Aercus

I think that implementing the KAS system is honestly a near requirement in vanilla. But besides that, the station piece would need to have very little mass because you would be holding onto a side, right? /-\ |-|. Where . is the handle and /\ is the docking port? So you'd spin out of control due to thrust imbalance..

I feel like even having a Kerbal in an immediately threatened position would be doable. I've learned how to take off from Kerbin and rendezvous with a craft almost immediately after entering space. Again so long as they started like 40 seconds after their in-atmosphere periaps. Which would be in space at that point.

I honestly believe you guys are singing to the choir on this one. The game now having entered 1.0.X is not likely to see any changes and certainly not one of this magnitude. The reason that the research system is as thus is because of how you are intended to progress in the game. It its more a matter of encouraging players to explore new places than it is to aid realism. KSP is not 100% realistic and is not intended to be.

I feel like a majority of the missions involving resucing X kerbal or retrieving X spacecraft have become rather monotonous. And I feel that by the time that someone has reached Minimus that they have the capacity for a larger challenge. I propose that after some quantity of playtime decaying orbits be introduced as rescue or retrieval contracts. Ex: "Bob must be rescued before he hits the atmosphere/ground" Orbital Char: Periapsis 100km Apoapsis 45km Bob would currently be at the point that gave you the most time to intercept, but it is still time sensitive and requires proper launch timing etc. Problems: Clearly it would be difficult to make this mission entirely possible as the objective must pass over the KSC and acheiving an intercept would be hard without the added effort of then safely wrangling the craft and preventing it from burning up, but i maintain it would be a fun mechanic or at least a fun scenario to play around with. Opinions?