New building - KERBAL AEROSPACE MUSEUM

[Cocox]

It would be nice if we had a building where you can enter and see the vehicles that you made and used during the current career. Selecting a vehicle would pop up information about how many missions it flew, time spent in space etc.

Also a museum in the main menu of the game, would allow you to enter and see the same but for different careers.

[1of6Billion]

I endorse this idea! Best idea since adding moar boosters!

[BudgetHedgehog]

I'm going to echo sumghai's thoughts on this because they perfectly reflect my own:

The idea of a museum located at the KSC is an often-suggested one, as evidenced by the following existing threads:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/85136-Capsule-Musuem

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/78301-Aerospace-museum-at-KSC

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65898-Museum

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/61125-Mission-History

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/59351-Museum

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53462-Hall-of-Fame

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53055-The-Kerbal-Space-Museum

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/49955-Flight-History-and-Museum

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/45688-Space-and-aeronautics-museum

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92455-Kerbal-Space-Center-Giftshop

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/91001-Idea-for-new-building

For everyone's benefit, I'm going to consolidate many of my thoughts and responses that are otherwise scattered amongst the existing threads:

Listing in-game achievements

Since KSP 0.21, the groundwork for this feature has been partially implemented - if one examines their savegame files, they'll note that the game already tracks the time when a player achivements (e.g. first successful orbit, first docking, first landing on a celestial body). It seems to me that it's just a matter of displaying this text on a readable plague within the museum.

Exhibits of Recovered Crafts / vessels

Whenever someone suggests this, they always fail to / ignore the following show-stopping problems:

- Modding is a major part of the game, with third-party add-on packs providing many unofficial rocket / aircraft parts. However, mod parts often change between updates, and sometimes users may uninstall entire mods. If a museum exhibit featured a craft that contains mod parts, what would happen if the mod parts are removed/altered from the game? Does the exhibit simply disappear?

- Similarly, would exhibited crafts display their original textures, or will they end up as simply clay / metal castings? What if a mod changed a part's texture? Would the exhibit retroactively gain the new appearance?

- How does the game decide what part of a craft is displayed in an exhibit? Often all that is recovered from a craft is just the crew capsule, with maybe a couple of parachutes and a few other parts. How would space stations, lander probes, rovers or complete lifter rocket stacks be handled? .craft files? What if the user deletes the .craft files?

Encyclopaedia of knowledge gained from other planets

I suspect that these would have to be pre-defined in the game like the contracts/science flavor text, and each would be unlocked once mission pre-requisites are met. But again, this should be trivial like the achievements or "firsts" as long as they are limited to text / images pre-made by SQUAD.

In summary, it's a neat idea, but nobody has addressed the potential problems when dealing with craft exhibits.