DerekL1963

Looking pretty good... that bump in the end seems to me to have been a PEBKAC error setting the maximum speed too high.

I hope you don't get rid of the "dump" option, I've found it quite useful for various types of testing.

In no particular order. Use fewer, but longer burning and higher thrust asparagus stages. Thrust plates are good for some situations, but mostly they are just duct tape that increases your lag and parts count because you have a bad design. Download and install MechJeb or Kerbal Engineer Redux so you have solid numbers on what each stage is doing. Consider installing Kerbal Joint Reinforcement. Build smaller boosters first and then work your way up as you learn how to build. Learn how to minimize your parts count for the task at hand. (More parts = more joints = more things that can slip, slide, or bend.) Search out Temstar's Zenith series boosters, read the thread for some of the theory of big booster design, then download them and take them apart and study them closely. Here's my booster (just about ready for public release) that boosts a five tank payload to 150km - note the complete lack of thrust plates or insane amounts of struts. It's completely stock except for Kerbal Joint Reinforcement. The non KJR version (in work) needs more struts, but still doesn't need thrust plates. And build rockets, and watch them fly, figure out how to fix any problems, lather, rinse, repeat. There's simply no substitute for hard performance numbers and experience.

Less guessing, more flight testing before releasing to the public.

In a sentence of ten characters or more - this. Just getting 130 tons into orbit is a big task, and asking the same booster to get to 850km? Redonkulous. Doing so with something as inefficient as serial or onion staging? Double plus redonkulous.

Thanks! Different people use different standard parking orbits and even though 75km is the most common it's nice to know.

Disabling torque and reaction wheels when using SMART A.S.S. would mean ships without RCS would be uncontrollable when using SMART A.S.S..

There's some cool container mods out there... but if anyone wants to take a swing, I'd love to see wedge shaped containers designed to fit inside nothke's 6S service compartments.

Nice designs, but what's the orbit for payload delivery? (I.E., the -I can lift 7.5 tons, but to where?)

Neither you nor AbeS know me, my capabilities (or lack thereof as appropriate), or my physical limitations. Please keep your laughter and your advice to yourselves.

No thank you. There's enough division in the community over mods without "enforcing it by law" (as it were).

No thank you! This is an extraordinarily useful mod for those of us who suck at EVA. Don't muck it up with OCD, especially as you're free to roleplay those limits if such realism is your thing.

Pretty much what happened IRL. The Soviet Lunar program failed not because Korolev died, or because they didn't have enough budget, or didn't have the right technology... It failed because the Soviet space program went into something of a decline after rabbiting out of the gate as they thought they had proved their point and they didn't take Project Apollo seriously. Internal politics further hampered their efforts and slowed their programs. By the time they figured that we actually intended to go through with it (which was something of a fluke itself) and put a man on the moon and that they needed to get serious, it was far too late to catch up. They had no time to put the necessary technological and industrial base in place. On the other hand, it's not clear that even had they taken the challenge seriously what would have happened because the US had an enormous lead out of the gate - the F1 was already well along in development, as was the Saturn series of boosters and the Apollo CSM. One thing people don't generally realize is that President Kennedy choose the goal a lunar landing over other options not just because it was hard or audacious, but because so many of the important puzzle pieces were already on the board. It would probably have been a close race, and more dependent on who caught the fewest bad breaks or who was the luckiest more than anything else.

That's often claimed - but there's pretty much zero evidence supporting it. (And no, the often cited SRB's aren't a case of that. Monolithics were rejected on technical grounds.)

The same answer applies in any case. I find the concept of a vertical tree intriguing, but if I can't launch and reasonably recover a vehicle with the first node, it's a deal breaker. At it's core this is a game of building and flying rockets. Imaginative rockets are cool (and even in the stock tree you have to be clever with your designs). Imaginative not rockets right out of the gate? Uncool.

No, there would no significant flash at all - the flash of a nuclear weapon is a product of the reaction between the bomb's energy and the Earth's atmosphere.

ISTR seeing reports of the development blowout systems for Peacekeeper back in the day, but have no idea whether they were implemented in the final design. I'm more of an (US) SLBM expert anyhow. No, that's not why they cancelled the thrust termination system. (Short version: they didn't actually work as hoped/planned because of the Shuttle's piggyback design.)

The core issue here isn't the legality and ethics - it's the can of worms you're dumping in you and your user's laps. Because mod packs aren't needed for this game - almost all mod authors work towards compatibility with each other, especially among the bigger and more popular mods. Maintaining full compatibility is a practical impossibility given the rapid rate of evolution of both the base game and the mods. And, no offense meant, it's unlikely you are smarter than or have more time available than that of the combined authors of the mods in your pack... AND they're all already familiar with their source code and functionality of the mods and the interaction with the base game. Right out of the gate, you're at a vast disadvantage. (And that's even without considering your recent join date. If I'm in error on that, I apologize.) Also because it's a support nightmare. For you, as mods are constantly getting patched and updated. For the original mod authors, as they get complaints about your custom version or un-updated packs. For the users as they can only stay in sync with the rest of the community if you're very on the ball and keep your pack up to date.

I didn't even know that Toolbar *had* folders! Thanks! (Edit the OP with this tidbit?)

You asked what people thought, and I told you. If you want to do things your way, that's OK, it's your mod that's how it works, but being insulting... that's uncalled for. If you didn't want opinions that varied from yours, you shouldn't have asked.

Re: shielding an object against physical degradation from impact and radiation damage; Since your shielding material is subject to the same damage you are shielding the data inside from... over time any "Hey, You! Look Inside For Cool Stuff" labeling you put on the outside will itself be degraded into uselessness. How do make labels that survive as well as the contents?

Excellent and very useful mod... but three buttons takes up too much toolbar real estate. A version where one button summoned a popup would be preferable to me.

Requiring weird vehicle designs to away from the root of the tree is pretty much a deal breaker for me. I'm intrigued by the general idea of a vertical tree, but it's not even as realistic as the stock one.

Stone tablets are man made... Seriously, stone tablets rely on artificially produced grooves to convey information - and those grooves are themselves subject to physical wear and degradation. Those grooves can endure a *LOT* of physical degradation before the information begins to degrade, but the amount they can endure is not infinite.

You and me both... And to answer Codepoets's questions; The answer is "yes". I've tried a variety of scenarios, and I find it impossible to predict when MJ will land right on target, and when it will land somewhere completely unrelated.