Letting exploration contracts expire (and other such questions regarding the order in which contracts appear).

[PTNLemay]

I remember looking this up a few years ago, and concluding that it's okay to let contracts expire.  If you're at the point where you're exploring both the Mun and Minmus, and you see a contract for the Mun, you can let it go, and the next one to appear will randomly be one of those two.  Is that still the case in the current version of the game?  Do exploration contracts just cycle through a data-base hidden under the hood that players never see, pick one, and throw it at us randomly?

If that is the case, has anyone ever compiled a total list of all exploration contracts?  Like, for each planet, these are all of the explorations you can end up doing.  I ask because I'm a hard-line completionist, and it always bothers me moving onto the next stage of the game without being sure that I've completed all of the things to do at the planet I'm still at.

Also, speaking of moving onto the next thing.  What exactly do you lose when you jump ahead to a new sphere of influence without first receiving an exploration contract for that planet?  For example, say I've just unlocked the parts needed to race to Duna, but the exploration contract for Duna hasn't shown up.  Do I only lose that first "Enter Duna's sphere of influence" but all the other stuff about orbits, returning science, rendez-vousing crafts around it, will all still appear in the Exploration contract?  The game sees "Oh he's at Duna now, I can throw these missions at him."  Or, by not waiting to see that first Duna contract, do I burn off the entire list of Duna-Exploration-Contracts?

 

Sorry if this question has been asked a lot already, I did look in the backlog.  The problem is that very often when people ask the question they muddle the terminology.  They bring in missions and campaigns and tech trees, and it's hard to parse which part people are answering.  That's why I wanted to reformulate the question, and ask it in three parts so each one could be easily answered.  Thanks in advance.

Edited November 21, 2017 by PTNLemay