Greatest Spacecraft of all time

[fragtzack]

 Like to thank KSP for getting my interest involved in space. After almost a 1000 hours played and still played, KSP got me into watching history documentaries about space, watching Scott Manly documentaries beyond KSP, watching Neil deGrass Tyson stuff, reading things on line.

From all this reading and watching stuff online about space and spaceflight, IMO the greatest spacecraft in the history of mankind and the advancement of space is Sputnik. Sadly not an American craft. While I am a proud American and the wonders of the American space program are truly wonders and incredible achievements, Sputnik is the true champ when weighing all factors such as politics, technology available at the time,  being first and the affect on history. While landing on that moon is incredible no doubt, just seems sputnik made  bigger change in history than Apollo11.

Without Sputnik, there would have been no Apollo11 mission or Atlas rockets or Centaur upper stages or a space shuttle. 

 

All that said about the greatness of Sputnik place in history am disappointed in the Sputnik representations in KSP (At least in career mode). The way Sputnik is done in KSP  in game career mode  "Stayputnik" almost pointless because other better tech comes first and if try to use "Stayputnik" right away as obtained, its almost impossible.

Sputnik was on a multi-stage rocket and there was an airfoil triangular cap(Airstream Protective Shell) around the dome payload .  KSP would have one believe that Sputnik was launched from the pad as you would see the ball satellite orbiting. 

Staysputnik in KSP should at a minimum include a aerodynamic protective shell for launch, and the required radial/inline decouplers should be tech tree available same time as Stayputnik.

 

Hail Sputnik

 

 

 

 

 

[Naten]

I think that the Stayputnik should have an option to have its mounting base act as a decoupler, much like the spherical pods from Making History.

[Guest]

While I appreciate the sentiment, I think there is gameplay to be considered. The tech tree doesn't make much sense from a historical spaceflight PoV, what with manned command modules coming before probe cores and high-performance rockets before jets. It does however make sense from a gameplay PoV. It's not perfect for sure but as it is, it does give a pretty decent gameplay progression. Early on your challenge is to design a rocket that's structurally sound, aerodynamically stable, and has a streamlined payload; later on you get more complex challenges as for example the aerodynamics problem is no longer a concern what with procedural fairings and probe cores or pilots that can track prograde or what have you. 

And yeah, KSP is primarily a game, not a hardcore rocket simulator, let alone history of rocketry simulator. If it's gotten people interested in space exploration, rockets, and the history of how we did it IRL, then it's already done its job.