Do you think there's potential for restoring space science with this mod? In that I mean the traditional non-SA launching a satellite and getting science packs landing back down to the planet. The cost/ratio would probably need some adjustment, as 1000 white science per rocket seems cheap, but yet space science in SA is pretty cheap once you get the first platform up, anyway.

The mod 'Space Age Without Space' re-enables this functionality. But it depends on the setting "launch_to_space_platforms = false" on the silo. I know you have some experience manipulating rocket launching stuff a bit with the Cerys magnetosphere unlock, though. So maybe there would be a path to do this? I sort of see how you did the send to orbit mode = manual and the tech unlock, not sure if there would be a way to automate it so satellites always launch to 'orbit' automatically once placed in a silo for automating research.