holding it to AMSO standard (which is high) also means holding it to orbiter standards (learning curve that scare's people off) it's obviously meant as a commercial product of a B type quality, having a steep learning curve in a game is suicide for a commercial product.
AMSO was the easier of the two.
You can learn flying it without orbiter knowledge in less than 30 minutes, provided you are not allergic against manuals.
A steep learning curve in a game is never suicide for commercial products, contrary, a steep learning curve can be motivating when combined with rewards for every tiny step. Contrary, a too shallow game play is deadly. This pits you in the bloody waters with many other shallow games and gamers, who actually don't want to buy your game, but just download it illegally, play it once and then forget it again for the next hype.
The really successful long-term addicting games have a complex game mechanic, that rewards long-term players, but does not exclude beginners...which Orbiter also does not do. It just expects you to read the manual, which is too much for many "casual gamers". But for casual games, you are better served with a Wii, than by PC games.
immersion wise, i can't think of a way to make a game like this immersive yet still open to the general public (outside of the orbiter community i mean).
There are many hundred ways. It is not like you are unable to drive a 1960s car, if you are used to modern super cars from other games. And how can you understand the competition of the cold war, without feeling it every second in the game?
You can make compromises in the user interface. You can say that some things are omitted for happening automatically, so the player has less workload. But you should NEVER compromise with the immersion. Immersion is an investment. You can't make a WW2 submarine game, and play it with a modern MIL-STD-2626 interface. It would feel wrong. And for a cold war space game in the 1960s, you need first to give the player the feeling of being there.
In terms of historic gaming, you should remember History Line 1914-1918... while it had nothing in common in the game mechanics with the first world war, the background and the historic scenario briefings are and give you quickly the feeling of understanding the bigger picture around you. And it ensured an A+ in your history class if you managed to survive the first 4 scenarios.
Also, is being astronaut only about centrifuge training? Sure not. And fueling the rocket is only taking development time away from the real astronaut duties... for example traveling through the whole country and appear on PR events between a tightly packed training schedule. An astronaut will never be seen handling the nuts and bolts of a rocket, that is the job of other people, but astronauts will take part in the development of spacecraft, familiarizing with the hardware and improving it from the point of view of an astronaut. You will do survival training or sit in class rooms learning about the subsystems.
As you can see, the feeling of being an astronaut is much more than just "going into space and pushing a few buttons on the way". It is being a front pig of aerospace engineering and technology-propaganda politics. And the Apollo astronauts had been such front pigs in the worst thinkable time for being in the limelight. Conservatives will think you are wasting money that could be used for more earthly things, or think it is far too dangerous. At PR events at universities, you have to expect left-wing students to protest against you, because you represent the same government that is bombing Vietnam. And your job is already hard enough without preventing to become crazy by such external pressures that act on you.
And the psychological pressures of being an astronaut had always been extreme, much more in the past than today, after we started having an army of headshrinkers in mission control for every astronaut, to make sure they don't suddenly snap out and go on strike until they are returned to Earth (which really happened).
And then, after your successful flight to the moon, you are suddenly too important to be send on a risky space mission again, and only few people will notice the broken man behind the hero.
And now tell me... do you really see anything in the real situation of 1960s astronauts, that is making immersion impossible or would scare people away? If you mean that it scares people away who mistake Buzz Aldrin with Buzz Lightyear, I think it is a good thing, because it also prevents disappointment. Because for all others, this means diving deep into a time, in which Mark 1 sensors had been better than all thinkable technology, pressing buttons was secondary and you had really been a part of a small elite, and not an overpaid engineer or scientist in the eyes of many less skilled people.
If the game then also has rockets appear as the breathing, hissing, singing, icy dragons that they really are on the launch pad, you would have an immersion that makes you shiver in awe. Because that is being an astronaut: Sitting on top of a thousand ton bomb, built by the lowest bidder. And feel well there.
