+1 If you can transmit the full (or close) science value, and electricity is unlimited, there's no reason to return anything. When rockets and recoveries cost money, there's even less reason to return anything. Even if you score slightly less science by transmitting, you still get way more science per flight, and science for a given time period, than a return could. There are enough science pots to mine that the total amount of science in the system is many times more what you need to get through the tech tree. One probe zipping around in the Joolian system with a goo canister can get you through the tech tree. I'd rather the system were simpler and less repetitive, and more difficult tasks gave bigger rewards. How about you can transmit a data once for science, and return that data once for more science, and then it's done? Some tasks, like collecting a sample, would give drastically more science for a return than a transmission. The game would indicate to you when novel observations can be made, so you don't have to keep clicking your experiments to see if the biome changed (or you just can't remember if you've mined that area dry already). Collecting samples would be particularly valuable, to encourage people to use astronauts.
