tater

There is not really a way around this. The difficulty in terms of operating spacecraft is fixed, only the dv requirements really change. A space race would also, obviously be cool, but it doesn't really scale difficulty with ability, either.

I would say sumghai has it nailed down pretty well.

2X and 3.2 are just fine with stock parts (I've only ever had FAR on with any RSS cfg, and a better atmosphere helps). 3.2 feels like stock to me now, so I imagine you's probably not notice a difference if you went from stock to 2X with FAR with just stock parts.

Try 3.2, or the 2X. Use FAR. Very little difference from stock, really in terms of ships.

This looks pretty cool. Does it replace the current contracts that look similar?

There are various ideas out there for processing ilmenite (FeTiO3) on the moon out there. At least one involves fluorine as I recall, others are reduction by heat, etc… no time to look them up at the moment, but I figured I'd throw them out there. As a slight aside, It would be interesting if each IsRU unit had to be specific to a particular process. Then, perhaps it could be done in such a way that unlocking the various processes, or even knowing which one worked where, would require "science" to be collected in some fashion. Ie: you need munar soil samples to be able to build an ISRU that will work on munar soils. You need data from the atmosphere of Duna for atmospheric ISRU for Duna, etc. I'm generally a fan of science that is actually useful, vs "points" and this seems like a good fit. Don't want to derail the thread though.

"We" is the market. If there is a market, and the moon (or a comet, or an asteroid) is the most effective way to serve the market, it will happen. It fusion were to become a thing, and tritium was part of whatever technique in play, the moon might well become useful rather quickly.

FAR/DRE/KJR/RSS(variant scaled Kerbol systems)/and a LS mod (TAC/IFLS/Snacks(set to kill kerbals))/KCT on career. I use simulation in KCT, and I've never used quick saves.

Agree 100%. I have to say I have little interest in the clunky looking stuff.

Kerbalkind can fly to space and land on distant worlds, I've never gotten this whole "kerbal" thing where they are supposed to be idiots. On top of that, I very rarely lose any.

Red or green?

Yeah, for anyone replaying career, the entire tech tree is almost certainly unlocked a long time before the first ideal Duna window (a little after day 200). Missions expire in YEARS, often. Time is meaningless in KSP, the only time it ever passes meaningfully is long time warps for distant encounters. Period. This is OT for 1 sat multiple contracts, but it is still repeated to the "grind" of the early game. Better to have a budget per unit time, particularly in the early game. I'm fine with the facility costs, frankly, though more intermediate steps would be good (same total cost broken over more, but cheaper upgrades). If your program were a "budgeted" thing (pure exploration/science "contracts" with a decent payoff, but payment spread over time), then the sat contracts could be more cash infusions, and you'd take it, then the sat no longer belongs to you once the contract is satisfied. Note that the contract would be offered, and might go away in XX days, and must be completed in YY days for the customer, so use it, or lose it. Regex ninjaed me with some excellent points. I'd like to see taking an "explore the mun" contract (mission) be what generates the munar survey missions, and have completion of at least X of those survey missions (not from 3d parties, list them as from Linus Kerman at KSC) is required ti fulfill "explore the mun." That sort of thing, so the contracts/missions exist in a context. Also, they'd not be constantly spammed as the same but randomized thing over and over.

Higher crew capacity is sort of hard to imagine sometimes. The IVAs often remind me of a TARDIS compared to how the same part looks on EVA - - - Updated - - - I want a larger lander part, like a Mars Direct hab. Cylinder in the 3.75m part size, 1 floor high (but at least 2 parts, one as the command pod/cabin, maybe another with a science lab and ideally rover garage with ramp (and possible fuel or mono). (the one on the right is what I was referring to, and you see how it could be an upper and lower part (plus engine parts as a third piece if 909s don't cut it) Gotta love stuff like this, too: (some similar designs are a lot like Roverdude's excellent stuff, I just want them bigger) My desire for the bigger lander/landed-hab parts is exactly this. Even before I started playing with LS I never sent any mission that didn't look like it had enough LS to me. So my even my first Duna mission was a lander with a Hitchhiker (6 seats, 2 used), and remaining in orbit a science lab, hitchhiker, and mk1-2 capsule (4 kerbal crew on the whole mission, 15 seats, 4 used).

Mr.Scruffy is right, time is meaningless in KSP. A simple mechanic to instantly add time would be for the "contracts" that in reality should be from your own program (all the "explore" contracts, and most all the survey/science type contracts) to not pay in advance, and not pay upon completion, but to pay out part every few months over the time threshold of the mission. (note that a kerbin month is like 6 days). Have other contracts tend to pay upon completion. So you get a kind of budget, and you might have to warp forward a couple months to build funds for the next launch. Yes, you have to warp, so what? Also, 1.0 is adding "warp to maneuver node" as I recall, and they could make a button that jumps forward 1 month or something.

^^^ good point about the diameter. I'd hope that the impact and reentry tolerance could be made such that lander cans are not atmospheric things. I suppose the mk2 right now might be tougher for that reason, hence the mass, but I'd really like to see a better way to integrate landers into stacks with interstage fairings with no bulge.

What should really happen is the ability to generate new planets and orbits for them on the fly. Most complaints about science, career, and really any replay of the game could be mitigated by the option to have all the worlds generated via a random seed (so you could share solar systems). Combined with the inability to know more than you should about distant worlds, this would make exploration really feel like exploration. At that point, you could have all kinds of variation in planets/moons, and have the possibility of anything, really.

At 2X, or even 3.2X, KSP plays almost identically to stock in terms of what crafts get to orbit (maybe a couple moar boosters for some missions), and I find the ascent/reenty to not be substantially different. A little longer? Yeah, but if you play with DRE and are used to shallow reentries anyway it's not terribly different (soon to be a thing in stock, anyway). In a perfect world, they'd scale everything up in size/distance to at least the minimal size that makes sense for the current balance and the new aero. With FAR it's around 2X, right? There are things about this scaling that actually make certain elements easier, BTW. Docking. You've got more time in daylight instead of spinning around Kerbin like a top, then closing the dangerous bit in the dark (this is like a Murphy's Law corollary for KSP in my experience, "all terminal docking operations will end up taking place at night." ). I suppose the plus side is that I now dock really well in the pitch black, watching nothing but the navball.

Museum? No. If any components can be retasked? Sure. Heck, I'm fine with giving it away to a private entity providing they are responsible for maintaining orbit, or deorbiting it properly when done (as long as it is a US company). I wonder if any parts would be suitable for the hub of a cislunar facility?

Yeah, an icon of the part would be awesome. In addition, a way to either show in a window, or click from within the mission selection area to show orbits/survey areas (should not be called "Mission Control," BTW, that is for controlling active missions (at least in english that's what it is)---maybe "Mission Planning," instead).

Weather is not climate. That you cite outlier events as "proof" shows a profound lack of understanding. Alarmism on the subject is predicated on any change being unprecedented. Within the range of change they consider critical there is simply no good data for historical climate, much less paleoclimate. Instead, they use proxies for climate that are not terribly accurate as they all have many confounding factors. Its not accidental that the rise shown in the graph above coincides with the era of more compete data sets and satellites. Same with things like hurricanes, they used to only get noticed when they hit land, now they are named, counted, and never make landfall. Recent satellite data is actually useful, and directly of comparable to previous years with the same instrument. Even comparing to the previous sat involves complex algorithms, and involves some subjectivity. Pre satellite data is like comparing apples to... Horses (ground data with sparse coverage in space and time, etc). Climate is is a complex system. The models depend on small changes in initial conditions making large changes in outcomes. The trouble is anything missed in the model might well be a bigger change in initial condition than changing CO2 inputs, sequestration, etc. Like the abysmal modeling of cloud cover they use, or solar inputs. I think it is likely that humans have a measurable impact on climate, I think the magnitude is very poorly characterized. Any mitigation scheme that involves vast sums of money needs to operate with demonstrably predictive models in order to make the right decisions. I expect to be able to literally place an economic cost per 0.whatever change in average temp (a whole other can of worms), and we should be able to test it vs observations, not models. Doing something is not always better than doing nothing, or doing whatever limits pollution (universally good) at the least cost. Mitigation might well be cheaper. From an economic standpoint, the goal is not no pollution, but the right amount for optimal human wellbeing.

No doubt, but I said the same amount of treasure spent. That basically means delivering the same throw weight to the surface of whichever body as the reference manned mission would be. The moon rocks collected were largely so valuable because of the choice of sites to land, and the sheer mass of rocks (hundreds of kgs). The question is how many kg of moon rocks could had been returned for the cost of the entire Apollo program? I imagine a comparable amount, though to be fair in the 60s men might actually have been easier than good robots. I was taught some of my lunar geology by on the only geologist to actually do that (though only on the moon). I get the idea. Still, instead of a small rover we'd be effectively talking about a manned MAV type vehicle, and the rovers could collect hundreds of kgs of samples. Robotic equipment has certainly improved over the years. Also, for sample return the rovers don't need to "do science" while they are there. They don't all need drills, maybe none do. They pick up rocks, and drop them in a hopper that vacuum seals them in a bag with the sample location serial number on it, and move on. Send a few per MAV, and they need not be quite as careful, have one drive carefully, another a little faster, and one can be sort of reckless If you can design a rover for men that can drive far afield, you can design a robot that can do the same mechanically---the terrain avoidance bit is clearly the limiting factor for mars. For the moon the 5 second round trip lag is not so bad. Or you could take your topic title and allow that missions need not be either only robot, or only manned. Fly the PEOPLE to orbit, then land ROBOTS to collect samples. Robots controlled from low orbit with near zero delay. Best of both worlds. You need not land, then ascend with heavy life support, so more useful cargo to and from. The risks associated with landing, etc become zero.

For the stock kerbol system, "realistic" given the scale is likely limited to having airless worlds that are not ice appropriately cratered. Clouds, and possibly weather where appropriate (wind storms on Duna, perhaps, to knock over unstable craft). Active geological features (volcanoes, etc), possibly smaller scale size craters where appropriate, or colliders on rocks to make landing more interesting. Ring systems.

I'd love to see smaller scale-sized craters as a simple example. The thing about 3.2X, even (I am going to try the 2X version as well) is that it plays almost exactly the same (with FAR) but the world just feels far, far bigger. The larger size gives more time for docking, etc, in daylight as well. On top of that, the terrain looks better (seems like the best balance between stock and 6.4X+ in terms of how the features end up looking, IMO (they actually look better).)

It's funny, after playing any RSS config at all, stock KSP just won't cut it. Even if you stick to the kerbol system in some scaled up version (which I'm fine with, I don't expect kerbals to fly out of Florida), the planets actually feel like planets, even at just 3.2X scale which I have recently been messing with (though 6.4 or 10 is better).

LOL. This. Newsflash: the real universe is more whacky than made up stuff, and way more interesting.