tater

Get the SSTU mod... of course you'll stop using stock rocket parts altogether if you do.

The work on the landing site in CA has been progressing well, OTOH, though that's at Vandenberg AFB.

So what? NASA gets money, too, it's just out of people;s pockets. Heck, BO is launching from its own facility, I don;t see how that's not a space program, albeit a tiny one. Once SpaceX gets the TX launch facility done, they will be more capable than most countries with space programs, particularly once D2 is flying.

They they launch anything at all, for any reason whatsoever without a customer paying for it---they are a private space program. Send an empty capsule to Mars? Private space program. There is no requirement to achieve X "science" per flight to count as such. They are doing "rocket science," not planetary in that case (engineering, really, but that's the first thing NASA did, too). Their interstage camera, or flying a go pro to Mars would be vastly superior to any instruments NASA imaged Mars with for decades. Blue Origin? Private space program. Both outfits are hybrids, they have customers, but they also do things because they want to do them. There is no formal definition of "space program," so you can't argue that they aren't one, really.

While I'm certainly not sanguine about Orion, making the charges would be substantially easier than it was when it was first proposed (computerized mills, etc). The security is not really an issue, been there, done that (Sandia and LANL have pretty tight security at tech areas, and for X-div).

The annual bit is really an abstraction that the player might never see explicitly. You have time limits to do things, and failure to get things done on time negatively impacts what they offer you in budget for a given project. Given the idea i this thread of R&D taking time, with possible setbacks, I think folding in some sort of R&D milestones---in the form of test missions---makes sense, as the point of the career game is really to create novel mission requirements within a context. So you are working on new crew pods, and after some elapsed time (barring one of OP's mishaps) a part test mission is created that is a condition of R&D progressing. Say it's the mk1-2 pod. The mission might be to multipart, like "explore" contracts. Put craft in a suborbital trajectory over Kerbin at an altitude of X (a very high orbit, approaching munar distance). Part 2 is to achieve a velocity in the atmosphere of at least 2200 or something. Part 3 is to recover the pod. (this is sorta like the real Orion test flight). Or it might have a splashdown test (unlike many in KSP, this one would actually be sensible).

An asteroid could be randomly generated (as they are) in a distant, perhaps polar orbit that is in fact a star gate (sort of like Pohl's Gateway). Flying through the gateway takes you to another system. It would effectively unload the current Kerbol system, and place you in a new one, spawning at the mouth of the star gate there.

What are the limits on time warp time compression mechanically? There are mods that substantially increase time warp (i.e.: for RSS). Why would the player even notice? Hit "build and launch" and, bam! the clock moves forward X weeks. All you'd notice was a different name on the button. I'm assuming a much faster warp, not the watching night to day cycles of the warp to next morning button. Again, career is supposed to be a roleplaying sort of thing, anyone not wanting to worry plays another mode. What we have now is "career" mode minus anything that might confuse the player into thinking there is any roleplaying or suspension of disbelief at all, lol. With the idea in this thread (which I like), time certainly needs to matter in general, otherwise it doesn't really matter though, hence the apparent digression into time mechanics. This mechanic alone (time required to research) increases the passage of in game time. Minus some real time progression, KSP should include more futuristic stuff, since if you can go from no space travel to past what we can do on Earth now (SSTO spaceplanes, etc) in a few months, then after a few years you should have any conceivable tech anyone here can think about.

I'd honestly like kerbals to do things autonomously---players can always take over, or turn that off. Landed craft have scientists EVA to do science (walk around within XX meter and collect samples). Engineers can inspect the craft for damage, etc. Pilots can stand around and take pictures. In space, they'd do similar things, but on an umbilical. None of those ideas are skill related, though. Skill wise, I want pilots to be able to pilot... a point of leveling up pilots should be to turn them lose on routine missions by themselves. Say station or base resupply. Scientists could be able to determine biomes (a name which needs to go away, since most "biomes" in KSP have no life). One skill might show biomes from space, another level might be able to show on the EVA nav ball which direction biomes are that are different from the one you are in, with the arrow color perhaps showing relative distance (close to far, nothing more). Higher level might put the number in km. Engineers get plenty with KIS/KAS, and they should not need high skill, the way KAS is is just fine.

I have flipped my share of those in the past, too.

Sagan was about science, so we'd not have gone back to the moon with people (because even then probes were better than people, a situation which has only become more true as time passes).

People time warp all the time. Either time warp is bad, or it is not bad. If warping to Eeloo is OK, then warping the same number of days for any other reason is OK. So which is it? I think time warp is a tool, nothing more, and it should be used if it is the tool that is needed. Again, the missions need not be structured as they are now, either, so comparing to any contract in the game (99% of which are simply awful) does;t help much. Say any program is given a budget divided into Minmus Month (50 days) chunks. You are right, it could be like a super "Explore the Mun" contract, or instead, it might be procedural/contextual (since the latter is now a thing). So you start a Mun Program, and then the contract office decided contextually that you need Mun missions to flesh it out. It might include precursor mission if you have not done them (say you skipped to the Mun without doing Kerbin Orbit stuff). So it might ask to do a rendezvous in Kerbin Orbit, or a docking (depending on what parts you have), and it might ask you do do that within the next couple months. It might ask for a landing site survey from munar orbit, and that might be a few more months away. The "Program" stuff might have the broad "explore" stuff included, but perhaps it could require doing X of the presented sub-contracts for completion... players choice. So pick some LKO rendezvous stuff, plus a survey of landing sites, plus one to get data from a particular landing site (which might be generated contextually from the orbital survey sites (picking one).

I don't think going places is sound, I think being in space is about the same. A year in orbit is not substantially different than a year to whatever world. If skills are a thing, they should actually be useful. With KIS/KAS added, engineers are very useful. Certain science should require scientists. If that were true, I'd allow every astronaut to have their primary skill, and level 0 of a secondary skill. So An engineer might have pilot 0, but at least if the pilot and scientist landed on the moon, the CSM with the engineer aboard wouldn't tumble.

"Career." It is career mode, not long-weekend mode. You can unlock the entire tech tree in less time than it should take to construct a single real rocket. It's not so much about role-playing as it is having to intentionally ignore all the terrible stuff that would otherwise make any sort of role-playing even possible. "Wow,we discovered rocketry 2 months ago, awesome that we're building near permanent bases on the Mun already!" Balance. A new career mode would not be the time mechanics on top of the lousy career mode that exists now. Everything would be rebalanced. The payouts, the rewards, everything. So any comparison, like the one contract, then warp straw man has exactly zero bearing on how it would actually play. If rolling out a design from the VAB to launch took a few weeks, for example (including construction time), then the Rep check might require a reasonable number of launches worth of results a year.It would take something squad would be unlikely to do, actual play testing. You can also "cheat" the current system by time warping to get new contracts instead of "decline."

I could see a PPTS-like 2 seater, though (smaller diameter, maybe 1.875), with a full size top node, and then a 3.75 version with perhaps more than 4 crew. Regarding land landing, it was not geography, really, but the fear the CCCP had of having vehicles land outside their actual territory---which is why so many of their craft were destroyed intentionally with explosive charges. The US has a global navy, so water meant we could land anywhere on earth with an ocean, a much easier target given the % of the earth covered with ocean. Choosing to land on land vs water in KSP certainly isn't hard, but I see your point, it is likely too hard to add to the game.

They've said 10-20, and I think they actually regard the real number as possibly much higher from things I have read.

Well, at a cost of 10,000, it would be an unlikely choice to unlock both

A simple way to add in variant tech trees would look like this, you start all career modes giving the player 10,000 science. There are 2 (more, if we can come up with variant paths to take) starting nodes, and they cost 10,000 to unlock each. You pick the one with the round capsule, and that places you on one tech progression, and if you chose the conical pod, you get the other. There is overlap in the middle of the tree, and "side" specific tech clings to the outside of the tree (requires a direct link to the 1st node chosen). All rescues pull pods from the "opposing" tree.

That's true regarding engines. I was thinking whole stages. I suppose if they can garner a higher launch cadence, production moves to upper stages.

Yeah, that's really the thing, not to have just different looks, but different capabilities.

There is the whole issue of "mass production" to consider. Reuse with current, very limited payloads to compete for means that reuse directly diminishes manufacturing output, which might very well harm cost efficiency. It might be cheaper to keep production busy and expend launchers than it is to reuse them.

I meant the crew pods. I'm all for soviet inspired parts, but the stock parts don't actually look like the US parts, either. Clearly the mk3 cockpit is a direct shuttle copy, but then again, so was Buran. Aside from that, the bulk of the reentry capsules are in fact conical in RL. The first 2 US capsules don;t actually look like the mk1, aside from color, as the mk1 lacks the nose. Certainly the mk1-2 is roughly Apollo geometry, then again so are cut-100 and orion. Perhaps a 2-kerbal pod with the steeper geometry of dragon v2/PPTS would be in order, or a 2 man, and a larger diameter 4+ kerbal version? One thing that needs to be included, though, are trade-offs. Soviet reentry vehicles could not land safely on water, and US RVs could not land safely on land. If that was built in, it would make far more sense to offer both, as there would be design trade-offs. Perhaps a stock-alike vostok has no top node, and is made such that any radial chutes big enough to land softly will burn off---then give kerbals a parachute option (you have to bail out). Maybe all the "koviet" capsules sink, but Soyuz-alike has landertron functionality. Make US-alike chutes not safe for land (have water vs land a thing).

A real time mechanic would have KSC with a base budget that is reevaluated every year (or annualized versions of contract payouts) based upon some criteria, so warping without doing anything would not be a path to victory.

If they launch red dragon to Mars at all, then they are a private space program, as it is not a contracted NASA launch, though there is cooperation. I think that the semantics don't really matter that much. MCT is fantasy without a way to pay for it, and the costs would exceed possible SpaceX profits (to all income streams) by huge margins. I'm all for private space, I'm just not seeing the income stream being more than a finite number of satellite launches at something like current rates. To pocket the same amount of money, private space needs to increase the number of launches in lockstep with price reductions to customers---and again, that's for identical income. Reduce launch costs by 100X, and you need at least 100X more launches, or you've gained nothing.

The lab is the only issue, but it's only because science is generic. ISS only generates science that impacts manned spaceflight over time. If KSP science had astronautics, planetary, and medical science points, then new crew parts would use medical science, and the science lab would only generate medical science points, so having a million of them does little good.