tater

I've never improved the runway in career at all, I use it to test rovers.

This is just fabulous. Nice work.

This same thing happens when you read (or watch) the news. The people reporting pretty much have no idea what they are talking about most of the time.The problem I see with some of the commentary here is that it assumes that without the mistakes, the movies would not be interesting, and that in preferring them to get things right, we'd be having them make boring movies. I think in many cases they are doing what they _think_ is right (with no knowledge of what actually is), combined with what they know how to shoot. Honestly, in most of the cases that really bug me, the movie could easily be fixed.

What I'd really like to see, particularly on airless or thin atmosphere worlds, is many more craters at smaller scale sizes. I want to have to have to maneuver a little to land

True, that's also a real market which I forgot. Still, the pure commercial market is limited to satellites for the foreseeable future.

Any plane parts in KSP work for spaceplanes, I've seen the pictures. Plus all the non cylindrical fuselages are space plane parts, and all are new and shiny, unlike 100% of the rocket parts, which look awful.

I didn't find the reboot nearly as compelling as the original show and stopped watching as well.

Something to think about after every single rocket part is redone to not look awful, and after some decent space station and base parts are added. The last thing the game needs are more magic spaceplane parts.

Sadly, @HarvesteRs dev blog on the subject was lost in the forum change I think. He mentions that other bodies would ideally get the same treatment.

92? LOL. I was thinking about the early-mid 1980s.

A counterfactual with no government space program is sort of silly. The military use alone meant that we'd have developed past the WW2 German use without question. Comm sats were proposed before we had much of a program at all, so I think those would have come out of market forces at some point. It would be private market, and by definition competitive, it would just depend on how many players. That said, there is no reasonable counterfactual without at least the military development of ballistic missiles. That was going to happen after ww2, no question. I should be clear that the MARKET for comm sats would absolutely exist minus government. That's just the need/demand for capability. It would have taken longer to be possible, no question.

_Your_ economy? I'm curious, do you pay US Federal taxes? The first sentence is 100% correct, the second two are flatly wrong. There is one market (and only one, lol) with a return on investment, communications satellites. Those would certainly have been developed at some point even without the government, IMO. It might have taken longer, but it would have happened, just like the 100% private data link between the Chicago markets and Wall Street.

Nope. ISS was a jobs program---for Russian space people (and NASA, obviously). The whole point of ISS was to occupy people in the former Soviet Union who had the skills to help "Bad People" make ballistic missiles (so they'd work on cool space exploration, instead), and to use the only tool in the NASA toolbox that they were forced to buy---the Space Shuttle---to keep up a decent launch cadence. NASA continues to have utility as long as we (the taxpayers) think it does. It uses little money, and has some positive returns (plus it's a jobs program, we spend more for far less interesting work in other areas).

I agree. Hence a number of my expanded career suggestion threads have not been gut jobs, but using the available tools to try and make it not stink Well, I've never said that exactly. You can clearly set a goal, then do it in sandbox. Land on all the moons of Jool with crew and return. Whatever. Planning? You have to plan exactly as much as you would for any mission, even in career, though clearly that planning in sandbox doesn't involve tech progression or funds. Efficiency? You can be as efficient or inefficient as you like. Limits? This one I tend to agree with. Self-imposed limits are different than real limits. Career is little better as-is, however. Sandbox with LS adds some limits, certainly (I pretty much only play with LS and a rescale at this point) Progression? Yeah, I don't have that with sandbox, it would feel pointless to me, and it is certainly lacking in stock career as well (you can do everything in less time that it might have taken to develop a single RL rocket). I don't presume to tell other people how to play, I just tend to advocate for the kind of career mode I'd like to play/see. I don't look down on sandbox in the least, it's not worse or better play, it's different play. I think what all modes lack in terms of replay value are (in no particular order): A real sense of exploration. My first play-throughs of KSP felt like exploration because I made a point of not even looking at the target worlds before I sent something there. The only possible solution to this problem is an optional, randomized Kerbol system, though it need not be entirely random, it can have a library of well-constructed planets and moons, picking a number of each, then doing slight rescales of both world size and distances. "Difficulty" could then set the range of rescale numbers---Easy would be maybe 1-2 X max rescales, with Kerbin locked at 1:1; Normal might allow 1-3 rescales of all bodies, and Hard would allow 1-6 rescales (Kerbin itself might get limited to ~4X max since it'd be only stock parts). Combined with a "fog of war" that masks values that need probes to determine, we get science that is not a grindy point thing, but science that gives us data to plan missions. Send a probe to the venus analog (Eve, or whatever similar world might be selected) so you have some idea of what kind of craft to make for a lander. That sort of thing. Novel problems to solve. All "accidents" are the fault if the player, which has sometimes resulted in fun, but as you get better, they are more rare. Rescues in career would perhaps be novel, except the way they are done is terrible, has no sense of urgency, and has no context. Some craft problems (Eve return vehicles, etc) are certainly novel---the first time you do them. This is replay, though. Meaningful time progression. True with all modes, time is not a thing in KSP. It needs something akin to KCT, and/or LS to make time meaningful. A simple mechanism that could even be a sandbox option (along with costs) would be strictly annual funding, perhaps doled out incrementally every 50 days (a Minmus month) or so, with a "warp to next fiscal month" button to make things easy.

No, NASA never shifted at all. It was ALWAYS a porkbarrel spending program. Always. It was just the king of pork during the Space Race. No money was wasted, the purpose of NASA was not space exploration when founded, it was a tool of the Cold War, and a technology jobs program.

2001 is old? LOL. Old would be USENET groups, back when the signal to noise was better because no one was on the net who wasn't a science or engineering person.

I think even those of us who play career hate career, lol. The current system (including 1.1) is awful. Not meh, awful. They need to start over with career, it's just bad---even though I prefer a career mode to sandbox. I just wish it was a halfway decent career mode. I'll always mess with sandbox, but I'll never treat it like career and have a whole network of stuff going on. I'll use sandbox for what I always have, designing and executing specific missions. Maybe a model can make a career mode that is not awful, unfortunately, the "bones" they have to work with are pretty terrible.

I didn't say they would, I used that as an example that the contractor has no control. Look at D2 and propulsive landing. They can do what they want, but they have to land with chutes, anyway. Regardless, NASA is not spending many billions on a single-contractor Mars mission. Who is building SLS and Orion? Boeing, United Launch Alliance, Orbital ATK, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Lockheed Martine, and Airbus Defense and Space. That list would not get shorter for a Mars mission.

Waste. They cannot dump it into space, then it's dangerous.

You made Modding Monday, congrats!

They do not have their own things. They have things they buy. SpaceX is no different than any other possible contractor. If NASA demands a certain spec, then the design changes. If NASA nixes reuse as wasted effort, then that goes away, pretty soon FH looks like SLS. That's how it works. Because NASA has a program for commercial crew and ISS resupply. It's a small budget, but without it SpaceX would not be as much of a thing as they are. I've not seen even an inkling of NASA spreading money around to private contractors to come up with variant Mars craft, have you? It will have to be a process that allows all the usual suspects to compete, as well. Note that the money that went to SpaceX also went to other contractors. The money was spread around (to different districts). LOL. One, people don't care even a little about the space program. This forum is a tiny subset of people. Two, they are for spending what money they spend---in their own district. They will vote for spending in someone else's district by horse-trading for some pork in their area. The congress-critters who are in the districts of competing contractors (and most defense contractors are very spread around on purpose) will vote against it regardless of cost in favor of their local companies. There is a reason large projects like Apollo are composites of multiple contractors. There is ZERO probability that a large taxpayer-funded Mars project uses a single contractor. Zero. Did you say you were an engineer? Because your POV on this issue seems... younger than that. It would be nice to share your wishful thinking, but it's just not the way things work here in the real world.

The latter. I checked google maps, and there is a state road nearby, but there is a possibility they are allowed to briefly close roads that might be in danger areas.

(the graphical editor on this forum is AWFUL, argh, it's impossible to break up quote reliably) Read what you wrote. You are explicitly saying that NASA "has their own things" which is nonsense. They BUY THINGS from contractors to the specifications they set. You have not demonstrated that SpaceX can supply a Mars vehicle, and particularly one to NASA specs for 1/10th the cost. Where is this mythical spacecraft, and what's the sticker price? We know that GOVERNMENT spending will without question continue to be done as it was before. What SpaceX can do with their own money is utterly irrelevant to NASA. Really. NASA spends taxpayer money. Their spending is controlled by Congress. Congress will---rightly, I might add---demand that this money is not all put in one guy's pocket. There is a reason SpaceX and BO have facilities in TX, FL, and CA, for example. 3 large states (large states mean more congressmen). This instantly buys them some congressional support. SpaceX lower cost is predicated on their vertical integration model, which is exactly counter to the way things actually get funded. To buy the votes, they would need to put a plant in many other districts, or subcontractors. Apollo was more than the manufacturers I listed, they had many subcontractors as well, in many districts. Why do you think Grumman got the LEM? Partially they were all in for LOR, but it helped a LOT that they are in Bethpage, New York (another large pop state). NACA/NASA was, is, and will always be a jobs program. How many times does this need to be said? In your own country, perhaps all money liberated from the people is spent with the input of unicorns with accountants to guarantee cost-efficiency, but in the US, that's not how government spending works. We can all wish it was otherwise, but that won't change anything. Really. You just don't get it. I haven't the slightest clue how your government works, so I'd not presume to tell you how they might chose to spend money. What you are suggesting will never happen.

NASA never uses "their own things." Who do you think built Apollo? North American Aviation built the CSM, Grumman the LEM, Boeing, North American, and Douglas built Saturn. They ALWAYS buy stuff, and SpaceX doesn't magically make that cheaper. If they contracted with SpaceX for some Mars vehicle, they'd work WITH SpaceX as the very involved customers they are, and they'd keep tweaking it until it ended up costing a lot. Also, and this is critical if you're going to bother talking about US Federal spending, it would have to be "non-vertical" in terms of subcontracting, because if all that money ends up in one congressional district, it NEVER GETS FUNDED. This was true when President Washington ordered the first 6 frigates of the US NAVY, and it has been so ever since, and will be so into the distant future. This is particularly true of an endeavor like Mars which has no possible return on investment. As such, it's a jobs program, plain and simple, it needs to spread the money around the US so that it at least has some usefulness.

A manned Mars mission would be more like 100 billion total cost I think, and even 1/10th of that is not "walking around money" for Musk, he's rich by regular people standards, but not really rich. Maybe Tesla will actually start making money and that will change. SpaceX can only do stuff that makes money. On top of this, you can't argue about the cost of A trip to Mars, Musk is talking about colonizing Mars, which is more like a trillion dollar endeavor (at least). So you not only need to come up with some economic driver where none exists (or will exist), but it needs to generate huge revenues.