No one

First, about the 50 year thing, I disagree that more time warp is needed. The way it is now, the game slapped me on the wrist and went "Bad No one. For your carelessness you must wait a long and tedious time", and I learned not to be so careless. Under your system it would say "You screwed up? Here, have some science!" But the main problem with your system IMO is that the joy of playing KSP, at least in my opinion, isn't actually the gameplay itself. The joy of playing KSP is the feeling of success from accomplishing something. At the moment, science is (sort of) based on what you do. You get science from going to different places, and you get the science when you go/return, not when you wait. Science is thus an additional goal mostly aligned with the main goal rather than an annoying pesky obstacle overcome by waiting not doing. Yes, science is currently a bit of a clickfest I agree, but I have seen lots of good suggestions which would I think would change that for the better and this, imo, is not one of them.

Launch Window planners combined with the in-game maneuver nodes make Duna rather easy to get to. I've never used KER or MJ, but imo the maneuver nodes+launch window planners make every planet other than Moho easy to get to, provided you know to set the planet as your target. Of course, when I finished with Kerbin's SOI I didn't know about the "target planet" feature, and thus had no clue how to get anywhere. I instead started trying to get as close as possible to the sun which has the exact opposite problem of Duna: No orbital mechanics involved (Other than Hohmann and Bi-elliptic transfers) but lots of delta-v.

The problem with assigning things the label of "cheating" is that when you apply it to anything other than exploiting glitches, the debug menu or save file editing then really all you're doing is telling other people that their way of playing the game is invalid because you said so. (The exceptions are because the debug menu is labeled "cheat", and also because debug menus are generally agreed to be cheating, because save file editing is near universally cheating across all games, and exploiting glitches is a bit of a grey area) Also it's very subjective. Personally I think that certain mods are cheating. Other people think they aren't. Some people think that Asparagus is cheating because it doesn't work as well in real life. Also, where do you draw the line? Once I had one mission which took 50 years thanks to Laythe accidentally slingshotting me out of the solar system. I left KSP running while doing other stuff while I waited for the ship to get home. Is that cheating? Under your situation it would give me massive science profit for not doing much, but I needed to warp through that time anyway because I was returning Kerbals home. You're turning a clickfest into a wait-fest. Even if you're doing something while waiting you're still waiting, and your primary goal is to pass the time.

There may not be an increase in difficulty in rocket design, but there's definitely an increase in difficulty in flight. It's much easier to get to the mun's SOI than Duna's. Especially if you don't know the trick where you target the planet. Also I think a manned Mun landing is easier than a manned Duna landing in that my standard lander usually has quite a bit of excess fuel when landing (One can return from the Mun with ions) on the Mun but taking off (It landed with parachutes, and couldn't take off and return with just ions) from Duna took almost all its fuel. If you want a harder rocket design then land on Moho.

So what in this system doesn't encourage the player to just get enough money to pay the researchers for a long time, then leave KSP running overnight while they go to sleep?

No one's qualified to be in charge of KSC. I mean, have you seen what people here do? But safety and rockets on Kerbin really stop being an issue thanks to the idea of parachutes. Just put one on the capsule and you're good.

Would building such a carrier be any more difficult than some of the other solutions proposed in this thread? If we're allowed to commision things into carriers, couldn't we just say that a continent floats on lava and is thus a carrier? Of course, someone would then have to say to the lunatic holding a gun to the world head that we had followed their instructions while keeping a straight face, but technically depending on how you defy "carrier", it would work.

Haven't the devs stated before that they do not intend to implement resources and thus it can't be Kethane anyway? I think that it's probably either a parts mod. Or maybe KAS. On the other hand, I play all stock and don't know many mods so it could very easily be one I've never heard of. KER I think they've pretty much explicitly stated they want to avoid because they don't want to frighten people with numbers.

"By foot" It doesn't say how said feet have to be used. How do you make a ladder-drive?

The KSP file has no DRM. You can just copy the folder onto a USB drive, take that USB drive to another computer, and open it on the other computer. The file will be in one of the following locations depending on your OS: Windows x86: C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\Kerbal Space Program Windows x64: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Kerbal Space Program Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/Kerbal Space Program Linux: ~/Steam/, alternatively in ~/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Kerbal Space Program

We have bunkers which would mean that not everyone would die, MAD still exists. Unless either country can move a significant percentage of their population off-world, MAD would still exist. Furthermore, it would be perfectly possible to just nuke the space-base.

The argument I always use is as follows: Let's say we have a country, let's call it Awesomeland. The people of Awesomeland are more industrialized than the rest of the world, and want to show the rest of the world how awesomely advanced their technology is. The people of Awesomeland want the world to fear them. In addition to Awesomeland, we have Not-Awesome Land. Not-Awesomeland is basically the exact same as Awesomeland except Awesomeland and Not-Awesomeland hate each other. And also both go "Na na na na na the other country does blah blah blah and thus we are TOTALLY different to each other." But both are industrialized superpowers. The people of Awesomeland and Not-Awesomeland both want to prove that they're better than the other. They have four options: Option A) Go to war Option Go to space Option C) Fight proxy wars in other countries Option D) Don't prove they're better than the other Option A can't happen because of nuclear weapons. Option C can and probably will happen but everyone agrees it's bad (When we're speaking hypothetically in terms of Awesomeland and Not-Awesomeland. Citizens of Awesomeland might say we need to contain the Not-Awesome scum or something). Option D won't happen because that's not the way the world works. Leaving option B. Space races invoke the same nationalistic pride, the same advances in technology (Actually the advances in technology are more efficient because the whole point is to advance technology), the same competition as war, except without the whole "lots of people dying" part. Also, both Awesomeland and Not-Awesomeland demonstrate their technological prowess and how it would be stupid to go to war with them.

The OP said: I simply want to modify the carrier to make it larger. I don't know if this would count as one of the accepted "larger" modifications or if it would be too major. Also, I think the issue is what you're modifying. The OP said that only modest modifications to the orbiter were OK while larger modifications to the carrier were OK.

My mistake, I thought the problem was that the carrier was small and (more importantly) moving. If you had a large enough carrier, couldn't you slow it down without a wire though?

Are modifications which make the carrier larger ok? Make the carrier so massive that the difficulties of landing on it disappear. (I assume that they would if you made it large enough. Is there a difficulty other than that the carrier is moving? If you made it large enough then the motion wouldn't really matter because if you aimed for the middle of the carrier then by the time you arrived it might have moved a bit but you would still be on the carrier. I think.)

Jeez, so many people with a utopia in which all sorts of horrible things happen to me. Thanks guys.

They were all transported by one massive company. KSP is a new company, with lots to prove. Also, their previous technology polluted the environment a lot, both to produce and to use. The government banned almost all of it when they moved to Kerbin.

No, it's just that none of the major companies will sell much to your space program until you prove yourself by doing science.

It didn't fly, but it still gets talked about a lot for a canceled idea which never flew. I think that Orion is a good name, but I think that the nuclear Orion is well-known enough that the name "Orion" has already been used. (Though this would only really be a problem if the current Orion did something really significant like land on Mars or something. But isn't that their plan?)

I think that it's perfectly fine to name the missions different to the spacecraft, but EM is a ....ty name and Orion is an awesome name. That said, I'm sorta glad they're not naming the missions "Orion" because every time I hear Orion I think nuclear pulse propulsion. I've never heard of an Apollo program other than the one that landed us on the moon. Imagine if the nuclear pulse propulsion was also called "Apollo" and every time someone said "Apollo" it was unclear if they were referring to nuclear propulsion or the moon landing. On the other hand, given how ....ty a name EM is, the missions will probably be referred to as Orion missions quite a lot.

You keep more of the velocity you had while you were orbiting Kerbin. In case it sounds weird, imagine the following scenario: Kerbin is orbiting the sun at K m/s. You're orbiting Kerbin at O m/s. You're carrying a magical bomb thing which will accelerate you really really fast to a speed at which you escape Kerbin's SOI in a fraction of a second and the losses due to gravity are negligible. Let's say the bomb gives you X m/s of delta-v, where X is some really big number. You also have normal rockets which can accelerate you from your orbit to escape velocity, but only just enough to escape. Let's say they give you R m/s. You have two choices: Detonate bomb and escape then fire rockets Fire rockets and escape then detonate bomb. If you detonate the bomb and escape then fire the rockets you are going at (Approximately, you'll still lose a tiny bit due to gravity) K+O+X+R m/s. (To start with you're going at K+O m/s relative to the sun, then the bomb gives you X m/s, then the rockets give you R m/s) If you fire the rockets and escape then detonate the bomb you are going at K+X m/s.

Moho means "Mother" in Kerbal. The Kerbals originated in Moho. They then stripmined it until there were absolutely no resources at all left, and had to leave. They also took all of its atmosphere. Then they went to Eve. They named it Eve because moving to Eve was the "Eve" of a new era. Then they polluted the heck out of it turning it into what it is today. Also while there they redirected an asteroid for the first time, creating Eve's moon Gilly. Then they went to Kerbin. Contrary to popular belief, the words "Kerbin" and "Kerbal" are completely unrelated. They named Kerbin "Kerbin" because they decided to attempt to "Curb in" their greedy industrial ways. This is why Kerbin is completely abandoned other than KSC, they all live in extremely minimalist structures underground. They rename the planets they colonize. All the outer planets haven't been colonized yet and are thus have named based on other things.

They don't need to threaten Commercial Crew specifically, they can threaten some of the easier things to cut and NASA would probably do as they say. I think that Boeing will probably win because of influence, and I don't know which out of the Dragon and the Dream Chaser will also win. Personally I think they should vote the CST-100 off the island, because as others have said it adds nothing new. Assuming SpaceX can get the Dragon to work with the same reliability as the CST-100, it would definitely be better.

After sending a manned return mission to Duna, now all that's left are Eve and Jool's moons. It turns out my fear of Duna was rational. I just barely got back into orbit. That said, I could have designed the lander better to include the return stage then ditch the rest of the lander rather than orbital rendezvousing with the return stage, so Moho (Which took all the fuel in my main lander to land and had too high a surface gravity to get back to orbit with enough fuel to get home, forcing me to make an orbital rendezvous without a completely different design) was technically harder. Duna was still a lot harder than Dres and Eeloo, I was able to land and return from them with no rendezvous and with fuel to spare. I keep going back and forth between doing that and making the last stage of the Tylo lander really really light. Back in .235, just before .24 came out, I was planning a mission where the lander for the other 3 was the final Tylo stage, but since landing on Tylo with a probe in .24 I've been more inclined to just make the last stage of the Tylo lander really light and use something else for the other 3. Taking enough science equipment to get all the data from a surface takes quite a lot of weight, and if the last stage of the Tylo lander is still carrying them then that's a fundamental limit on how light it can be.

I've been everywhere at least once. Probe landers do not return, manned landers do*. *In .235 they did, in .24 I leave them there. They have the capability to return, they just never do. When I start going to places I've never returned a Kerbal from before then I'll return them. Bodies I haven't landed on with a Kerbal yet: Eve Tylo Laythe Duna Vall Bop Pol Eve and Tylo I don't know if I could return them. Duna's atmosphere is scary but it should be easy and I'm currently planning a manned mission to it. Laythe should be easy but I'd have to do it differently to how I normally do things. Vall, Bop, and Pol are all easy but I can't be bothered to do them individually so I won't do them until I can make a lander I think could return from Tylo, put that on a ship along with a Laythe-lander and the lander(s) for the other 3, and then land on all of them.