All NASA manned missions up to and including Apollo relied on ground station network to communicate with spacecraft. The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System was not deployed until the 1980s. So, for historical accuracy, money should be spent on the ground-based network first. It will be nice to...

The need to complete certain projects to unlock another is, IMHO, a step backward compared to BARIS. In real life, an advanced project can be started while lessons from ongoing projects are absorbed. I think it will be more realistic if research progress and maximum R&D reliability are throttled...