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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.

Is the PMA done with landed bases in mind (the angle)? Nice.

I asked a female astronaut I spent some time with the biggest engineering challenge, and she said "plumbing for female astronauts," lol. They basically use a negative pressure toilet. I can only assume that the camp toilet in Orion has this capability (think about it). It ls a plus, but we're talking about a square meter and a curtain here, presumably not hard to add to any craft (again, I think the OP should have included CST-100 as well, since I think both of the LEO craft in play could be altered to meet most realistic Orion uses). Pick a real mission, then explain why it needs a---what is the total Orion/SLS cost to date, 18 billion?---huge, expensive system. ARM and other cislunar stuff just needs to get to the stable lunar orbit in question, or a libration point, whatever the plan is. That's a few hundred m/s if time is not much of an object, or several hundred if you don't want the crew to dilly-dally in transit to and from (many good reasons for this). That's all about the SM, and any of the 3 can have a good SM with some dv in the bank. If a hab is part of the plan, then any of the 3 are fine, and really any of the extended duration benefits of a capsule disappear, as the tab will do the LS, and the capsule is a taxi. The crew can use the hab OTW, and leave it (making return transit time important), or they can dispose of the tab, and dump it ahead of reentry. All 3 craft could do this. Mars? Not really worth even talking about, frankly. Orion cannot even reenter from the ARM mission without alterations. Realistic BLEO missions are cislunar for the foreseeable future. If any of the 3 are best for the only time they would really be used on a Mars mission, taxi to the real vehicle, then earth reentry, then sure, they get used. I'd like to see that someday, but I honestly think I'll be dead first.

I've been playing career since 1.0, beating it up. Moderate+ difficulty setting (gotta have quick saves, KSP always crashes on me, it's just a matter of when now (Mac OS)), I don't want a grind so I can save up to invent the ladder or something equally absurd as I might do on hard. Tourists. I like the hawaiian shirts in the thumbnails, otherwise entirely uninteresting to me. Other people might like them, so not a huge problem, but they share the major issue with rescues, in detail below... Rescues. Grossly too many of them, and they are entirely unconnected to my manned spaceflight progress. Send a probe to Jool, then rescue missions for Jool pop up even though my first Duna expedition is en route, in orbit around the sun. They need to be not in any SoI you have not landed on the parent body of---with kerbals (test for if a flag was planted). Parts testing. Just as dumb as always. What, pray tell, is the difference between orbit (anywhere), and suborbital over _place_airless_world_here_? Ditto escape velocity out of X. You're in space (who thinks of these?). They are almost universally dumb. I only do any of them to take parts I want but don't have (and I do the test to get the part if so, I don't take the mission for the part, and do it later). Explore… I like these, but I have been not getting them reliably. Maybe I passed some milestone too fast. Last try I got the Mun one, the try before I got Duna, but never the Mun, etc. Ore. These contracts are written with the same attention to detail as all the others. Collect ore, and bring it from A to B. If A and B were meaningful, like extract ore from the Mun, and deliver it to a station above the Mun with an IRSU part… that makes sense. Bring X hundred units to Kerbin? Why? Or ore from Eve to Gilly? What? I have a probe in orbit, that's it. Dumb, all of them, IMO. I thought about doing one from the Mun as a sample return, but it's more than a single tank, and wasn't worth the trouble. Surveys. Random, with no context, hence pretty dumb. 3 in one area, a 4th somewhere heavily displaced (for reasons). What about altitude requirements… WHY? I would be fine with that if they made some sort of sense… wide field observations, then below 4000m, then surface data… it's like Ranger and Surveyor. But it's just random. I do none of these at Kerbin, usually. I would do them perhaps if they were from orbit… an actual reason to launch a polar satellite instead of just launch missions. Satellite launches. I'm fine with these around Kerbin. I never reuse them, that seems like cheating to me (they are commercial launches for a customer). Around any other body… they are really space probes, and should't be for 3d parties. If I send an orbiter, and there is a mission where the sat launch is right, I might take it, but I treat it as MY probe, not a commercial launch (I should;t have to pretend this way, science missions should be from MY program). Visit A, then B, etc for reasons. Utterly uninterested in those. Maybe others like them for reasons. Asteroid contracts. (Katateochi noted I had forgotten these) These are mostly also absurd make-work. Put it in orbit around X? Why? Do I then get a mission to build a base on the asteroid I just put in orbit around Eve, or did they just want to see me do it for reasons? The missions/contracts are uninspired, and slapdash. They create no story arc---not a particular arc I want to see, but ANY story arc. I'm fine with sandbox/open-ended career, but the goal is a STORY. If you read the accomplished mission objectives in chronological order reduced to a sentence or 2 each, written conversationally/descriptively, it would be nice if it made sense as a story. Flew an orbital flyby of the Mun to mark landing sites. Next mission they successfully landed, etc.

I asked that way up the thread, actually. That's quite meaningful from a duration standpoint. i just checked and it is described as like a camping toilet, and a unisex relief tube. Not really a bathroom, but better than zip bags.

A few things that would be cool to see (I'm thinking landers here, I don't care as much about Gemini pods, there are a few mods for that). One, I'd like the possibility of inset parts for a 2-stage lander. Like a lander base stage with hole or something (another mod does this). That or whatever might actually work without have huge, top heavy landers (I'll admit I'm thinking of scaled up kerbol system mods with stock parts, so not hyper-critical). Two, It would be cool, perhaps for a 3.75m service bay to think of it beneath a lander/hab of some kind, perhaps with rover garage functionality. This would require a similar sized tab/control unit to stack above.

A benefit of living in New Mexico is that the sunset image above is actually really boring we prefer some clouds.

Or both sunset and moon at once (and Venus):

That's a cute sound bite, but it's not a mission. Constellation, erm, Orion, is a moon rocket. The TPS would have to be redesigned even for the proposed asteroid mission (which is a dumb mission, that only exists as something for Orion to do, a robot would be far more cost effective). That's according to LockMart, BTW. Mars? LOL. Not without a redesign---though I'm sure LockMart would be happy to do both redesigns for a few billion each). It requires SLS, and SLS cannot possibly hit target costs because there are no payloads. It needs a high launch rate… of huge payloads, otherwise it will be the only thing NASA can do. What are the payloads? A moon rocket? I'm down with that. Fund a lunar exploration program. THAT would be the mission. Everything to that goal (which would let them use Orion as-is). Building it, "because" is silly.

SLS is a boondoggle, plain and simple. Shuttle is a terrible model for doing, well, anything at all. The launch cost estimates for SLS are about as realistic as it was to call Shuttle "a space truck." remember when it was supposed to be cheap, and fly twice a month? LOL. What do you put on top of a rocket with no mission? I guess a spacecraft with no mission.

What awesome task? btw, it looks like they are still thinking about what radiation shielding they will actually use. Also, ready for its awesome task implies they could launch soon. It's not at all ready for anything. Not the capsule, not the SM which doesn't exist, and not the launch vehicle to put it on a transfer anywhere interesting. WRT manned flight I have to agree with Zubrin on one point, they need to set a short term goal, then do it. Making something that maybe is good for something is exactly what we've been doing post Apollo.

Yeah, it would be more "stockalike" if the 2 mods above had a fuel tank, rcs tank, and engine instead of all in 1, even if that raises part counts. The way ksp does things, the additional crew space on the Soyuz is wasted, though, and would artificially create crew spots for stations or even transport even though the spaces are quite small.

I think the analogies like the one above are frankly wrong. I'd really like hard stats on how much radiation is mitigated, for example (for both). Without a "storm cellar," or unless Orion is uniformly built to those standards, a solar flare during a single, nominal 21 day (claimed duration) mission could end an astronaut's career (or life, rarely). Any requirement for a shielded hab to dock with would give the same capability to any craft docked. NASA says that Orion's shelter is to pile supplies up in the aft of the capsule. I'm pretty sure they can do the same on D2. Rad hard electronics are not that complicated to swap out for, frankly. I'm totally unsure on redundancy within the capsules, though, and if a service module is assumed, then a SM trunk could obviously be added to dragon. The real question is what percentage of the money spent in total on Orion would need to be spent to make D2 work for the Orion missions postulated. If that is less than total Orion spending at all, Orion was a bad deal.

I'd like an optimized KSP to have a competing space program with Soviet looking parts. You could chose which program you'd play. Ideally with a "space race" career mode.

Porkbarrel Express?

I'm not sure reentry speed should be on that list. The tested orion heat shield is not even what they'd actually use at this point. The other stuff is what I was looking for (radhard, etc). I have yet to see much on mission duration except for the 21 days statement for Orion duration (which is basically lunar/cislunar at best). How much of the life support, etc requires the service module, because otherwise we are comparing a capsule to a CM/SM combo. Again, D2 is not designed for a vague, non-mission BEO, so it would be sort of stunning if it was even close in many comparisons. I think a lot of the issue is the hype of "the spacecraft that will take us to Mars" nonsense that was on every news site when EFT-1 flew.

Like this: Tantares or this: HGR 1.875m parts

It is using modified PICA (PICA-X 3.0 (2.0 is used on dragons now)). PICA has the record reentry speed (or did, anyway) at 12.9 km/s. I don't see how improved PICA is somehow worse than Orion. I'm not saying either is better, I don't have a dog in the fight (other than my tax dollars as pork to Orion). What I am saying is that saying "Orion is better" without a good reason is equally silly. Quoting ad copy from lockmart (or spacex) doesn't count, I'd like to see some real data/specs. It apparently took them 6 months to hand "gun" the avcoat into the honeycomb (basically a guy squirts the material like caulking into 330,000 holes, one at a time). Turns out people don't apply the goop in a very regular way, so the properties are not what they should be. Maybe avcoat was selected because it generates the most man-hours of work? Maybe Orion has better radiation shielding? I should add that more importantly, what is the mission for Orion. Not what mission can be invented for it, what mission, with a launch date (EDIT: they claim 2021)? CST-100, and D2 have an actual mission that is wanted/needed, and will fly in 2017. Orion is a spacecraft no one actually wants. I think it makes sense to design a spacecraft for a specific mission, and I think it makes sense to alter an existing design if possible for a specific mission. It's odd to design a spacecraft with no mission, then start shopping around for a mission for it.

What about it is BEO aside from reentry speed vs D2? I think until we see PICA vs AVCOAT the reentry velocity issue is up in the air. Does Orion have a toilet or something, making it more suitable for long duration flights? Additionally, what was Orion's test reentry? It was a sub-lunar return velocity, right? Also sub astroid return, so effectively untested. Orion as built now (block 1) is a 3 week endurance. Dragon 2 specs (again, just as "on paper" as Orion's) say 1 week to 2 years. The latter seems odd, but if one week, there is no reason why 3 weeks would not be simple (we're in Gemini territory there, frankly, pretty trivial). So how is Orion "built" for BEO in a way that is meaningfully different than D2? (aside from the interior being wallpapered with billions of pork dollars).

I'm well aware that any long-duration flight would include another module, but the hype about Orion paints it as a spacecraft.

Taking an Orion on an interplanetary mission would be like taking that mini across the sahara, too. The 2 vehicles are transfer/reentry vehicles, nothing more. I don't think any of us want to spend a few years in the <10m^3 D2 (unsure if that's total pressurized, or habitable), or 8.95m^3 Orion (habitable volume)... Apollo was 6.2m^3 for reference.

Neither are "interplanetary" alone, all that matters for that distinction is what they can cope with in terms of direct reentry trajectories. The D2 heat shield is capable of high speed reentry, supposedly, but we'd have to see a test to known for sure (and Orion was only tested below a lunar reentry as well, so while they can make a far better inference, it's untested as well).

Perhaps I just tend to concentrate on what they got wrong. I was more concerned with the debris hitting all 3 spacecraft, including enough mv change to debit the chinese station in 90 minutes. This implies the same orbit, but in the opposite direction. You could assume shuttle and ISS being co-orbital, but a chinese station? Why, when their space center is a few degrees south of Baikonur (~41 vs 45 degrees)? The whole point the spacecraft at a target 100km away and drive there, which is intuitive to anyone unfamiliar with orbital mechanics, and unintuitive to anyone who is. It looked good, and was a fun, action movie.

I think it's cheap at twice the price.