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Except it shares more with STS than Saturn. SLS (as a name) entirely fits its pedigree (on so many levels, lol).

I said if full it would be behind the sun. I assumed that any reader would recognize that people (or instruments) cannot see through the sun. Silly me. The tone of OP's questions drove the level at which I chose to answer, telling him it was near greatest elongation would have required an explanation of that as well. btw, Venus is absolutely visible on the other side of the sun (meaning well past half phase). It might not be easy to see naked eye, but you can see it (it is considerably smaller due to distance however).

Yeah, hence my sketch above. I'd like to have rovers not require "krazy kontraptions" as they do now.

The justification for SLS is stunt missions, so what is "cool" is relevant to SLS discussions. Sus volans, great latin name (like Jupiter).

ISS has some large, flat reflectors (the solar panels). Since the attitude of ISS is known, on certain flyovers, from certain points of view on earth, the sun is reflected directly at the viewer. Think about a signal mirror. At some random angle to you, it's not bright at all. If I angle it so that the sun is reflected into your eye, it's blinding. There is a phone app called "Iridium Flares" that shows such passes by the Iridium sat phone satellites. These are pretty small, and they can be substantially brighter than Venus (out to ~ -8 magnitude (lower is brighter, and it's a log scale). (cool app, it's like a meteor on command" thing. Check when a flare will occur, then wait til a few seconds before and tell your friends to look the right direction---a dot appears, gets crazy bright, then dims back down to a dot). Venus is doing the same thing, reflecting sunlight, but it is much farther away than ISS. The mirror a few meters from you is far closer than either, so it would be brighter than anything but the sun. Apparent magnitude is what we see at any given moment. Absolute magnitude is how bright objects appear if they are all seen from exactly the same distance (set to 10 parsecs). At 10 parsecs, ISS is invisibly dim.

ARM is NOT BEO, it's BLEO. BEO requires it is outside earth's influence. On topic, it's interesting to YOU, heck, even ME, lol. It is not visually interesting to Joe Blow on the street. It's just not, like it or not. The reason the "Space Race" ended with the Moon was that nothing done since by men has been sufficiently interesting to the public at large. Note that after Apollo 11, even the Moon started waning in interest during the Apollo missions. - - - Updated - - - It's never been anything but watered down. Capture is properly done by a robot, and all Orion does is rendezvous there (either lunar orbit or a libration point). The "asteroid" they are talking about would be tiny as well. The plan is to take a rock off an asteroid, or find a tiny free floating asteroid (a big meteor a few meters across). The earth gets hit by these daily, I can go to the meteorite museum at the university geology dept here in town as see dozens just like whatever they will capture. One is over a meter.

The atmosphere doesn't magnify to any meaningful extent. Some scattering. The Moon looks bigger because it is near references. Venus is large, relatively close to the earth, and relatively close to the Sun. Venus is currently between us and the sun, but off to the side. As a result it is pretty bight, and fairly displaced from the sun (a "full venus would be behind the sun, and nearly full venus is very close to the sun at sunset/sunrise.

Yes. Deadly Reentry has nice looking decouplers for heat shields. Honestly, the stock decouplers in general look terrible (except for engine fairings which look OK).

Imagine the news coverage. It would basically look like an ISS EVA. Stop a few random people on the street and ask if they watched the coverage of the module being moved on ISS to make room for the commercial crew dock. We'd all wait here until you found someone who even knew what "ISS" was, but we'd all die of old age. It has no flash, and will generate little interest. It will get some news coverage, and old people will watch that, I suppose, but it is simply not compelling.

What about the dummy contract idea, perhaps? Select "Orbital tourism" as a contract, and it autocompletes, which unlocks some sort of orbital tourism contracts which otherwise you would not have seen. Short of the hotel, perhaps some contracts that require a several days on orbit in a craft with a cupola Building the station is then a choice. The basic idea is more dependency in contracts, both to general parameters (only send rescues or tourists to SoIs where you have planted flags, for example), as well as to specific contracts (in order for contract Y to be offered, contract X must have been completed).

I explicitly said except for unmanned. Manned space flight is basically a really cool stunt. I like really cool stunts, but any such mission needs to have some "cool" to it, or it will not encourage expansion. ARM has zero cool factor. Those of us who watch NASA video from ISS will care, and no one else will give it a 2d look. The Moon or Mars as stunts make far more sense.

I remember working one night helping the TA teach astronomy lab at the campus observatory. A guy was pointing out 3 stars that as he observed, made a triangle, asking what they were. I had to inform him that except for the special case of them being in an actual line, any 3 stars made a triangle.

I wonder if you could actually just burn money with an oxidizer and use that as fuel? On topic, why not latin animal names like dinosaurs... Sus volans rex!

No, I'd be fine with giving the entire ~2/3 of total federal spending called "programmatic" entirely to NASA. As it is, with their 0.5% of total spending budget, they need to use every penny the most frugal way possible. Sadly, NASA has little to do with this, as their choices get second guessed by Congress, which gives them money with strings attached (to spend a ton on SLS/Orion because those contractors own the right congress critters). I was optimistic when younger. I've watched them do nothing cool for decades. I think you will find many older guys who are excited about SpaceX, Blue Origin, etc, think this way because they've given up on NASA after cutting their teeth watching Apollo, then growing up to see virtually nothing come of it (unmanned is another story entirely, kudos to those guys).

I forgot I took some (cruddy) lunar eclipse shots a few years ago: Was my Canon DSLR, the latter with the long lens, both with a tripod.

Because the bottom line from my accountant a month and a half ago at tax time is still fresh in my mind, and I'd prefer tax dollars spent based upon merit, not pork barrel politics that make me feel like I'm driving an expensive car off a cliff every year. Given that that will never happen, might as well make jokes. - - - Updated - - - LOL. some extra text.

For 3.75m, there have been a few "Duna Direct" mods started that have what I tend to think of when I think of needed lander parts at large size that don't exist. Kerbal landers tend to either get tall, or they are wide contraptions that are hard to launch with rockets that look like rockets. Some sort of intentional rover delivery system would be kinda neat. It seems like a rover could fit horizontally within a 3.75m part, the trick is getting it out and having room for engines/fuel. I'm bad at this, take pity Room for propellant on the sides, and a node under each solid side for an engine. There would either be a floor which might need a ramp for rovers (possible?) or open on the bottom, and doors. Also a node on the center of the inside top to hang the rover. Obviously any scale seen here is entirely imaginary, I have no idea what I am doing.

What is needed within the current career/contract system (barring a total redo of the whole thing) is to have the contracts actually interact with each other in a meaningful way. That's in addition to eliminating all the really dumb contracts and replacing them (which is major, since the large majority are simply awful). Again, I would like to see at least one new contract type---a MISSION, which belongs to the player to be introduced (it's just a contract with the player flag as the logo, not difficult). In addition, perhaps player chosen "strategy contracts" that function as auto-completed contracts in a sense, and those are prerequisites for other contracts, more later... For example in Tw1's tourism suggestion, there would be a station contract, but it would be to explicitly create a space hotel. Completing this contract unlocks contracts to deliver and retrieve tourists from that location. In my "Strategy Contract" suggestion above, there might be "Tourism," "Probe Space Exploration," Kerballed Space Exploration," "Kerbin Orbital Facilities," etc, etc. You take "Probe Space Exploration" and the "contract" is instantly completed---but that contract is a prerequisite to unlock contracts to place space probes at various bodies (combined with current progress, so if you have already visited the Mun and Minmus, and you selected the probe contract, you'd then get to see Duna, Eve, etc probe contracts). It's a sort of smart, directed filtering. Short of that, at least have the extant contracts have more prerequisites/requirements before they appear. Have the locations less random, and more directed at some level. Have the Survey contracts (these should be MISSIONS, argh) worthwhile by making them ways to pick landing sites. What if science out off context was grossly lowered in points, and science done… scientifically, had a multiplier? First landing is always max data, but each subsequent landing (even in new "biomes") drops the base points. They come back up in points via scientist skill, and via the survey missions, which direct the scientists to collect from specific areas of interest. Maybe even the multi-part contracts like explore/survey could require they be done in order… spitballing here. Unless parts testing actually unlocks parts, they are just to make stupid contraptions. Most all are just dumb, too. I can see testing a part in vacuum, but there is no possible reason it needs to be tested in identical vacuum over the Mun, or escaping Kerbin, whatever. Stations/bases/satellites built for 3d parties should NOT belong to the player. They should pay out, change ownership, then open new contracts for resupply, repair, or expansion. Ore? Any ore contracts should be predicated upon existing facilities. Moving ore is just dumb---though really ore to fuel should be only X% efficient so the dv budgetary issues are real (hauling ore to refine elsewhere should not be a thing unless you can literally jump off the body in question). A more immersive mission would be to resupply a certain existing facility with X amount of fuel every XX days for a while. Set it up so that IRSU is the ideal (though not only) solution. Moving ore from Gilly to Eve? That's like a mission to collect some snow on Mt. Everest, and move it to the summit of K2. For reasons.

Porky. Then at the end of each official video, they can borrow from Looney Toons and say, "Tha-tha-that's all, folks!"

We get greenish colors sometimes...

K^2, you'd push a small hab module for a month long mission, no need to buff the taxi. Orion is not built for BEO missions, only BLEO, it needs to be upgraded for BEO, and likely even anything other than straight lunar (according to LockMart themselves). I'm unclear on what if any shielding Orion actually has. We are talking cosmic rays, and that means water, or hydrogen (could be the H in plastics). It has to be plastics, but I'd like to see the thickness/mass. That is it for radiation protection, it's not that complicated---add hydrogen rich plastics. Electronic protection has 2 options, Orion uses one, which is clunky ICs that can eat cosmic ray hits. SpaceX and others use use smaller feature computers, but have redundancy and error checking. Maybe they could chuck an old PowerPC based laptop as a backup . I'm unsure what Boeing did with CST-100.

Why the offset, then? Seems like it makes alignment on putting a station together much more critical, and you could not use this part on the thrust axis of a station if a docked ship was to want to push it someplace. Love the hab, though, really awesome.

Kegereneku, you entirely missed the point of my space race comment. I wasn't suggesting one, I said that the existence of rescue missions implies a space race as a narrative. From a story standpoint, "why" matters. My kerbal isn't the first on the Mun if there is a wrecked craft there that I know of (even if I don't take the mission). That implies another program, so I get the anti-immersive element of that, with none of the pluses an actual space race would add. If they are going to implicitly add competitors, why don't they make use of it. Story matters for immersion. It would be bad enough if there was no positive arc to play due to contracts, but it actually harms immersion. You are working towards the milestone of first kerbal on the Mun or Duna... And you get spammed with rescues on/around the Mun/Duna. Guess Jeb isn't the first. Planning a Duna Direct sorta mission with habs and isru en route, and a few companies want ore moved from Ike to Duna, and others from Duna to Ike? Just dropped on the ground, or do they have facilities there (the only reason to want a delivery would be to have someone to receive it). Evantis, some of the contracts aren't stupid, most all of them are. Most all part testing is bad. Rescues are bad due to inappropriate locations (where I have yet to send a kerbal), and HUGE numbers of them (there must be many competitors as they have more stranded in space than I have astronauts period). Ore contracts are all busy work. Sat contracts around any world but Kerbin are absurd. Station or base contracts are all absurd---all should be delivered, then abandoned by the player, they are built for a customer after all, not yourself. Asteroid contracts are also dumb. Ejecting one bound to hit Kerbin would be OK, but landing them? Dumb. (#verylolkerbalexplosions)

The contracts are random. They are effectively written by a finite number of moneys with keyboards.

Absolutely, Claw. I want to be clear that while I might have a story in mind that I like, I don't mean that everyone plays MY story. I want the contract (and to beat a dead horse MISSION) system to not be random, but to have it really be based on what the player has done, and perhaps wants to do (via actual strategies, which are nothing at all like what those are in game). The rescues pretty much require the idea of a space race to make any sense at all, for example. Right now I take them if I like the name of the astronaut. One was actually the same name as my daughter, so she became my go-to scientist. If they have meh names… sorry bro, you get to die alone on the Mun.