tater

The principal issue with the science/tree as a reward, is that KSP gets easier, not harder, as the game progresses.

^^^this addresses none of his statement that you quote. There is a finite market, and reducing price doesn't help unless it is so low that it somehow creates a new market, which would be an order of magnitude or lower in cost/kg to be a thing, I think, and even then it's dubious.

We had some friends on college from Japan, and another friend decided that they should be initiated into New Mexico with rather too much of that same beverage... It's been decades, and I still can't stand the smell of it

My first launches on TV were Geminis, though the first I remember was Apollo.

F 'in-A, bubba!

An hour later here, and I'm awake

It's only 10:15 pm in CA.

Out of curiously, how much did you pay in Federal taxes last year? A current per capita share is around $13,000, so that much per family member gives a right to a say, IMNSHO. Short of that, you don't really have any skin in the game.

I'm aware of those, and no, they don't really, particularly if combat is a thing since knowing where they are is critical if you could know where they are.

1961. Alan Shepard. First US manned, suborbital flight of Freedom 7.

Robert Goddard facilities: "Blockhouse?": Another: Corrugated metal? Sure. Boring buildings? Sure. Rockets on one side, Flossy the cow in the next stall over? No. It might be a language issue, actually. At the VLA, we always called this building, "the barn:"

A crewed lander needs to leave as well.

OK, I figured out the issue. I was so used to a scaled-up Kerbin, that I slapped a standard 1.25m heat shield on the bottom of the Soyuz without even thinking about it (I've been testing career as well), even though this is stock Kerbin. Without the stock HS, it works fine. Somehow the interaction screws up the chute, even though it obviously seems far more protected with 2 HSs.

Note that this was after reentry. I just tried a suborbital hop, under 20 km, and it works.

I hit deploy chute, nothing happened. I tested twice. The only other mod I have now is EVE, since I wanted to see if 1.1+ helped my possible mod load (otherwise I'm solely testing SSTU right now).

Was I just being clueless about the soyuz chutes and failed to read something?

You make assumptions about the tech (in terms of how you characterize the weapons, etc), then the effectiveness/tactics just have to fall out, with possibly unexpected consequences. KE weapons should be able to explode into shrapnel, or disperse bearing-balls, for example. At a certain range this guarantees some hits at a much lower mass per impact, but also possibly avoids over-penetration vs a long-rod penetrator.

On the soyuz reentry capsule (and possibly others) there are 2 "decouple" buttons on the right click. One decouples at the bottom, one at the top. If they cannot be marked, it might be better to simply eliminate one, and have the player have to use an extra part (it could be that I'm just too clueless to deal with it, lol, but before using them I have to do a quick save, since It's always a coin flip for me to get the right one). Also, on the one test flight of that I did, after having to reload because of decoupling the wrong node, I had a perfectly nice reentry, and I watched the chute to see when it was safe... and it was never safe.

If the ship is mostly propellant, a through and through is a bad thing, particularly when the propellant is under pressure.

There should be 2 SSTU folders inside GameData: SSTU SSTU-TextureSets

A couple things. One, a picture of the craft would be helpful. Two, when you say you have a small amount of fuel left, do you mean before attempting landing? Again, a craft to see would help.

There are not many planets in the Kerbol system, so it should be possible to have a player-driven set of goals, with budgets/rewards given perhaps based upon the limits the PLAYER puts on the mission (I proposed this a while back in some thread). So you have a mission planning place (which is what "mission control" should be renamed, anyway, as "Mission Control" should control missions in flight, because that is what mission control actually does in RL). There is a "create new program" button. You push it. It takes you to some drop-downs. (I'm using "Program" here, like Mercury Program, Viking Program, Apollo Program, etc) Program type (manned/unmanned) Return to Kerbin? (Y/N) Target planet SoI (Moho/Eve/Kerbin/Duna/Dres/Jool/Eeloo) Program target body (contextual, would depend on the choice directly above, so if you selected Kerbin above, there would be Kerbin/Mun/Minmus here). Program flight goal (suborbital, orbit, land) Program Primary goal (science from, EVA, etc (maybe stacked pull-downs based on mission type (landers get seismometer, etc)) Program X goals (add a + which keeps adding goals) (so at this point if you picked unmanned, no return, Kerbin, Mun, orbital program, it would be a munar orbiter). Program budget request (a slider here for funds) Program tech request (tech/science points to buy stuff for the program) Program time frame (a time frame to achieve flight goal) The game would base Rep reward on what ou ask for vs budget. Rep would be how you "buy" Program requests, so there might be costs to the pull-downs for some of them to open.

Pre-designed worlds would be best, but the could then all be slightly varied via scaling. Scale all worlds (and distances) between 1 and 3 for easy mode, 1 and 4 for normal, and 1-6 for hard.

More likely the structure needed to secure the side boosters. By placing those structures on a purpose-built core, they save that mass on the regular F9 launches.