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Yeah, it's not that I have an issue with having the capability, I just don;t think we have a reasonable plan for using that capability, and unfortunately the capability has annual, fixed costs in perpetuity as long as it exists. To keep the lights on with zero launches is a couple billion a year. Should NASA decide to devote the bulk of their un-earmarked budget to SLS missions, then maybe it gets used.

I think the habitation issue is reasonably well-treated in USILS, actually. It's not "micromanaging," perhaps because it basically rewards what I did anyway. I make my long-duration vessels look rather like Mars DRA concepts. They require similar volumes of living space (to scale). If you routinely send kerbals to Jool in a craft that's basically a spaceplane the size of a Gulfstream, then yeah, you're gonna have a problem. If you're like me and you have 4 habs, a central lab, a mk1-2, and a lander on the thing for a crew of 4, then it's not an issue. I think it's not a bad idea to codify it in some fashion. Like you need a dedicated "habitat" to get past XX days for every X crew (2? 4?). Perhaps the recycler elements get scaled such that you need a hitchhiker for every 2 crew for max effect (because the LS machinery is considered to be on that part, and works indefinitely for 2, or limited time for 4). It need not be terribly complex.

The NASA Mars DRA 5 has the habitat at 30 mt. The lander is also about 30mt, and the transfer vehicle is closer to 40. That's 100mt. For a mission with 6 crew. So yeah, "colony ship" is a little hyperbolic, it's basically a Manned Mars mission ship all up in one package.

Roverdude's mod, includes habitability. So you can have the "stuff" to live, but if you just add tanks to a mk1 pod, that won't cut it.

SpaceX apparently has around 5000 employees (wiki). If the average wage is 40k a year (the median wage in the US is 51k), each launch right now includes about 18 Million $ of payroll. That can give us a lower limit on costs with a launch a month (2/mo and you can half that figure). The whole Mars nonsense requires billions (with zero RoI), and even making 10s of millions per satellite launch, that's still chump change. The satellite market is finite, and in other threads people (including me) have done the math looking at the last few years of launches to see what % SpaceX could possibly take. The reality is that there are a small number of possible customers per year, and that is unlikely to change significantly.

It's funny that the people that tend to be against LS also talk as if blowing kerbals up is a common occurrence. I play with LS (death=true), and I don't manage to kill any via LS OR explosions for the most part. Stock travel times are so short, it's just a slight engineering challenge with LS added. Heck, I'd argue that in stock the problem with adding LS is that it's not hard enough, not that it's too hard. I play with LS and at 6.4X usually, and then it becomes more of a challenge. The Mun looks like stock Mun missions mostly, but I bring a Hab to Minmus (think Orion with a small Bigelow) as it's a much longer mission architecture. Dun starts looking like Mars Direct. From a gameplay standpoint, and I'm talking career mode here, the problem with KSP is that it gets easier as you play. It's literally the hardest for the noob starting their first career right at the start than at any other time. LS as a default mode in career (again, USILS as a benchmark) basically makes Kerbin SoI operations effectively "stock," but farther missions require some planning... making them slightly harder than they are in stock, but right now they are easier in a career setting than the first Mun missions without LS. They raid any LS supplies on the ship if there are any. If you manage to separate some---say you disconnect a section and let them drift together towards Duna, and then you use that section to resupply after letting them starve a while (assuming death is not turned on), then as soon as it docks, they raid all the new supplies. He has a handle on exploits. Honestly, if someone wants to cheat it that badly, they can just turn it off, or edit the save, right? With 3 allowed modes, OFF, ON (no death), and ON (death), everyone can be happy. That last is a great example, and something that has been SF fodder for a while.

The problem is financing something without a customer. NASA is certainly interested in Red Dragon as any Mars architecture requires the engineering knowledge that RD will gain, and it might take multiple flights to get right (something that would impact any current MCT design, as well). Still, where is the money coming from? No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

USILS addresses this. Time limits are great gameplay. Take a common occurrence in stock KSP. You strand a kerbal. So you build a slightly more capable craft to go fetch him. This is a pretty trivial exercise. When you have to get to him with a clock ticking down, it's much more interesting (throw in KCT, and it can become positively nail-biting). A stranded Duna mission could easily result in the player having to make "the Martian" type choices regarding rescue ops... They might lack the parts to make anything substantially better than what stranded the crew, so they elect to send a LS resupply while they work on unlocking whatever part it is that will make a proper rescue possible.

It's possible to kill kerbals? How do you manage that?

Yeah, big glass is certainly a legit payload.

This. Note that USI-LS (seems like the best example since Roverdude is a dev) gives a 15 day grace period for all crew pods with no LS stuff added. That basically makes Kerbin SoI stuff "stock." Apparently the vast majority of players never leave kerbin SoI, so the vast majority would be unaffected except for bases. Those can easily be supplied. Farther missions require bigger ships, or perhaps sending ahead supplies.

It would be a toggle, hence a non-argument (thanks for not pointing out my typo, BTW ). Also, it's a non-issue in sandbox (again, a toggle). If it were the USI-LS type, default would be to not kill, but you can turn death on as well, so it effectively adds 3 options to stock. 1. As it is now (LS toggled off) 2. USILS default (doesn't kill, merely disables crew, who can then be rescued 3. USILS with Death=True. For it to be "vanilla" as per OP, I'd assume the USILS default would be the stock version, with an option to turn it off, or turn it up.

Yes, it should absolutely be stock. Time limits make a huge difference in any spaceflight with crew. It is fundamentally different. The game would need more robust mission planning, however. That or a system like Roverdude's that just makes them tourists after they run out (no contract rescue missions, in other words). @panzer1b, even photosynthesis requires raw materials. This is a non-argument. You could play with LS not on. Managing them like sims? You need to simply make slightly more realistic craft. Done.

SLS is actually under construction and hitting milestones, and you can watch videos of testing and assembly. BFR doesn't exist. There is a finite market for satellite to GEO, and thecae of 30+ at once is pretty unlikely, volume starts to dominate over mass.

@Shadowmage, so your mechanism above would effectively use the "core" part to assemble/inflate as an EPL "launchpad" part, with itself as the thing to be constructed (with the "pad" bit destroyed in the process)?

Solar gas turbines? Use a parabolic reflector to heat an operating fluid/gas to drive a turbine for electricity.

While a specific contract can certainly be steered one way or another, something of the magnitude of the SLS program, including any similarly expensive and huge payloads required to make it have any use at all, would certainly in fact be spread over numerous contractors as it has always been done since the initial order of Frigates during the Washington Administration. That's the way the horse trading gets done, and to expect otherwise is delusional. On top of that, see my other post above---what is the purpose of SLS or BFR? What payloads exist, or might exist to utilize this capability? Short of a full manifest of possible payloads, it's building a huge, expensive program for nothing other than what it really is, a Federal jobs program for space workers.

1. How much of tanks would actually be seen, anyway? 2. One opposite sounds fine, there is a to going on for these parts externally, and if some brave soul ever decides to mess with IVAs, it means fewer things to have to worry about, right? 3. That sounds fine.

Time limits that matter are the only limits that I think make sense. The budget aspect is already there, since you need to complete the mission with funds to spare, or it's not worth taking.

Or meaningful time limits. Rescues for example. If you have to rescue someone in a short time frame, it requires a very different craft, and can be challenging in a way it normally is not.

Given the numerous issues with career mode, a good deal of role play is required anyway. Heck, minus EPL (which I will certainly give a new look to), I'd launch the right tonnage, then hyperedit the torus there, and delete the deadweight tonnage. I saw a mod that uses the EPL stuff, but is a parts free version, maybe I'll try that.

While I am certainly not an SLS fan (as anyone who has read my posts on the subject in other threads knows), BFR is even less real than SLS, and has an identical problem. It's a launch vehicle without a mission. If someone comes up with a bazillion dollars of private money to watch people die on Mars, then it has a mission, otherwise it's a huge rocket with nothing to lift. That's the problem with SLS, not that it exists, but that the annual fixed cost of maintaining the capability (once it actually exists) is so high that it needs a lot of launches to look reasonable, and there are not enough huge payloads for it---and if there were, they would also be incredibly expensive themselves.

@Shadowmage, parts are looking awesome. I totally get the EPL thing, it is a simplification that I really like, I just never liked the actual parts in that mod... I didn't know about the check for how it spawns the craft, either, which avoids what I thought was a problem (which isn't). Regarding the science labs, that's too bad, as the large stations would obviously have room. I suppose that there could be small lab parts designed with attachment to the hub in mind. Here's an idea. Imagine you make a new adapter shape for the hubs. Call it "Lab-like." It's a cylinder, of the torus hub's base diameter, and a couple meters high. It is not a lab, it does nothing, it's an adapter. Make a copy of the adapter as a stand alone part, it's an actual lab. Give it 2 seats, and lab functionality. The larger the torus, the larger the lab adapter. You slap that on one side, and if you want symmetry, you use the adapter part on the other side. Maybe the -H torus could have a larger hub than even it would with an inflatable, so the lab is even bigger in diameter. The idea is the smallest way to add lab functionality, and larger tori (meaning larger diameter matching lab parts) could have more capability (science storage, etc).

I should have added orbital space flight, not just hitting the Karmen line---which is a great milestone/achievement, but basically useless, particularly for a crewed vehicle. I agree on lift making more sense in the definition than air breathing, but functionally, I don't think non-air breathers make any sense in this role (X-15 didn't generate huge amounts of lift I think, I'd imagine a rocket slung under a B-52 would do just about as well).

They are hard, or inefficient. Minus the "airbreather" part, what's the point, exactly? I consider a "spaceplane" something that functions like an aircraft, but can reach space, I guess. I don't consider Shuttle a spaceplane, for example. If it were efficient to make rocket spaceplanes (or just not far harder than rockets) we'd have seen one by now. I'm happy to change the definition I use if there is a well-established usage that I haven't paid attention to. Good question, and I don't know. I do RO, but I have yet to make aircraft, I'm pretty disinterested in them in KSP, honestly. Yeah, I always find posts about spaceplanes leaving KSC and going to Duna (or anywhere else that is not barely LKO) and back pretty funny, and a sign of how goofy KSP can be. At best an even lightly realistic spaceplane gets you to low orbit with a small payload.