Telescopes, Satellites, and Prob Suggestions

[rckydog606]

I don't think Satellites/Probes serve much of a purpose as of right now but I have a suggestion on what they could be for. Maybe for the career mode have it to where you can't see any of the planets. You would then need to build a Telescope to search for the planets (Have a hot or cold feature showing if you're close to finding one and then show a black ball or the planets orbital path). You would then need to send a Probe/Satellite/Kerbal to map the planet and send back data to kerbal. That data would be used the map the surface/temp/weather/or any life. Maybe if a kerbal is out on Eeloo and wants to transmit data back to kerbal. He would be too far to transmit that data so he would have to relay that data to a satellite orbiting dres to get it back. Maybe i'm asking to much....

[boomerdog2000]

Remotetech does a fairly good job with transmitting information back to kerbin but it only affects probes. Manned mission don't need ground contact.

On the concept of planet discovery maybe you would have to build a telescope either at ksp or in orbit and it would reveal the orbits of a few planets close to kerbin (maybe the inner planets and duna)but they would be the black balls like you said until you send a probe to them. Then you could build a stronger telescope to reveal the farther planets.

[rckydog606]

I’ve not played around with the probes or satellites that much (only one that's orbiting around kerbal) I figured they didn't do anything yet. I think the telescopes would be a great addition to it especially the planet discover factor that it would bring. Didn’t the Hubble telescope get taken up in pieces?

[Deejay2000]

I do find that there aren't enough uses for a probe (besides using them in place of Kerbals so they don't die) and that something like RemoteTech would make satellites much more useful. Also using probes to map the surfaces of planets would be nice. I've also thought about having to discover the planets before you can see them on the map. All of these things would make probes far more useful.

-Deejay

[Beeman]

Well, discovering planets via telescope is definitely planned. Let's just hope they add orbital telescope parts as well, to improve the knowledge-base before actually sending probes to those planets.

They also had shown some work in progress images of scanners that you'd use to scan for resources from orbit. Those were kinda cool, though there were only the two of 'em.

[Bilfr3d]

I do think that having to map out the whole solar system would add a fairly good aspect of fun and realism into the game. I would also think that they would add the possibility of putting a telescope onto a satellite for more mobility hen mapping out

[Amazonys]

I couldn't help but notice that there was an observatory in the KSP R&D concept art. So I think that perhaps this will be coming sooner rather than later

It's in the top right

http://i.imgur.com/MXoZHyo.png