I also like the increased difficulty of .16. It\'s much harder to even reach orbit, but it\'s great when you do. There are a couple of things that get me into orbit now. One is using lots of struts. Even with the large decouplers, you can still improve their strength substantially by placing about three struts on each of the four inner... whatever they\'re called, there are four of them. Look down into the decoupler and put one in the center and one on each side, all leading up to the engine or wherever it will stick. Another is using the throttle wisely. As other commenters have stated, you don\'t need to thrust at 100% all the way up. As soon as I reach around 200 m/s, I throttle down to keep it there. It still climbs fine, and eventually my throttle is quite low, yet the speed keeps climbing. Great way to extend the lifespan of the stage. Yesterday I landed on the Mun twice. My rocket has the lander on top, followed by a tri-coupler and a stack of three tanks, three high. The bottom stage is the same as the second, a stack of three tanks, but four tanks high instead of three. I add radial decouplers and place three stacks of two of the largest tanks around the stage. Finally, I strut the hell out of the beast. It hasn\'t blown up on me yet.