It's not about realism, it's about immersion. As it stands, I can fly 50 missions in Kerbin's SOI and have only a month pass. I can exhaust all there is to do on Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus and still be months away from the first Duna window. So what does any player do? They timewarp to the transfer window. This breaks immersion because my active space program (50 missions in one month remember) suddenly stops all activity for months or years until I get the window right. That doesn't feel right, and it doesn't feel like the actions of a successful space program. Right now we desperately need something to manage. Right now KSP is a rocket building and flying game. It is not about running a space program and bares little resemblance to any "Tycoon" game. Build times and science taking time promote, but don't require, multitasking multiple missions and contracts at once. Running multiple missions helps make it feel like a real space program. One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is how are they implementing resources. I can't imagine they'd make resource mining happen instantaneously (even fuel transfer takes time in the game) but that would directly conflict with SQUAD's stance on time based mechanics. SQUAD has some cognitive dissonance on this topic and I think they need to reexamine it.
