Northstar1989

No part modeling experience necessary! All that's needed is someone to run/maintain the mod: maintaining the code for updates, working out any bugs that may arise, and finding other people with expertise to expand the mod/ add models and such as you see fit. I actually tried to recruit @FreeThinkerto take over the mod before, but he seems to have his hands (understandably) quite busy with KSP Interstellar- probably the largest/ most complex, awesome mod to ever grace this game... Get to know the mod and you'll love it. It really is a much more elegant, simple way to improve the efficiency of your rockets than optimizing every detail of the staging and design. You quickly come to wonder why space programs don't at least use short mass drivers of a few hundred meters in real life... (of course there are major engineering challenges to building something that draws this much power, this quickly: not unlike building a Supercollider) Of course, actually playing the mod regularly isn't a prerequisite for maintaining it (although it is helpful). Just getting this thing up to date and "officially" released for 1.9.x should go a LONG way towards getting players using it again, and popular mods tend to have a tendency to keep going on their own- as eager fans step in to maintain it as others step aside... In that sense, Scott Manley, Kottabos, and several other prominent YouTubers doing videos on or shout-outs for this mod back when it was current was probably one of the best things that could have ever happened to it. It means players will flock back to it sooner if it comes awake again- as they tend to remember when someone like that introduces/teaches a mod to them... (and 2 major YouTubers EACH spent at leadt 30 min on it) And if players see the mod up-to-date AND releasing new features: especially those that improve their quality-of-life; like longer tube parts to reduce part-spam, high and low-res textures for newer and older computers respectively, and multiple different selectable config sets for stock or various different upscale Kerbin sizes, as well as maybe extras like a patch to allow use of KSP-Interstellar Megajoules instead of EC for launches- which are easier to conceptualize when you need really huge amounts of power; THEN players will flock to the mod in droves, and likely remain loyal to it and willing to take it off your hands (so it doesn't go into hibernation again) even if you don't have time to maintain it anymore yourself... Just things to think about... I'll hope you decide you have time and effort in you to become the mod's new maintainer! And if you do, never forget the value of others chipping in and helping! Great leaders lead by example, but AMAZING leaders find other highly-capable people to delegate to who do better work even than themself and inspire others without their having to put in nearly so much work... A great mod is a team effort- and part of that team are other dev's, and part are amazing YouTubers like Kottabos and Scott Manley: who provide desperately-needed marketing, publicity, and education on how our mods work to players for us... (and sometimes, may even notice things about the mods we miss ourselves!)

If it provides extremely low-cost access to orbit, it's worth it. Keep in mind there are Economies of Scale. It isn't nearly 10x as expensive to check a 1.2 km long airship (a good starter size for carrying small to mid-sized cargos to orbit) for tears as it is a 120 meter rocket. And the cost of doing so PALES in comparison to the cost of refurbishing even a couple rocket engines... Which an orbiral airship doesn't have to worry about: as it uses clusters of ion thrusters (which typically are designed for very long service-lives) instead of rockets, to ascend to orbit over more than a week (the thrusters are powered by thin-film solar panels over part of the blimp surface). And a failure of one or more ion engines won't cause loss of the airship or cargo: just a very, very slow (hours-long) drift back to ground-level where they can be repaired (remaining engines get it back to base).

Do you have the skills to become one? Anybody can (and if they think they're up to it, shpuld) go and make a branch/copy of this mod at any time: based on the license it's under they don't need my permission to do so. But what I started this thread for was to try and draw someone with the skills to maintain and expand this mod into the future...

NFAero is not updated for 1.9.x and won't be for a lonnnggggg time. OPT only has a single 2.5 meter, electrically-augmented (borderline cheaty) Scramjet- a fair number of fuselage parts, but zero upsized turbofans/ramjets. I'll check Airplane Plus, since you mention it. The bottom line here is that players SHOULDN'T have to trawl an endless and confusing sea of mods hoping to find such a basic functionality, though. Some simple, upsized jet engines are easily in order for the base game: and quite a few players would probably pay for a spaceplane-themed expansion featuring it...

40 engines? *Shudder*. At that point I'm not sure which would commit self-immolation first: my graphics card or my CPU. Larger engines are clearly desperately needed. As for your spaceplane- I could probably give you some useful pointers. Also some useful mods to try out. I was the first (by at least a couple months) player I know of to ever build a 3.2x Kerbin spaceplane that worked in one stage (also could only haul about 1.2 tons of cargo, and 2 Kerbals, to orbit though...) Was done with RealFuels and FAR, plus low-level KSP-Interstellar precoolers (which allow jets to operate efficiently at higher speed/altitude, like they would in real life- unlike Stock precoolers: which are nearly useless...) Anyhow, enough about mods. This thread was about needing new/larger STOCK jet engines so we DON'T have to rely on mods- or in this case, create our own- as I can't even find a mod with this functionality, other than OPT's 2.5 meter electrically-augmented Scramjets, or the 2m5 meter SABRE engines of the long-defunct original B7 Aerospace Parts... 2.5 meter jets, even in mods, seem to be incredibly rare... I don't care if I have to buy a new DLC/expansion for it, this NEEDS to happen...

You are correct that you need 100x the volume of displacement per unit mass to even get off the ground. But orbital airships are already being designed to exceed this threshold many times over, here on Earth (see discussion of the "Dark Sky" platform). The upper stage would become the ONLY stage on Mars (the lower stage is designed for dense/turbulent air, and wouldn't be light enough for Mars. Luckily, it wouldn't be needed either). The lower gravity kicks in because if you need to displace 10 million cubic meters of air to get 10 tons to orbit on Earth, you could get more than 30 tons to orbit in Mars' lower gravity. The denser gas mix on Mars (CO2 instead of M2/O2) also means you don't have to displace *quite* 100x as much air. But the 1% density is analogous to operating high in Earth's atmosphere: which is something orbital airships ARE already being designed to do. No they won't. You're thinking Goodyear Blimp. I'm talking JO Aerospace type airships- already designed to lift in less than 1% Earth sea level density air (in fact, less than 0.1% sea level density) and several dozen kilometers long. If it can fly at 0.1% sea level pressure on Earth, it can fly at 1% sea level pressure on Mars. In fact, due to the lifting-gas issue I described in the OP (CO2 is denser than N2), it can fly at *lower* pressure on Mars. Gravity comes into play only because an airship of a certain size can lift a certain WEIGHT off the ground. That same weight equals more MASS in a low-gravity environment. It's just like how you don't need as much Thrust:Mass ratio to lift off on Mun as you do on Kerbin... The rest of your discussion is irrelevant, because nobody's talking of using breathing air as a lifting-gas on Mars (it would differ if I were talking of floating Landis-Land style cities there: which would be impractical). My point is that even breathing-air lifts there, and gases like Helium or Argon that lift on Earth, are even MORE effective on Mars...

A simple request- but the game could really use larger (1.875 meter or 2.5 meter) jet engines. Even on relatively compact (can be launched from the Level 2 Runway) suborbital and air-launch spaceplanes I build, I end up having to spam 8-12 jet engines or more to get optimal capabilities/efficiency. This isn't a problem relegated to mod playthroughs. Even going all Stock, I can build some very large wings out of the structural wing parts (as I should be able to! Although the part-count spam can get really annoying...) and end up needing to spam engines to go along with it. If you think about it, this is very "Kerbal"- building it bigger instead of more efficient (the very limited selection of stock spaceplane parts, and oversimplified drag/aero models don't really allow for optimal efficiency). It would be nice if the game catered better to this very common problem even in Stock KSP (and even more so with mods: which give us more interesting/useful heavy payloads to lift to orbit)- the need to spam far, far too many jet engines on our spaceplanes due to being limited only to 1.25 and 0.625 meter jets. I would like to see some 1.875 and 2.5 meter Stock jet engine parts! A spaceplane-focused DLC could even sell well to the community I bet. The stock spaceplane parts selection is far too limited- hence why some of the most popular mods for KSP have long been spaceplane parts packs... But console players can't share in the mod-fest, and many players prefer to play the game "out of the box" (Stock ONLY). So it would really be nice to see more spaceplane parts, and particularly larger jet engines, as part of the base game...

Where can I find the electric configs for the Banshee? The readme says they're in the "Extras" folder, but I checked there and there was no config by the name indicated in the readme. Do I have to download it separately? Was this an item of such high demand that it's now integrated into the mod already somehow?

So, a while ago I started this discussion off: And then didn't really have time to participate in it. Plus, it timed out after a while, so replying to it now would be necro'ing. Giving credence to some of the interesting thoughts there (why I'm linking it), I thought I'd bring back up the subject of airships... Especially now with SpaceX making the possibility of a Mars colony (and thus regular lifts to Mars) a real thing, developing more efficient ways to get to orbit than rockets is becoming ever more imperative... Interestingly, orbital airships could work *even better* on Mars. That's because: - The atmosphere on Mars is mostly composed of CO2, in comparison to which even a breathable N2/O2 mix is a lifting gas (and other, lighter gasses even more effective) - The gravity on Mars is much lower than Earth's, reducing the weight an airship needs to fight against when lifting a payload. - The air on mars is extremely thin, even near the surface- so it packs very little force, even in 100 km/hour winds. This means that strong winds ripping apart an airship are less of a concern, and you don't need 2 separate "stages" (a sturdy airship to take you to a "Dark Sky" platform, where you transfer cargo/people to a lighter, larger airship designed for the calmer upper atmosphere of Earth...) A single very large/weak airship could take you from the surface all the way to orbit. - Orbital Velocity on Mars is less than Earth. - Payloads returning from Mars to Earth are likely to have very high value for their weight, and be relatively small in total mass (mostly, people making a return trip). This is the optimal niche for orbital airships- which would be EXTREMELY safe (not explosive, very easy to bail out of if things go south) and even at very large sizes have extremely limited cargo capacity... An airship that takes you to orbit, where a specialized orbit-to-orbit only spacecraft takes you back to Earth, and a reusable reentry vehicle/pod takes you to the surface, would be ideal at high annual volumes of traffic I would think... Anyways, this thread is for discussion of airships, orbital airships, and airships on Mars. One misconception I wanted to clear up, by the way: envelope mass of an airship does NOT scale linearly with volume, because it's not a pressure vessel. It operates at ambient (or close to ambient) pressure- indeed one of the design constraints of an orbital airship is that its volume needs to expand quite significantly on the way up, until the internal pressure is very low (and shrinks on the way back down). Therefore, it really DOES benefit from the Square-Cube Law for envelope mass. More importantly, an orbital airship also benefits from the Square-Cube Law when it comes to Drag: an orbital airship with 2x the dimensions in every axis has 8x the volume, but only 4x the cross-sectional and total surface areas... So, 4x the Drag but 8x the volume to provide lifting capacity- adding up to MORE than 8x the payload capacity for 8x the size... At small sizes, aerodynamic Drag is the major obstacle to achieving orbit: so bigger is definitely better for an orbital airship.

I am looking for someone to take over the Neatherdyne Mass Driver Mod. It was last confirmed to work in 1.7.3 though it needs a recompile, apparently (I'm not great with this kind of computer stuff- just real life physics, chemistry, and math... I'm a Biologist by training, on the path to retraining as a physician...) Still, it was a great mod while it was current. Scott Manley and Kottabos Games even both did videos featuring it- as did several mod fans! (FWIW, Kottabos did a much better job explaining the mod's use than Manley- but I've linked both videos below) I hope the videos are enticing/ get someone to want to use/update/maintain the mod! Also, to give anyone a full picture of the pertinent details, I was in the process of trying to update the models for the mod, and add new/longer parts, when I had to fall off my KSP gaming/modding several years ago (got a new job as an EMT, was too busy for modding and barely had time/energy to play after long hours at work...) It may be possible to follow up and use one of those models if you're really determined. One of the chief goals I had for the mod going forward was to add newer, simpler models and elongated parts, so players could build 1-2 km long Mass Driver tubes with ease (important for gradual accelerations that won't knock out/kill Kerbals, and for reaching really high speeds with very heavy rockets in Real Solar System and such...) The mod was balanced around real-world data on what's physically possible for Mass Drivers (notably, documents related to "StarTram" and other such ideas that didn't make it off the drawing boards). However, much like using RealFuels engines in stock KSP, these parts could tend to be a little OP'd for the stock game (personally, I played on RSS 3.2x most of the time back then- and it wasn't quite as OP'd even there). So some debate arose around balancing, and I was a little too stubborn for my own good. A wiser modder might spin off the base configs as a RSS/RO set of configs, and create a new/nerfed set for use on stock-sized Kerbin... These words of advice are only that, though. Whoever takes this over is free to use the mod however they wish... (The license gives pretty much free reign to take over the mod and use it however desired... See "CDDL-1" licenses for more information... The main distinction from a more common GPL license as I understand it is CDDL-1 is stringently "copyleft", meaning you CANNOT reduce the rights or commercialize any derivative products- they have to remain similarly free and open to the public... IIRC, the CDDL-1 license was inherited from another mod it got the original parts from, which as you can see meant I had to keep it CDDL-1...)

Except... Didn't Nertea lose the original source code for NearFuture Aeronautics or something? Said something about it on the NearFuture mods pack page recently...

Forgive me for being a little confused- but what exactly are the features of OPT- Legacy vs. the "main" mod? Since this thread is labeled "OPT Reconfig & OPT Legacy" I thought there'd be a description at the beginning of what Legacy does to change the base balance (and whether it might be advisable for some players to install Legacy AND the "main" mod), but so far I can't seem to find a description... Thanks in advance for any clarification! EDIT: Also, since the Reconfig overwrites the Firespitter fuel switcher, do I still need to keep that folder of the "main" OPT mod, if I install that? Or can I just rip it out (delete it) entirely, since Reconfig lets B9 Part Switch and Community Resource Pack do the work instead? Regards, Northstar

Cool to see interest in my mod still pops up from time to time! (I made the Netherdyne mod) I'm looking for somebody to take over the mod, by the way. I haven't had time to maintain it (hence why the title is so far out of date). Let me know if you or anyone you know is interested- or if anyone else sees this thread, feel free to message me! I promise I've become a lot more relaxed about the whole pushing for "realism" thing (the Netherdyne Mass Driver parts were balanced around what's physically possible in real life- but much like having RealFuels engines on stock Kerbin, it all ends up a little overpowered for anything other than a Real Solar System-sized planet...)

Yes. The mod only checks if a vessel is landed. What I would like to see, however, is a function to integrate NON-LANDED vessels (those in orbit) into the main save. All that's needed, if I'm not mistaken, for this is to trigger the save-integrated function that makes the mod work, when you click a button ("save and jump to Main Mission"). OP, IS THIS POSSIBLE CURRENTLY? Save files for craft include not just positional information (all that's needed for landed vessels) but also speed/trajectory info. Just adding that to what's integrated should (probably) allow use of FMRS on non-main stages that attain orbit. I really, really need this feature for when two or more of my craft end up attaining orbit separately. Such as when air-dropping multiple rockets and flying them to orbit (dropping the 1st allows the plane to ascend to higher altitude/speed before dropping a 2nd), when co-launching multiple vessels destined for different orbits (that separate from each other before attaining orbit- such as if headed to different inclinations) on a single launch stage, or when launching certain Microwave Beamed Power vessels in KSP-Interstellar Extended (a special subcase of the multiple upper stage problem- except they may be destined for the SAME orbit. The difference is, one Upper Stage may rely on beamed-power and take a more gradual trajectory at lower TWR to maximize use of the beamed power, while the other has no microwave receiver and ascends quickly to minimize gravity-losses and aero drag). Alternatively to the last case, you may want to launch an upper stage with wings (that takes s gradual trajectory) and one without (ascends fast) on a single plane or upper stage. Both are destined for orbit. Reasons for this including limited number of engines your CPU/GPU can handle operating in one instance (splitting into 2 vessels means you can have each batch of engines loaded at different times, not at once), limits to the size of planes you can build on a level 2 runway (you may push the max length for a plane with one 2nd stage, launched on back of a low-altitude carrier plane. You don't want your wings to be too long on a supersonic plane if running FAR- long and sleek is desirable instead. But if you just built the separate rocket into the plane, would need more wing area to operate effectively as a plane without stalling...), and limits to available Funds in career mode (although spaceplanes tend to be more reusable, and cheaper in the long run, they coat more upfront than a rocket...) The CPU/GPU units are particularly relevant for me (plenty of RAM for the multiple save files of different stages before FMRS integrates them all, but my game seriously chugs if too many engines- particularly jet engines- are active at once...) TLDR: The mod works for landing vessels anywhere, but we REALLY NEED the ability to integrate stages outside of an atmosphere, in orbit, into saves with the main vessel- for using multiple concurrent Upper Stages mainly, but also for air-dropping multiple small rockets.

If you're still interested in this, the way the mod works is by having only a single model, and then using rescaling for the smaller/larger parts. This makes for a smaller mod file, and hopefully less RAM usage from playing with the mod active. A part with 2.5 meter INTERNAL diameter would be the most appropriate base size. Eventually, the goal was to have re-scale configs included with the mod for 0.625, 1.5, 3.75, and 5 meter parts. Maybe, with the increasing popularity of 7.5 meter mods, one of those as well now... I haven't been able to keep up with mod maintenance anyways, though, so I'm looking to hand the mod off. I'm asking @FreeThinker if he would be interested in taking over the mod, but you're free to jump in yourself if you think you have the abilities to recompile and try to occasionally bugfix the mod.

Sorry about that. The mod needs a recompile. However, seeing as I haven't even had time/energy to play KSP for severally months now (drama+backstabbing at work, trying to get into medical schools, night classes, and going back to grad school soon) I'm not going to be able to keep up with maintenance of this mod. I would love to hand it off to someone else.. @FreeThinker would you be interested? Any other volunteers?

I think some people here are under a false impression- that the primary force on a spacecraft to be resisted is the internal pressure of the fuel tanks. It's not. At least not on high-thrust chemical rockets, or any stage launched atop one (electric thruster-propelled spacecraft built in space would be an entirely different story, for instance...) The main force the spacecraft have to contend with is that of their own THRUST: two, maybe three g's of force translating up the entire z-axis of the spacecraft from engines all the way up to the nose. The forces involved are greater than those from the fuel pressing out on the pressure vessels (an interesting aside: the thickness of spherical pressure vessel laws increases in direct proportion to their volume, due to the Square-Cube Law for surface area vs. volume, and the linear relationship between pressure vessel mass and volume. Larger tanks require thicker walls. This is relevant to a few points raised in earlier posts.. ) at many point in the rocket, and so many rockets (especially large, tall ones: *cough* BFR *cough*) require extra structural reinforcement beyond the strength required to contain the internal pressure at many points along their length... --- It is the external shells of large spacecraft, that overlay the pressure vessels and have no direct role in contacting the gasses, that I thought Kevlar (or better yet, Vectran) would be useful for. Structural elements (the use I quite clearly emphasized in the OP: *not* use in strengthening the pressure vessels, which carbon fiber overwraps are actually more appropriate for...), which could, by the way, easily be overlayed with an extremely thin metallic outer coating to reflect UV away from the polymers beneath... --- On Polymers and Ceramics: - Further reading indicates that composites made using spun polymers such as Kevlar are exceedingly strong in tension, but very weak in compression. - By contrast, certain ceramics are exceedingly strong in compression (far stronger, pound-for-pound, than Aluminum: which explains why there has already been substantial research into greater use of ceramics, and ceramic-based composites in spacecraft... https://www.space.com/31516-3d-printed-ceramics-next-gen-spaceships.html https://sbir.nasa.gov/content/ceramic-matrix-composites-spacecraft-propulsion). - Appropriate use of polymers such as Kevlar where tensile forces dominate, and ceramics in places where compression is king, seems to be the key to next-generation, lighter-weight spacecraft design... Indeed a lot of NASA research appears to be focused in precisely this direction. --- In short, further reading indicates that what I was suggesting... has already been considered by much smarter people than myself, and indeed is actually precisely where spacecraft design is headed (although there seems to be more focus on Carbon Fiber than on Kevlar, as it is potentially even stronger: although far less capable of shielding crews and components from radiation...)

Reading about THIS scientific publication, and a related Space.com news article, on The Mars Society page on Facebook, I was inspired by the idea of greater use of Kevlar in spacecraft... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01707-2 Basically, pound-for-pound, Kevlar is just as effective as Polyethylene as radiation-shielding in space (and MANY times more effective than Aluminum). It's also denser (Kevlar has a density of about 1.44 grams/cm^3, vs. a maximum density of about 0.975 grams/cm^3 for Polyethylene)- meaning that a tile providing the same level of protection (measured in grams/cm^2) would also be thinner: https://www.ptonline.com/columns/density-molecular-weight-in-polyethylene http://www.dupont.com/products-and-services/fabrics-fibers-nonwovens/fibers/articles/kevlar-properties.html But more interesting, Kevlar is also STRONGER than Aluminum. Looking at two of the most important parameters describing strength (Tensile Strength, and Yield Strength) it is substantially stronger: Kevlar Tensile Strength: 3620 MPa Yield Strength: 898.5 Mpa*m3/kg http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/tadp/1996/reports/tech/material2.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevlar Temper 6061 Aluminum Tensile Strength: 290 MPa Yield Strength: 240 MPa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/6061_aluminium_alloy#Standards 7068 Aluminum Alloy Tensile Strength: 710 MPa Yield Strength: 683 MPa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7068_aluminium_alloy 7068 Aluminum Alloy is basically one of the strongest aluminum alloys that sees any actual commercial use, and is currently being considered as an UPGRADE for many spacecraft designs (weaker, but more workable alloys are currently used). It currently sees its greatest use in military ammunition. 6061 is a relatively strong, basic form of extruded Aluminum, which sees many commercial uses. ------ My basic idea is this: since Kevlar is both stronger (pound-for-pound) and better at radiation-shielding than Aluminum, why not make greater use of it in spacecraft? Particularly, why not work it into the structural elements of more spacecraft? Regards, Northstar

As a published Biologist with a graduate degree, substantial research experience in Reproductive Biology (and *specifically* an entire year spent researching Spermatogenesis), and one of my areas of focus being Genetics and Development, I can state that is categorically false. Sperm do *NOT* live "only a day or so" (in fact they take about 70-90 days just to form), and new ones are not generated from scratch on a daily basis (although new sperm are continuously being formed). The man's Spermatogonial Stem Cells, Sertoli Cells, and various other cells of the testis that support Spermatogenesis are NOT "fresh" 10 years after a space mission, and because the woman's eggs that are active 10 years later were completely dormant and inactive during the space mission (and thus at minimal risk for radiation-induced mutagenesis) she is actually at lower risk of reproductive complications due to the radiation exposure than the man... --- The formation of Sperm (Spermatogenesis) takes 10 to 12 weeks (as much as 3 months!) from start to finish. What's more, since Spermatogenesis is continuous in the testis, on any given day there are MILLIONS of cell divisions going on associated with it. You really should at least read the Wikipedia article on the topic before presuming to make statements on sperm formation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermatogenesis The male reproductive system is actually far MORE vulnerable to radiation exposure than the female system for the following reasons: 1. Cells are most vulnerable to radiation while they are actively undergoing cell division. A woman is born with all the immature eggs she will ever have, but all but a handful are frozen in Meiosis I at any given point in her lifetime- and active cell division of the follicles only occurs at certain times of the month (as opposed to 365 days a year in men), as dictated by the hormonal cycle. Follicular development also occurs at a much slower pace overall- a single egg takes 10 months to develop, as opposed to 3 months for sperm. 2. There are no active germline stem cell populations in the postnatal (after birth) human female. All ovarian follicles have already been formed long before birth, and the germ cells are merely frozen in their development. The germline stem cell populations that give rise to new germ cells from scratch degenerated before she was even born. By contrast, males still have active germline stem cell populations- which are capable of accumulating mutations during cell division due to radiation exposure and sustaining the effects of these mutations in ALL future sperm generated from those mutated stem cells (a female can have half her actively-dividing follicles mutate, and they will all be gone in a year- with the dormant eggs that later become active as good as new. A male can accumulate mutations in half his dividing spermatogonial stem cells, and it will affect his fertility and risk of cancer for the rest of his life...) Stem Cell mutations also *greatly* increase the risk of cancer compared to somatic cell mutations, consider the "Cancer Stem Cell Theory"... There are other reasons, but after writing this much, I don't really feel like going into them... It suffices to say that men are actually at greater risk of radiation exposure affecting their fertility than women. --- Not to mention women make better astronauts for a variety of other reasons, including lower metabolic rate (for long-duration missions, the cost of food for the crew is a very significant consideration. Females burn through substantially fewercalories in a day than men on average, in part due to their smaller bodies...), lower incidence of aggressive/violent behaviors (on long-duration missions, the risk of crew attacking each other is, once again, a significant consideration. I believe it was a Russian male cosmonaut who once wrote in his diary about a space station mission that on an extended stay in a crasmoed space station "all the conditions necessary for murder are present" and that he personally fantasized at times of bashing one particular comrade's head in...), and greater tendency to behave cooperatively and follow instructions ratger than behaving easily or independently (indeed NASA once experienced a small "mutiny in space" of sorts when some of their astronauts stopped following orders...) --- No, the reason Russia no longer relies as heavily on female cosmonauts as it once did has nothing to do with biology or the relative suitability of male vs. female cosmonauts (because females are actualky BETTER suited for the demands of extended space missions). My best guess is it has to do with creeping conservatism in the later years of the USSR (as others have suggested) and sexist attitudes ultimately gaining more dominance in the Russian space program and political arenas, as others suggested..

Exactly. I don't see why they couldn't at least allow Scenarios to be played like Career Mode...

I persist in asking about being able to take on contracts and manage Funds/Reputation/Science in custom Scenarios. If I'm correct, we currently can't create a Custom Scenario just to, say, play an all-stock game out of an alternative launch site and still manage the Career aspects of the game. Or am I mistaken?

You still don't get it. I'm talking about being able to play scenarios like Career Mode, with Funds and missions, *not* "regular Sandbox mode". This is a Sandbox *Game*, and we already have tons of ability to customize our Career games (starting off with piles and piles of Funds and Science on Custom Difficulty, for instance). This would just be one more way.

You completely miss the point that this is a Sansbox game, and players should be able to do as they wish in it. Not to mention, it would still be a "Scenario"- just having the ability to take missions and manage Funds in a Scenario like in Career is all I'm asking for...

How hard is it to get a precise location on the first try? I.e. what if I wanted to add a launchpad in the mountains west of KSC, or in one of the even taller ranges elsewhere on Kerbin. How hard would it be to get a launchpad on a mountaintop, rather than side? Also, I understand that Mission Control, Administration etc. are all disabled in a Scenario?

Please do. The ability to place custom/alternate launchpads is what had me the most excited. However I don't see why they couldn't have also thrown in custom/alternate runways as well... And, of course, the whole thing really needs Career Mode integration. What I really want to do is play Career Mode with a mountaintop launchpad (probably in the mountains west of the KSC) available for an alternate launch location. Or, extra landing-pads for precision-landings, SpaceX style (yes, I've managed to return launch stages to the KSC pad, and once even to a floating barge before. It's incredibly difficult, though...) In one previous save I literally went so far as to *FLY* an Extraplanetary Launchpads pad (as well as several storage tanks for RocketParts and fuel) out to those mountains with a giant nuclear-electric helicopter I built for a challenge. I then used Fuel Balancer mod to edit in full loads of RocketParts and fuel after each launch... (rather than waste time flying resupply missions) I would much rather have worked with a Stock alternative launchpad feature. It took me *hours* to fly the pad out (less time for the fuel tanks, once I figured out how to better sling payloads beneath the chopper using multiple KAS winches with different attachment points and levels of tension in the lines so I could fly at a greater Angle of Attack for the chopper blades- made me really wish I had gotten to attend Army Air Assault School back in my ROTC days, since one of the many lessons learned there is how to sling payloads beneath a Chinook...)