Science & missions

Readiness

The checklist distinguishes an experiment being scientifically available from a vessel being capable of running and returning it. Missing hardware, crew, storage, power, situation, biome, and data route are reported independently.

Survey campaigns

SCANsat contracts should name a real target body, require a defined useful coverage threshold, respect unlocked scanners, and avoid generating duplicate offers for the same body and tier. Tarsier observations and KMS survey imagers contribute only where their capabilities match the objective.

Data handling

Science may transmit immediately, wait in a KMS buffer, move to a hardened drive, or return physically in a sample canister. Route capacity and delay affect transfer time but never silently delete stored results.

Contract quality policy

KMS contracts must have a named body, achievable prerequisites, bounded duration, meaningful objective chain, non-exploitative rewards, and a strict simultaneous-offer limit. Repetitive waypoint crew reports and multi-decade filler offers are suppressed.

Career progression

Custom parts are assigned explicit tech nodes, entry costs, categories, manufacturers, and prerequisite dependencies. The R&D audit verifies both source configs and ModuleManager's final cache so a part cannot be considered integrated merely because it appears in sandbox.

Operational science loop

1. Choose a question or contract objective.
2. Confirm situation, biome, body, crew, and instrument requirements.
3. Plan storage and the return or transmission route before collecting data.
4. Run the experiment and verify the result is stored exactly once.
5. Transmit or recover it, then confirm science credit and contract progression independently.

Mission types KMS favors

Useful programs include progressive body surveys, constellation commissioning, long-baseline observations, relay and gateway deployment, sample-return chains, station research campaigns, and infrastructure maintenance.

The suite rejects filler that selects arbitrary waypoints, vague targets, blank body names, impossible equipment, duplicate offers, or decades-long expiration windows without narrative purpose.

Offer generation limits

Contract generators check prerequisites, unlocked hardware, existing active/offered contracts, body reachability, and tier completion before creating an offer. Per-family and global caps prevent one generator from flooding Mission Control.

When a template is corrected, already serialized offers may require a one-time save-safe cleanup. The cleanup reports every withdrawn contract and never touches active progress without explicit confirmation.