Paul Kingtiger

I always test a design without crew to "man rate" it. But why not carry on like that? Because Kerbals choose to go to the Mun and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard!

SRB's are always fueled up so for a military missile they are great, you can launch them straight away. For civilian use they have one big advantage and a lot of drawbacks. First up, they don't cost very much with is good right? However: 1) They can't be controlled, which means once lit they burn until they run out of fuel. This limits what you can do with them and means they can't be turned off in a emergency or throttled. 2) The fuel and exhaust gas is really toxic, which has an environmental impact. The area around Kennedy Space Center is a nature reserve and is measurably damaged by every launch using SRB. Cars close to the launch site have their paint damaged!

I was thinking last night, have you looked at doing this with engines as well? You'd need 2 engine models, a atmosphere version with a short bell and a vacuum version with a long engine bell. Then you'd set the diameter of the engine (the height would automatically set based on a ratio) with the engine power being limited by the size and the ISP being limited by the power and the type, with vacuum engines having a higher vacuum ISP but lower power for a set size. Fuel and Oxidizer use are a factor of power and ISP. You could take a step further and generate engine clusters, single, twin, row of three, square of four and cross of five. The clusters would use the same stats as above and scale the engine model down and fit it to a mount plate to give the different clusters. So I guess you would gave 10 set engine models (clusters 1 to five, for both Atmos and Vacuum) with the size scaled depending on the diameter of the engine set in the generator. With both engines and fuel tanks we'd be able to custom design the most efficient booster for any payload!

Brilliant find! I've been using Deadly reentry and had worked out a lot of stuff by trial and error. This gives me a much better handle on the situation. Now to install Ferram Aerospace Research so I can play around with generating lift on reentry (will have to make a pod with off center COG). Does anyone know the Vacuum Pe for Kerbin?

Great mod, very useful for trying to copy real world stuff. I'll play around with some textures and see what I come up with.

Looking at it from the perspective of what Squad have promised (everything free for people buying before the end of April) I think DLC is a great idea. There are quite a few parts to the game that some players will want and others won't and it makes sense to offer these as DLC. That allows everyone to tailor the game to their requirements and wallets. I absolutely agree that DLC is a great way to keep money flowing to the devs which means continued game development. The trick is to do a good job of selecting what will be DLC and what will be a free patch.

I love KW, the parts are very polished and 3.75 seems a good place to stop, giving you 3 good sizes of parts and plenty of options. The fairings are brilliant and I can't wait to use them with an improved aerodynamics model.