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Camera for science


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One way to gather early science is to do a fly-by of the Mün. While you pass over the Münar surface, you EVA and collect EVA reports.

I like EVA reports but think you gather science by not only looking at, but taking pictures of the Mün Surface.

So what I suggest is a new part - a camera - that when activated, takes you into a camera mode.

And given you have the right motive and focus, gives you science by transmitting the image back to KSC.

(obiously, a transmitted image is as good as a image brought back to KSC)

Ex:

You fly over the Mün, spot an anomaly, takes a picture of it and gets not only science, but also coordinates to that spot.

What do you think?

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i belive that going EVA and taking a pic of your ship under different situations can have a great scientific vaule

ofc it might be a very little science income, but then give fresh science for each different ship landed at each different body

which should not take KSC center into account

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Actually, there could be a good deal of Science income from cameras, if done right.

I'd recommend having two different options if you're going with cameras. One that takes pretty pictures for the press, like the EVA cameras NASA uses, would have limited scientific value, unless combined with something else--one of the things that made the Apollo J-missions so valuable geologically is that, right after the dust had settled after landing, they did an EVA where one of the crew poked his head out of the LM's top hatch and took photographs that did a 360-degree panorama of the landing site to the horizon, and they did likewise at each "station" along the EVA routes, to allow the geologists to have the all-important context that their samples were being taken from. Likewise, on Gemini EVAs, they did experiments using the EVA cameras with various lens filters to take ultraviolet photographs of various stars and such, to gain data on the unfiltered UV spectra of the stars (couldn't be done from Earth because of the UV filtering of the ozone layer; couldn't be done from the cabin because the windows were likewise UV filtered to protect the crew's eyes). However, that said...

Cameras HAVE been key scientific instruments on a number of spacecraft. Indeed, on the Ranger and Lunar Orbiter probes, the camera was pretty much the SOLE scientific instrument. The way to implement that wouldn't be with an actual in-game camera, though. What I'd do is make it similar to the current science instruments, albeit working by biome. The data collection could be done as "take photo mosaic," featuring an animation of the camera frantically scanning the area, and would represent taking a series of photographs that could then be assembled into a mosaic showing the entire area (this is how real space photography is done; the camera's field of view is quite narrow to get high resolution images), which can then be analyzed for various scientific purposes, including mapping and such.

If you wanted to go a bit further with this, you could also have different types of camera that can take photomosaics in different wavelengths of light, allowing collection of different data. These photo mosaics could also then provide PR value and money when the pretty ones are released to the press; there could even be synergy for having cameras take the same mosaic at three different wavelengths, allowing a false-color image to be created for public consumption. (Maybe later on, once you've got enough technology to allow this, there could be a single-camera option that can take mosaics at various wavelengths through the use of different filters, and a true-color option, too.) A great deal can be learned from photographs of the same object at different wavelengths, and this could be valuable scientific data as well as financially. (Let's face it, NASA doesn't put cameras on its unmanned probes purely for PR purposes; there's plenty that can be gleaned from good photography.)

That said, I could also see value in having an EVA camera that can transmit photos back to Kerbin, both in terms of "gaining surface mechanics data" (i.e., how deep did the landing pads sink into the dirt? How bad is the dust? etc.), and possibly in repairing damaged parts, since a photo could show the ground team what the damage is and let them figure out how to fix it...

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