Buying research?

[Krymson Skorpyon]

In the administrative building, there are options to get a one-time infusion of cash by "selling" reputation or research.  I don't see an option to spend a chunk of cash to get reputation or research, though - just long-term policies to trade it on a mission-by-mission basis.  Am I missing something?

[Yellowburn10]

Short answer, no, nothing is being missed. It was purposely designed that you couldn't "buy" reputation or science from the admin building. 

However, I suppose from a purely gameplay perspective, it would make sense to be able to trade cash, reputation and science points freely between each other. But since that's not the case, I like to think about it like this: With reputation, that one is simple when you think about it; you simply can't "buy" a good reputation, something like that needs to be earned. It's not just some numbered resource, like cash or science, but it's supposed to represent how much the rest of kerbal kind likes your space program, and how much they're willing to send you quality contracts to do for them. And honestly, if a real space agency was giving me money to try to give them a better-than-they-deserve reputation, that would look pretty shady, no? As for science, well, that's also simple: nobody else has "science" as a resource that they can give you. Your space program is the only organization who is out there in the solar system trying to learn more about it, and as such, you're the main provider of science. You can sell it for money, but then that science would presumably be "used up for research" like we do with the tech tree. In that light, it'd be a bit silly to try to trade money for science from kerbals who don't have it. It'd be like if NASA went around and asked if anyone had any Moon rocks for sale. 

Of course, this is just my own head canon, but I feel it makes sense.

Edited September 26, 2020 by Yellowburn10