Why a Geminialike 2-man Capsule is needed in Stock.

[Whirligig Girl]

Simple: it was a big part of American Spaceflight History.

Gemini Program did have lots of cool things planned for it. MOL, Gemini Moonships, and Big-G crew pod. The two manned capsules we have in KSP right now closely resemble Mercury and Apollo command pods. The Gemini pod is a big piece missing in KSP. We can do such cool retro-looking ships and missions in career mode with the Mk1 pod, a Mk2 would look really cool and retro.

Thoughts? Think I'm totally wrong? What about how my reasons are entirely wrong for the reason we need a Gemini pod. All of the other reasons have already been said and I'm sure Squad has heard them, I don't think this has been said.

[tater]

1.875 m parts to go with it, too.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Why do we need another American-like pod, instead of a Soviet-like pod? Voskhod could be a good model for it. Even though it was 3 man, 2 men launched in it as well.

[CaptainTurbomuffin]

Many people say a 2-man-pod is needed, as in mid-career mode, you need a pilot and a scientist. Altough many people say this, I disagree with it. Either bring a pilot and have less science, or if you're hardcore enough, bring a scientist and fly witouth SAS. Only for mid-career mode. In the late game, you can have SAS mudules, so you won't need a pilot, and in early career mode, you should only use a pilot, as he gives SAS woth 0 XP, but a scientist with 0 XP is not giving you science boost, as I know. The 3-man-capsule? Maybe it'll have use when we'll have some kind of hardcore life support system, and a REAL need of engineers.

[Whirligig Girl]

Why do we need another American-like pod, instead of a Soviet-like pod? Voskhod could be a good model for it. Even though it was 3 man, 2 men launched in it as well.

I'd be down with Soyuz parts. Would actually be a good thing to have if we wanted to have a new line of 1.875m parts. I suggest Gemini because of how Americalike the other two pods, as well as a lot of other parts, look.

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Many people say a 2-man-pod is needed, as in mid-career mode, you need a pilot and a scientist. Altough many people say this, I disagree with it. Either bring a pilot and have less science, or if you're hardcore enough, bring a scientist and fly witouth SAS. Only for mid-career mode. In the late game, you can have SAS mudules, so you won't need a pilot, and in early career mode, you should only use a pilot, as he gives SAS woth 0 XP, but a scientist with 0 XP is not giving you science boost, as I know. The 3-man-capsule? Maybe it'll have use when we'll have some kind of hardcore life support system, and a REAL need of engineers.

Maybe Engineers should be needed for some part test contracts. At any rate, I disagree that 2-man pod should not be added because you think everyone should fly as a badS. Might also be woth usig spelcheker.

[nigelvn]

Many people say a 2-man-pod is needed, as in mid-career mode, you need a pilot and a scientist. Altough many people say this, I disagree with it. Either bring a pilot and have less science, or if you're hardcore enough, bring a scientist and fly witouth SAS. Only for mid-career mode. In the late game, you can have SAS mudules, so you won't need a pilot, and in early career mode, you should only use a pilot, as he gives SAS woth 0 XP, but a scientist with 0 XP is not giving you science boost, as I know. The 3-man-capsule? Maybe it'll have use when we'll have some kind of hardcore life support system, and a REAL need of engineers.

Also, if you just slap on a probe core, you can take a scientist and fly with SAS

[CaptainTurbomuffin]

I'd be down with Soyuz parts. Would actually be a good thing to have if we wanted to have a new line of 1.875m parts. I suggest Gemini because of how Americalike the other two pods, as well as a lot of other parts, look.

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Maybe Engineers should be needed for some part test contracts. At any rate, I disagree that 2-man pod should not be added because you think everyone should fly as a badS. Might also be woth usig spelcheker.

Than let me change my opinion about this. 2-man pods might not be so bad, if it is physically possible to house 2 kerbals in a 1.25m pod. Even the black pod looks tight. And, i should be somewhere halfway in the tech tree, between the black an the grey pods. The point why I changed my opinion is that it could have the same disadvantage over the black cockpit as the grey cockpit has: higher mass. The grey pod is 5 times as heavy as the black pod, but it only houses 3 times more passengers. Maybe a 2-man-cockpit should have the mass of 2.3? Than you could have a Mercury-style-rocket, a pilot and a scientist. And simply using the good-old Mk.1 "black" cockpit would be better due to the lower mass, but worse due to the lack of a pilot/scientist.

Edit: Also, if We're going to have so many cockpits, could we give them nicknames such as "black"?

[Kegereneku]

IMO, we need a 2-man capsule because of the Pilot-Scientist-Engineer paradigm. The aesthetic is secondary.

[tater]

Why do we need another American-like pod, instead of a Soviet-like pod? Voskhod could be a good model for it. Even though it was 3 man, 2 men launched in it as well.

Soviet is fine, but I agree with gregroxmun, the extant capsules are all "NASA" style, so gemini matches stock better. I often use HGR which has both Soviet style pods, and a Gemini analog. I also think that the 1.875m parts are just incredibly useful, particularly in slightly scaled up RSS configs, with otherwise stock rocket parts.

With a full suite of Soviet-style parts, it would almost be better to have a full set in 2 styles, and you pick on or the other (just from a part/memory standpoint).

[Wjolcz]

I would rather have a Dragon-like pod with crew of 4, tbh. The fact that I have to use Hitchhiker to transport my interplanetary crew is killing me. Always need a probe on it and panic whenever I lose control.

I'm not saying that having a two-seater is a bad idea, but I don't think it would be very useful.

[tater]

I never send guys interplanetary in anything less that a command pod, a lander, a hitchhiker for each 2 guys, and usually a science lab. A few years in a capsule designed for at most a couple weeks seems a little cruel

[Wjolcz]

I never send guys interplanetary in anything less that a command pod, a lander, a hitchhiker for each 2 guys, and usually a science lab. A few years in a capsule designed for at most a couple weeks seems a little cruel

Well, that's not what I meant. I do the exact same thing actually. At least 1 hitchhiker per every 2 crew members.

What I meant is that transporting the said crew of the expedition in the hitchhiker, from KSC to the mothership in orbit waiting to depart, is a bit silly. Or to the surface and back, or whatever.

A proper capsule that can transport 4 kerbals and is able to be controled by them is needed. And I mean for 2.5m rockets. Not MK3 SSTOs.

Edited August 6, 2015 by Veeltch

[tater]

Play with a scaled up solar system (even slightly, like 3.2X), and the need for 1.875m parts becomes more obvious.

[Wjolcz]

Play with a scaled up solar system (even slightly, like 3.2X), and the need for 1.875m parts becomes more obvious.

What if I don't?

[CaptainTurbomuffin]

There's a point in 2-man capsules, but not in 1.875m parts.

[Kerbart]

Once you have the octoprobe core you don't need a twin capsule, but it'd be nice to have one. There are several modded capsules out there and that's great, but one should be able to play the game with stock without the feeling that something is missing and that's the case right now. In a game where you have to launch manned because the technology is not unlocked until you get past half the tech tree it just seems wrong to send an unmanned Mk I capsule (with probecore) on rescue missionsâ€â€it just feels like you'd need a pilot for the maneuvering required. The Mk III is complete overkill, not to mention that it blows your budget in career out of the water.

I agree with others that Soviet style capsules would be awesome. They have a much more Kerbal feeling to them to begin with.

[tater]

There's a point in 2-man capsules, but not in 1.875m parts.

Yeah, there is, they look better for a 2-mad pod. If it was just the kerbals, maybe not, but you need to fit 2 helmets in there.

[BlueCanary]

Right now if you want a two kerbal ship the best looking option I know of is a mk1 pod on top of a mk1 lander can, which doesn't really look that great. So a 2 kerbal pod would be nice. On the other hand, how would they physically fit there? 1.875m parts would work, but that seems a lot of work and crash-causing (for me at least) extra parts. So I'd want a 2 kerbal pod, but only if it could be done in a physically feasible way, preferably without 1.875m parts.

[Frozen_Heart]

1.875 m parts to go with it, too.

I'd like 1.875m parts as well. At the KSP half scale of ships, they would work well with Soyuz, Falcon 9, and the Space Shuttle SRBs.

[KSK]

I too would like a two-kerbal pod of some description. Something akin to a Gemini would make sense given the capsules we already have but a Soviet lookalike would be cool too.

Lots of reasons why.

The Gemini programme had some really cool missions if you like doing historical reenactments in KSP. Bonus points if you're playing sandbox and manage to replicate the (sadly failed) manned maneuvering unit mission. Then, as somebody has already said, the proposed extensions to Gemini provide still more inspiration for fun KSP missions.

For career games,having early access to multi- kerbal capsules would be a nice alternative to strapping a probe core to a Mk1. It's maybe a personal quirk but I much prefer to fly tourist or rescue missions with a pilot+passenger or pilot+empty seat configuration rather than sending up an empty Mk1 by remote control.

Having early access to pilot+scientist crews would provide another way of earning a bit more science in the early game. It would also let the player train up crews more quickly. I don't think either of those would provide gamebreakingly large gameplay advantages.

[richfiles]

It is true that Gemini's capsule was slightly larger in diameter than the Mercury capsule, but the majority of the larger diameter seems to actually stem from the tapered service module. The other bulk of Gemini's mass comes from it's longer, and larger diameter nose.

I would argue that a viable option for a 2 crew Kemini module would be to retain the stock MK1 base diameter, but make the capsule's main body slightly longer, so it has a shallower taper (so as to accommodate two kerbals side by side, add the double door style exits), and make an integral nose that more or less completes Gemini's profile. The part would obviously have more mass than the single seater. The nose tip would be a slightly larger diameter than the end of the MK1 capsule, but taper to the same small diameter at the tip, for reasons of aerodynamics and part fit. it also would be distinctively Gemini like.

This would make a Kemini two seater module both viable in the early game, and not require a whole stack of new parts. While not absolutely true to Gemini, a rocket could be built with smaller diameter FL tank upper stages, and larger diameter Rockomax lower stages.

As for Soviet capsules... I have a thought that I like... The Inland KSC needs to be an alternate starting point in the game. Furthermore... It'd be cool if you had a couple capsules that were soviet specific, that you'd progress with if you started a game selecting that as your launch site. Just a thought. Maybe a Lunakhod shaped rover body or something! I'm sure you can do it with mods. As you advance the tech tree, and scale up the Administration building, you could get exchange program contracts, like the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission. You are tasked to dock with a foreign space agency's vessel in space, and upon doing so, you get the option to unlock some of their unique tech int he tech tree.

While it doesn't cover the unique contracts, administration, or tech tree elements, you can setup Soviet parts and have other launch sites (to play as another Kerbal nation) using Tantaresand that one mod that adds a TON of additional launch sites. Those two mods could make that happen. I forget the name of the multi launch site mod though. Oops!

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/81537-1-0-4-Tantares-Stockalike-Soyuz-and-MIR-29-27-06-2015-PPTS-Dev

Maybe that other mod was Kerbal Konstructs?

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/105247-1-0-4-Kerbal-Konstructs-v0-9-2-My-Ears-They-Are-Bleeding

Edited August 16, 2015 by richfiles

[passinglurker]

if only the mk1 cockpit had tandem seating. We get two seats for tourists and rescues without a new size everyones happy until they want to go to the mun... yeah nevermind we need a set of 1.875m parts that include a two man capsule...

[Alshain]

We don't need 1.875m parts in stock just to support a mod (RSS). It's just more parts that we don't have room for and wouldn't be useful for stock players when there are plenty of parts we really need in stock, like 2.5m SRB's.

However, the K2 Command pod has become invaluable to me and I would love to see a 1.25m 2 man pod stock (and I really don't care what it looks like).

[passinglurker]

Who said anything about RSS? I sure don't use that mess, and besides there are many cases for 1.875 just with stock alone such as being a good size for a two man capsule with helmets or smoothing the jump from 1.25 to 2.5, and not having room wouldn't be a problem if squad would just practice proper efficient texturing and texture sharing techniques like the modders they claim to encourage, but really any early game single part two man option is fine by me. Unless they screw up the non-existent crewed part ballance and make it impractical to use anyway...

[Wjolcz]

Who said anything about RSS? I sure don't use that mess, and besides there are many cases for 1.875 just with stock alone such as being a good size for a two man capsule with helmets or smoothing the jump from 1.25 to 2.5, and not having room wouldn't be a problem if squad would just practice proper efficient texturing and texture sharing techniques like the modders they claim to encourage, but really any early game single part two man option is fine by me. Unless they screw up the non-existent crewed part ballance and make it impractical to use anyway...

AKA "Let's have a whole bunch of 1.875m parts just to support a new 2-man pod"

Just what Alshain said. 1.25m pod with crew of two would work better, though I still want a 2.5m Dragon-esque command pod with crew of 4.