Kerbart

There are multiple factors that make the average population fear nuclear energy: The potential to go really, really, really bad. Chances of that are of course astronomically small, but for the same reason people play the powerball, they don't understand probability with very large numbers. Coal plants don't blow up. Gas/oil plants might blow up but seriously, what can happen. But in the rare event a nuclear plant goes haywire an area in a radius of 10km or more is made uninhabitable for decades. It's witchcraft. At least, that's how it's perceived. People don't understand it and it's a natural tendency to fear the unknown. The notion of "it's safe when dealt with properly" is there, but the nuclear industry has a history right from it's inception of taking regulatory shortcuts, running dangerous experiments and when something goes wrong plainly lie to the public in practically any event (Fukushima showed that once again). Combine the previous two: you know when a coal/oil plant has problems. Or when a windturbine has issue. You can see it, hear it, feel it. With nuclear energy you'll have to trust what management of the local plant is telling. And once again, the track record is not very encouraging. Now I'm not saying I agree with or support the above point, but the OP's question was why people in general don't trust Nuclear power, not what I think about it.

Apollo-style Mün mission. Jeb has boarded the lander can, and about 90° in orbit before descent he detaches from the capsule. I figure “in those 8 minutes in orbit capsule and lander can will float apart, no need to waste precious monopropellant over that†Well, we all know that ships don't rotate in orbit (unless you make them to). Which means that an alignment like this: == will after ¼ orbit be aligned like this: = = And in “rotating†(relative to orbit) into this position the fuel tanks of the lander sheared off a part of the capsule. I did hear something but aside from a bland “docking port collided with fuel tank†I didn't see anything in the log and nothing exploded. Wew. Close call! That it wasn’t that close I only found out when Jeb came back with a lander can loaded to the gills with surface samples from the Far Side crater. “Why can't I select the docking port of the capsule as target?â€Ââ€â€as I got closer I learned the answer: because the docking port is gone. So I EVA’d Jeb over, and figured I'd write off the science and push the lander out of orbit (no debris left behind). Luckily I wanted to go to bed (it was late) and decided to leave that for another day. This morning I realized that I can just send another shuttle to pick up the lander and collect the science. Once again a victory for procrastination! But more about that another time...

Check out the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building). It allows you to put rocket ships together in pretty much the way you just described -- taking separate parts and putting them together. Amazing! The functionality is already there! The devs are clairvoyant!

It's a game. It should be fun. Should it be ruined for the people who'd like to use it because you don't have the self control to not use "revert" and "abort mission"? EDIT: On a side note, there are “legitimate†uses for these buttons (at least in my book they're legit): Deorbiting debris that is in a decaying orbit. If I plan my launch correctly and discard stages in a 100×40km orbit then I have no problem in removing those through abort mission -- the only reason they are there is because they’re on rails. I could sit each of them through the atmosphere but where’s the fun in that? Borking a launch because of staging tree errors, especially if they happened because I just edited something in the VAB and KSP decided that my launching clamps now belong to stage 3, not stage 11. “In reality you can't revert!†Well yeah in reality I’d have a team of specialists whose job it is to prevent just that, so there you go. Ok, so my boosters decided to detach themselves and rip of the launch stage, but not before igniting it. Good thing I have an abort sequence in play. Capsule detaches, moves away from the carnage, chute deploys. And now I wait... and I wait... and I wait... and I wait... and I wait (etc, etc). Finally, landed. Now I can rover the capsule, go back to space center and then go to the VAB. Or I can revert to VAB immediately. Much quicker. Just launched your Mk-2 shuttle to meet up with the moonlander launched by Jeb and wait... Why is Dildo Kerman sitting in Jeb's seat? Where's he going to be after docking? I can't have four Kerbils on this mission! Yes, the lander can will come back to collect science, but it's not safe to deorbit in that! Didn't anyone check on that? Well in real life my launch crew wouldn't have let Dildo even near the launch pad. And I actually did modify the crew, but I forgot that hitting the "save" button resets that. Good thing I have revert to VAB... (actually I'm using Crew Manifest but you get the gist). I'd like to call these buttons the Festivus buttons. If you're hardcore, you don't touch them. For the rest of us--Festivus!

Is there any insight on how it works? Does it simply adjust certain in-game parameters, or does it go beyond that?

They also recorded an unusual amount of explosions in the upper atmosphere and orbit of #3...

I'll take a wild guess. First there was the level of solar power for Kerbin orbits. Then the inner planets were added. Inverse square works both ways, so to prevent solar panel performance from being absolutely ridiculous when venturing to the inner planets (a single panel would be enough for a gargantuan craft) performance was mapped to a fixed curve instead of the inverse square law. Which probably means that it's also a bit friendlier when going to the outside of the system.

Not true. You can switch focus just fine in the atmpsphere, as long as the vessels are close. I do it all the time. You can shift focus by using the [ and ] keys (the square brackets). Just make sure your probes don't drift apart too far.

In career mode I'm constantly updating ships as new parts become available. Or simply because I did a half-ass job designing them in the first place. For a science mission to retrieve some samples I launched my Mk2 shuttle to have it dock with the lander (sending the whole ensemble as one package... No. Not when your most powerful motor is the skipper). So... launch, parking orbit, waiting for transfer, rendezvous until we're 50m apart. Ready for docking... and nothing happens when I activate the RCS thrusters. Hey Jeb, when we switched fuel tanks in the VAB, did you remember to put the monopropellant tanks back? Yeah... I thought so...

There, I fixed it. Orbit Kerbin for 30m and you've time traveled forwards 30 minutes! Yay!

I think you need more batteries. And your goo canisters are mounted upside down (note the arrow at the top pointing downward)

To rendezvous, simply click on the target vessel in the map and select "set as target". Now aim at the pink "open circle" (o) and burn. Easy as pie!

Ability to transfer surface samples to other vessels. Right now there's no reason to use lander cans in career mode unless you accept them as feasible atmospheric return vessels.

Oggula, I disagree. Just build another ship with some protruding "arms", rendezvous, maneuver to catch the ship between the arms, and at periapsis rotate to retrograde and burn. Repeat as needed until your apoapsis has now turned into a periapsis of, say, 30km. Then move away, burn again to get back into orbit, and switch over to your other craft to guide it through the atmosphere. I've done it multiple times to get rid of debris.

You might want to check out this thread that was started earlier today

I thought there was already a mod for that.

Every body has a biome, Mün and Kerbin are the only ones with multiple biomes (and apparently even that doesn’t hold up).

Mechjeb has my preference as it's easier to put out of sight when you don't need it (unless I'm missing something monumental with Engineer)

It's a simulator with little green men from outer space. I think you're losing the race with realism right there.

If it makes you feel better, open the goo container during flaming reentry and it will tell you it's cold

I think that was more meant as a pre-emptive answer to somebody claiming that you can if you have plugin XYZ. As Hodo pointed out, add a control unit to your "debris" and the problem is solved. You'll need to "guide" it through the atmosphere anyway as that is the only way KSP with deal with the atmosphere for you.

Once you've made the decision to have a specialized landing vehicle, why drag all that shuttle mass to the moon and back?

$125 seems a bit much but maybe that'll go down. People were more than willing to pay $30 for Microsoft Flight Simulator and then spend an additional $500 on the various add-ons, so why not?

The number of engines has nothing to do with pogo oscillation. Apollo 6 had it, and Apollo 13 had it pretty seriously but nobody ever talks about that because Apollo 13 had other issues during the flight that got more attention from the press, and pogo oscillation has been a known problem on earlier (one engine) rockets as well. There was only one case of an N-1 where pogo oscillation was a problem and ironically that was the most successful N-1 flight (in all fairness it might have occurred on the other flights if they didn't blow up first). The other flights ended even earlier, because it is simply impossible to get reliability out of something that uses 30 engines, and because there were some serious engineering problems with the N-1. Edit: as you mentioned, having 30 engines doomed the N-1. But there's little relation between 30 engines and pogo oscillation

Add reliability to the list. If your engines are clustered tight together you can compensate for one of the engine failing and simply burn longer. With asparagus setups you will need every engine to burn, doubling, tripling or even quadrupling the chances of failure. And RL engines are fare less reliable than the KSP ones...