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Chicken and egg problem. We gain that technology by attempting the lofty goal of off-world colonies. Projects like biodome just don't fire the imagination as much as "5 year colony on mars"

KSP is not simple, some of the mods are far from simple, and the modding scene (as a whole) for this game is set to get very not-simple rather fast. I'm not a modder, I can't even program. All I know is my experience from Arma 2 which has an uncountable number of mods, everything from graphical changes to 8000 new uniforms for people who care what water bottle the enemy is wearing, new sounds, new maps, extensive plugins... everything. Setting up your mods and joining a server would be a nightmare without the Six Updater. Browsing existing mods would be painful if they were all in one ugly forum. The OP could have phrased it better, since the way he did it is provoking an emotional reponse. Imagine he said "I think we should adopt this [github] as a community standard because [reasons]" instead of "how about you're forced to use this"

Manned spaceflight has a more profound cultural impact though. It's one thing to have curiosity record an emission spectrum of a mars rock, it's quite another to see a video of an american and a russian playing golf on the moon. And, more long term, the end goal is surely to have large, self-sufficient manned colonies off-earth. Imagine the psychological, sociological, environmental and technological developments that would come from an endeavour.

The US gov't cut funding to the NERVA program in the 70s specifically to avoid having to fund a future mars mission and a continually expanding space programme, as I understand it. Catastrophic lack of vision there. With the recent competitions and incentives, and Planetary Resources mining bid, the space race seems to be kicking off again.

lol what Anyway, some kind of unified mod system would be very nice. Beats the hell out of a cluttered forum.

Yeah, access to space is going to get a lot cheaper in the next 50 years. Planetary Resources mining bid (fuel and materials), Bigelow Aerospace's man-rated inflatable station modules, and Virgin Galactic/x-prize related ascent methods.

So this is like a dwarf fortress succession game, but with KSP? neat. Maybe when I get better I'll join in.

Yeah. I was figuring you'd start with basic parts and simple goals mirroring the RL space programme; launch unmanned rocket into space, launch a satellite into a stable orbit, launch a kerbal into space, launch a kerbal into orbit, launch two kerbals at once, make a spacecraft rendezvous, land on the mun, mun sample return, etc etc etc. Get lots of money for passing these "main quest objectives", and more normal amounts of money for randomly generated side quests (deliver this comms satellite to this orbit, perform this experiment [read: launch cargo, have kerbal interact with it by a minigame] in space). Allocate scientists and funds to research projects, build new launch sites and recovery sites (save money by reusing parts, the more you use a part the less reliable it is), train kerbonauts a lá X-COM. Research progress reaches plateaus till you test the prototype on mission. End-game is when you've completed all the main quest goals (explore every planet etc), but you can still continue. Players might compete to reach the end-game in the minimum number of years, or missions, or money spent. This is one of those games where the future potential really occupies my mind. I am going to have to be careful not to over-play the early versions so I can still enjoy the final product. I played the early versions of minecraft too much and I can't enjoy it anymore.

Eventually, in the far future, when all the krakens have been de-tentacled and all the game features (docking, planets, space stations, life support, electricity etc) are in, how will the campaign work? I see most parts have a cost value but of course this doesn't have any use at the moment.

His name will live forever. Thanks for the first steps, Neil.

Yeah, practice making interesting 2-3 minute videos before you make tldw 20 minuters.

Very professional. Nice short video too, not like some of those 15 minute monstrosities made by people who love hearing themselves talk.

Planetes is pretty much the king of the hard-sci-fi TV world. Defying Gravity might have been a good western live action competitor but the script and general plot was awful. Oh, and there was a docudrama about a manned solar system explorer a few years ago. That was quite good if I remember correctly. Space Odyssey: Voyage To The Planets.

This sounds perfect! I'd love to play a mission like this.