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Kerbal Space Program launches Career Mode with its latest update

It's not rocket science. Oh wait! Nevermind. It is!

Slowly but surely aerospace engineering sim Kerbal Space Program has been gaining popularity over the last couple of years - despite it not actually being a finished product yet - and now its latest 0.22 update adds a Career Mode to the mix.

One small step for Kerbal, one giant leap for Kerbal-kind.

Previously players would muck about in the game's Sandbox Mode trying to build the best possible craft to launch their cute little "Kerbal" critters into space. Now the game has some semblance of structure as you're tasked with hiring your own astronauts, researching and developing ship parts, building vessels under a budget, and accepting contracts to bolster your agency's reputation.

Rather than giving players the keys to the castle, Career Mode has you earn new gear through Research and Development. By running science experiments players will be able to accumulate data on parts and unlock new parts. This should help ease new players into figuring out just what all the hundreds of ship parts do. Advanced players need not worry, as Sandbox Mode is still available as well.

Also new is the ability to save particular under construction ship modules, so you can go back and tweak your build without having to reconstruct it again each time.

Kerbal Space program is available for PC and Mac on Steam Early Access for £17.99 / $22.99. Check out its new Career Mode features in the dev walkthrough below.

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