Science labs

[iLlama]

When you pick up a sample the scientific value dcreases if you just send back a report because you can't perform experiments and analyze it properly without a proper science lab, so it will be cool if you can attach scientific labs to your lander or rover so you can analyze samples and perform even more complex experiments in space, there would be a small one for rovers (like the one of the curiosity rover), a medium one for landers and a big one for space stations like the one in the ISS. the idea is that this is an higher tier lab for more advanced experiments so it wont overlap with the current basic lab.

[Capt Snuggler]

manned science labs would be a great feature! also the higher the intelligence of the crew in the lab the higher the science return. it would give space stations a purpose. also you could have missions where you need to deliver the "science payload" to the orbital lab for study.

the payload could be anything, new equipment, specimens, what ever.

[Nobody]

Mobile labs would be a great addition for the science. Logically the reason a large portion of the data loss in transmission is that they are doing crude analysis of samples and experiments. Taking them something to a mobile lab before transmitting would allow more data to be recovered from the samples/experiments than just transmitting alone.

I would suggest pairing this with making the more advanced transmitters more efficient(less data lost due to weak signal) so sending samples from the most advanced lab with the best transmitters would get you over 90%(but less than 100) return.

[Tw1]

They'd have to be big, and heavy, but that would be cool.

[SunJumper]

Possibly include the ability to get extra science from returning samples to the R&D building (clearly transmitting can only happen once per sample, but returning to R&D would allow for extremely in-depth analysis, possibly giving interesting factoids). Think of this as a third tier. Eyeball, mobile science lab, science complex.

[Nobody]

The idea is about reducing the penalty for transmitting not removing it. My suggested alteration would have loss at 2 points Converting samples/experiments into data(reports are already data) and Data loss/corruption during transmission.

There should be multiple labs of varying sizes with the more advanced labs being better equipped(adding weight) and the top of tier lab almost as good as the one at RnD.

The transmitters would vary in power(more powerful signal degrades less). Even with combining the best of both you will still lose potential science by transmitting compared to returning them home.

a 3rd option to farther reduce it is adding a data storage moduals that could take all the processed data from the lab and physically return it home while the long term mission continues(world tour as other planets get full enviroment maps)