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The Great Wall was a military/geopolitical exercise, that's off the table. Cathedrals? They were to increase the power/prestige of the Church. People, usually just a few, stood to gain something, and ideally did this with other people's money. I can understand us going to Mars as a national contest (which is 100% of the reason we went to the Moon), but "ideology?" I'm not seeing it for Mars. If ideology is required, then a Mars colony is off the table (which is fine, since Mars isn't a great place to colonize). So there is no ideological reason for a Mars colony, and no economic reason. Stick a fork in it, it's done

Very few magnificent projects in human history have been ideological. Profit, even if limited to a ruler and his class, has been the primary motivator for all of history, with personal glory next in line. The Space Race of the 1960s might in fact be the only exception.

True, and to be really fair to the differences, you'd have to not allow vostok (at least with whatever chute you have available at the start of career) to be survivable on land... but we'd need kerbal parachute for that

SLS is like giving someone a really cool car, but with strings. You have to pay for a driver 24/7/365, plus a mechanic. So now you can use your awesome limo... except the driver won't take you just anyplace. The driver and vehicle will ONLY take you to the kind of shoe and purse stores my wife really likes, where the cheapest thing there costs as much as a used car, and will only take you if you promise to buy stuff once you get there. How many times can you afford to send the car off to buy a $2000+ purse?

Radio telescopes don't look down. Perhaps you're thinking of a radar mapper?

Nils, the new USILS adds support for "habitability," meaning that while you might have supplies for 100 years for a mk1 pod, no astronaut will put up with being cooped up in that tiny pod for long periods. RoverDude added a habitation value in months (30 day months) for parts like the hitchhiker, and then a multiplier for other parts. He used the part mass as a multiplier for that (which I have changed in my game, it's too much frankly). He also added recyclers, and the science lab got that capability. The greenhouse seems ideal for a multiplier, I think everyone would spend all excess time in there .

Assuming 1.1+ adds the ability to have more parts around without issues, this would make a lot of sense. They should do more than just add new, Russian-inspired parts, though. For career/science play, add a whole suite of such parts, but really think them through as they represent different paradigms, and then redesign the tech tree so that you pick a path, then move along it. Have the appropriate pros and cons of each system, as well. For example, the CCCP pods might have built-in retrorockets for land-based parachute landings. The US-style parts might land too fast for that---tweak the US capsules to land at 8.5-10 m/s and have that survivable on water. So if you go with the current KSP parts based on US stuff, you land on water or die unless you build some other kind of craft. If something like the current version if USILS (RoverDude's life support mod) were added, then the added habitation volume of the Soviet-style craft might allow longer duration flights, etc. Make tech tree choices matter with meaningful branches, instead of just unlocking everything.

It makes so little sense as to be ridiculous.

Why would you put a radio telescope on Venus? To intentionally make it difficult? NASA doesn't get "contracts" for stuff, or maybe it would make sense: "Place a radio telescope floating above Venus. Include 20,000 units of monopropellant, and 2000 units of ore from Mercury."

I checked out he examples on github, and there was not one for adding this functionality. Would it be systemic, or does it need to apply to specific scatters by world?

This makes pretty much no sense, as Martians will be entirely dependent upon government for literally every single aspect of their survival.

Regarding changing laws... it's substantially more difficult that people who don't deeply understand American politics realize. NASA wants an entirely different system than what Congress makes them buy. Honestly, the reason for fanboism about companies like SpaceX and BO is largely driven by the reality that as a government entity, NASA is by definition political. It has always been so, and always will be so. That's what happens when you spend other people's money. The idea of private entities with motivations past the next election cycle is what drives a lot of the desire to see them succeed. It certainly does for me. With NASA it's going to be kicking the can most of the time, honestly. This would be SpaceX jumping the shark. Mars One is utter nonsense on multiple levels. Why would SpaceX, a company that actually does something team up with penniless loons? The only result would be to make SpaceX look unserious.

A reasonable cost? They have to beat the bushes and make up payloads for it since it's a rocket without payloads. 1 launch per year is the dead minimum just to not have NASA fold under the strain of keeping SLS active. It would not be reasonable without more launches than that. Also, to be reasonable, they have to have already needed the launcher. NASA doesn't want it, the congresscritters in the districts that make it want it. There would be less of a dark age is NASA got the same budget, but was allowed to buy what they want with that money.

A dark age of spaceflight would be LESS likely if SLS was cancelled.

How could SpaceX possibly launch 30 times this year? The title should not read "Optimistically," but "Fantasy." They are scheduled for 14 right now: http://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/ The list gets farther from reality as it goes on.

Is this just on your build, because I am running a Kopernicus mod right now, and haven't noticed interaction, does it need to be added world by world in their cfgs?

It's not random, I'm pretty sure it's tied to reputation. Make a copy of a save where you have not been to the Mun's SoI, but you think you should have that contract. Edit the copy and up your rep a ways. See what happens.

I'm the same way.

I don't think anyone questions that kids that love science fiction are perhaps more likely to go into science or engineering. I don't think that there is a link between specific technologies invented by writers (who generally don't have a clue about STEM stuff) and reality. If someone were to invent a warp drive tomorrow, a better explanation would almost certainly be, "because math" than "because Star Trek."

The OP is really neither, it's "how does it compare to our technology?" The bar for your comment is just to ask the inventor of something if he made it because he saw it on ST. That ignores the counterfactual that would likely have the same thing invented by someone else, anyway, though.

Good idea.

You'd need to demonstrate that no one ever thought of even a precursor before the particular ST you mean. ST TOS was derivative, as were all the follow on shows---at least to anyone who knows science fiction from reading. FTL is a standard SF tool, and nothing about "warp drive" is terribly unique. Communications? As was shown, Dick Tracy, among others. Tricorders? Is my phone a tricorder because it gives me information magically? Nothing about the tech itself was fleshed out, so it's just a prop, as are the medical scanners (salt and pepper shakers in TOS). ST doesn't use lasers, they use phasers, which are not a thing. Note that they shoot under warp drive, so apparently their weapons are FTL as well. Put a name on it that sounds cool, that's the tech. There were talking/AI computers in books long before ST. Lem had an AI controlling a ship over 10 years before ST. Carbon nanotubes are not made of Al. Closer would be Aluminium oxynitride. Honestly, when it was mentioned in ST in the 1980s, they likely either made it up, someone was already working on it, or perhaps they reworded sapphire (Al2O3).

I'm (once again) with Nibb31. Star Trek is fantasy, not hard science fiction, and any technologies we have, or will come up with that are anything like ST are strictly coincidental. ST TNG technology in a nutshell... add "-genic field" to, well, anything, and you have a new technology. This seems to be the rigorous method writers used to invent these plot devices, 'erm, technologies.

A slightly related, but perhaps acceptable idea would be to have something like Gateway (Frederik Pohl) or the Monolith (Clarke) exist. Not aliens, but alien technology. It would be in a solar polar orbit, though it could be random as well. In KSP it could function as a stargate. This opens the possibility of randomly generated star systems without changing the base game whatsoever.

Either way, the vessel is under constant acceleration. So the floor would not strictly speaking be the floor do to the additional force vector.