tater

29.28 seconds (with 4 mods) on my i7 iMac.

Counterintuitive... a stuck valve is what you might expect. What about cargo at X gs impinging on the tank, crushing it?

Politics is the raison d'être for SLS/Orion, if you pull the politics plug, there is no possible discussion.

Coverage started.

Some public schools are great. Sort of depends where you live.

Home schooling is a pretty weak option, IMO. My wife and I are both science people, read a lot of literature, have many outside interests, and have both taught at some level, and homeschooling was not even on the table for us---not because we could not do a good job, but because we didn't think it was in the best interest of our kids. Socialization is meaningful, as is having a life of your own, which kids at school actually have. We know people have done it, and while they have groups they work with for social/educational activities, you then end up with a peer group that is dominated by the demographics of people who elect to home school. Some do so for reasons like "there's not enough calculus in 4th grade," but more do so because "there's too much science in the science." I don't want my kids' peer groups to be dominated by the latter.

It's the flat area inside and including the arc that is lit past the terminator. The "Bay of Rainbows."

Nice shot of Sinus Iridum.

Yow, that sucks. A couple weeks ago I started getting SMART warnings, so I threw an SSD in my Mac to replace the failing HD. My (old, crappy) gaming PC is entirely un-backed up, but the mac (with about 40,000 family pics on it) is backed up in triplicate (one off site). I think I should back up the PC having read your tale of woe (hadn't considered it worth it until just now).

Go take a bath in what should have been fatal x-Rays? How about an option to just build O'Neil colonies (as they did anyway).

This. Its the screwy mini solar system. What if kerbin's atmosphere ended closer to 10km? You'd need a shallow reentry to bleed off velocity, but you'd hit thick air very quickly. This is why many of us prefer more realism, as arbitrary tweaks are not required to make things behave as you would expect.

To be fair to homeschooling, an education degree is the easiest at university, so assuming the parents have real degrees, they are likely better qualified at least in some subjects (edu majors have among the lowest test scores entering university, yet consistently have the highest gpas in college, it stretches the imagination that their schooling manages to turn so many "meh" applicants into academic diamonds). Regardless, I'd have your folks talk to the school. Typically those of us who spend a lot of money on school for our kids (we also pay heavy taxes to support the public schools as well), want value for our money. Your parents are likely no different. IMO, what private school does is to select for parents that value education more than anything else. Still, if my kid isn't challenged for north of 20 grand a year I'm going to be in there asking why not. My real caveat might be if it is a private, religious school, that could easily explain problems with the education (if that was the only option here my kids would be in public school).

This, though the tuition is likely substantially above the $2500 lost (I know it is where my kids go, with 2 it's like driving a new car off a cliff every year, lol). You'd need a parent willing (and capable) of pushing you harder than your private school, as well. A few observations, though a few have been made. One, you need to involve your parents immediately, and not with a demand to home-school (which is a huge undertaking for the parents). Tell them you are not challenged/interested enough, and ask what the possible solutions might be within your current school setup. The options seem to be to fix school for you, go to public school, or the most radical is what you suggest. What is lacking at private school, exactly from an educational standpoint? Mid school is more constrained than high school, usually, so you might have to do your time before you can take more control over what classes you take. Two, assuming the first thought is fixing school, I would talk to the school (or have your parents do so) about how challenging the classes are, and what you can do to keep it interesting. I say this because the opportunity cost of homeschooling is likely in fact more than the 2 tuitions, so why not let the infrastructure of a, you know, school, work in your favor, and get them to tailor a better education for you. For what we pay (my kids got to private schools), if my kids are not challenged, we would raise a little hell with the school, or look at another school (doesn't seem to be a problem so far). Any discussion with school should happen during the summer so things can be planned. Here the mid school to HS private schools have 3 good choices, and when my son is ready for mid school, we are open to him picking a different school than his sister if that is a better fit. Are there private school choices where you are? Three, instead of home schooling, why not public school? I cannot see home schooling as anything but a negative in many ways, as the social aspect of school is at least as important as the rest (I was a nerd in school, and not at all popular, but the social stuff was still better than nothing).

While I like the idea of a KAS part that is designed for kerbals to travel through, the condition for satisfying a base contract should be the required new construction parts merely be landed on the body in question, and within some range of each other (say inside an X hundred meter radius).

Mine freezes right before I hit 70km someplace around 68,XXX meters I think.

End game requires a reward system that goes past Kerbin SoI (I'm usually done or nearly done with the tech tree by the time the first lowest energy window to Duna pops up). To have an "end game," the dev need to decide what the point actually is for career. That's step one. Honestly, if that was done, it would change everything about career, because then they would have designed it with a goal in mind. If the goal had been exploration, there would be a kind of 'fog of war" where you learn things about the kerbol system by exploring it. Mapping might become more important (more like scansat). The point is step one, rather than tacking on an "end game" to a career that is poorly thought out.

It's not really hard at all.

This is why a replay functionality would be so cool.

My issue was hitting space in career locks the game up.

I have used delay with srb rockets in early career when I can tell that the twr is too high (drag the separation to a new stage after launch). I then can let it coast a little into thinner air.

I'll show my age and say I was expecting 867-5309.

You can set the thrust of the srbs in the vab, you know. Try setting them much lower early on. Say 50%.

Using the "it's a game" rationale, why not just hyper edit to orbit, it's a chore, after all. For moonlike bodies (no ice), you should get almost entirely O2, which is ~40% of the regolith (oxides). For atmospheres, etc, you can get O2, and C, but H will depend on the location.

I think it has to be the contract/career bit that is causing this.

The only mod I have going now with this is kjr, and in career (not sandbox), the second I reach space it crashes. Could it be the base "reach space" contract not liking the scale somehow? I tried a clean install, and even tried leaving the 2 MM dlls you provide instead of deleting the old one.