TL;DR
Instead of having two recipes (launching a satellite and crafting in space), the early space science research should be changed to trigger techs instead, and the space recipe should be the only one.What ?
As a refresher, this is the proposal for how early space science works:
When I first saw this it seemed a little clunky to me. It felt like the early techs (space platform, asteroid colleection, and space science in space) were basically just gated behind launching a certain number of satellites (each satellite launched gives 10, and the first few techs take small multiples of 10 to research). Once the space recipe is unlocked, I don't think anyone will be launching satellites to get space science anymore, so why not just gate the early techs behind triggers like this:
Why ?
This simplifies early space science and prevents there being two recipes for the same thing.Let me know what you think!