RidingTheFlow

Most engines were nerfed with new aerodynamic, as they would've become OP otherwise for lift-from-Kerbin game stages (which is huge percentage of total gametime).

Huh? "seems irresponsible"? This sounds like arbitrary restriction you've imposed on yourself. I just timewarp for months, years, whatever. It has no game play implications whatsoever (except contract time limit, but these are generally very generous for several transfer waits). These contracts are very good source of income (and generally provide ability to do ore survey afterwards if you leave enough of spare dV).

Just use HyperEdit if something breaks and needs to be fixed in way game won't allow. E.g. remove+refund failing ship, rebuild and put fixed ship at same orbit. No reason to maker you career take a hit + waste time because they've changed game under you.

Well, this explains why I wasn't aware of any useful heat-insulating parts. Most of them are not even structural parts allowing two side attach, and one which are (e.g. bay) still don't have much insulation to be useful. Personally I think it would help if lattice girders (e.g. "strut XL") made greatly reduced conductivity (e.g. 10%?) - because they are very low total cross-section area. Which will actually make them a lot more useful in construction than they are now (and also, different from solid I-beams). This way you can reduce heat travelling from your engine block to crew block across the girder connection.

Umm, you appear to be saying I should mod the game myself. Will we ever have some heat insulating parts in stock? Or do we have some already (because I am not aware of any)?

How do I do that?

Its good we have realistic heat system, but when we will have realistic heat insulating parts (e.g. Insulating bulkheads)? We need to be able to control heat from spreading. And no, just high thermal mass is not solution for everything. There should be parts with low thermal mass (so they dont receive much heat from hot neighbor) but low thermal conductivity (so they wont pass as much heat onto cooler neighbor).

It should also spare people the pain making bad performing and convoluted nuclear landers ("its highest ISP, so must be the best!")

I kind of agree NTR should've been 2.5m from the start, requiring fairly big launchers & assembly - also current small size makes it useless on its own and it mostly used in clusters of several anyway to transport anything bigger than tiny probe. But I doubt it will ever be changed now - once it here, never removed Hopefully at least they will add another 2.5m version at some point.

This looks painfully part-county Out of curiosity, what is the part count for this complete assembly and do you get smooth FPS with it?

Personally I'd prefer agency launch just to "appear" here (with spent money & time) to the "autopilot". I don't really fancy watching same mundane tanker launch over and over again just for the sake of it. If you made 5 launches without a hitch, you will make 100 of them without any changes - there are no much randomness in stock KSP launch physics (e.g. no random failure, no part spec divergences, no varying weather, etc).

Wouldn't say I am "really set on" it, just that I'd prefer ion RCS added to stock rather than 3.5m reaction wheel. But I can work around whatever game gives me really (and now most efficient way is just to stock couple reaction wheels - which weigh less than fuel required for turning via vernors and do not require own periodic refill).

http://www2.l-3com.com/eti/product_lines_electric_propulsion.htm I hope you know what "momentum dumping" is, how its related to RL reaction wheels and why it can't be done by just low-gimbal engine. Really, ion engine is just a device to apply thrust (force). Which means that in certain situations any competent engineer *will* consider using it for rotation (since there is no "good force" or "bad force" to rotate your spaceship with).

I think you should easily realise that even static RCS thrusters are "thrust vectoring" - just instead of rotating one nozzle, you have two+ nozzles and switch them on/off - this rotates actual vector of thrust (applying the needed force to ship you need to rotate it or translate it).

Seriously guys, you are ridiculous. http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/ion_prop.asp But this argument goes nowhere and you right that it's easily moddable (and not even needed since reaction wheels even more powerful anyway), so I think I'll stop here.