BMBender

Question the glider 5k flight. that from orbit, mid atmo, below 30k below 10k what? Unless your talking about a glitched infini glider it's going to have to be launched to altitude /speed via another vehicle or a disposable rocket.

heh @geb you need export Launchpads just to do that one

hmm I can definitely see a point some time in the future for me where the level of stupid begins to switch from fun and novel, to dumb and wonky. I don't think it's bad per se, but I can just tell it's going to get under my skin sooner or later. At that point I suspect I'll switch to a science career save and DLoad Mission Controller. Thanks Squad for the sci career option that's gonna really save me some burn out on this one.

My favorites so far are fire off an SRB(the NASA part one) at 73k on a suborbital trajectory. My next fav is fire off an SRB while splashed down. JPL weeps.

Personally? no I won't be changing my debri habits. From what I can see not much point imo. Jump through hoops with probe cores/chutes everywhere(that dig into the return costs pretty steeply anyway), work around the moving Bermuda triangle, all for an at best marginal return for effort. From what I can tell the returns from recovery are modest enough if that's a significant determining my space programs financial viability I have bigger issues. I may waist time with a cost challenge or two but other than that, nope kepler syndrome ftw When I'm in the mood for SSTO's I will but just as a side effect, not because I care much either way.

Any incentive that chutes may or may not apply vis a vis recovery is pretty much irrelevant with the fairly significant de-incentive of the 2.5k magic Bermuda triangle that follows you around. Get rid of that then we could have a serious discussion about balance, rational incentives, and a base line mathematical approach to plausibility.

I'm not going to debate who's play style is better than someone else's, ones skill or effort is relative in a single player game; no ones style of gameplay is any more or less valid than another's as long as they find enjoyment in it. I fail to see how someone adding one or more parachutes to their rocket prevents another from building an SSTO if they wish or vice versa. If the incentives or de-incentives on how the $ return works out are an issue there are already mods that address them with plenty more coming after the update drops. It should be fairly easy to mod your game to any complexity, simplicity, expense or cheapness I imagine.

aye SSTO's are much more realistic

My only point was if we're gonna get so deep in the weeds towards realism about number, size, drag of chutes and what they're slowing to say what is and isn't an exploit, there are much bigger offenders to plausibility. At least parachutes and the concept/practice of recovering spent stages actually exist in the real world, unlike other things I could name.

hehe it was just the 1st thing I grabbed along that concept Then your problem is with how KSP handles drag on tanks in particular as well as the non scalability of chutes. There are realism mods that address both. You basically have a problem with the math ok fair enough, but calling sticking chutes on the side of something you want to slow down in atmo an exploit within a game were magical yellow fuel lines with no mass, no corrosion, no pumping apparatus, no angular momentum, no wear fatigue, and no associated cost exist is somewhat rich imo.

Someone should report NASA for trying to exploit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/cluster_chute2.html

Yea it would be nice if they could shoehorn an on/off toggle for the 2.5k atmo range. For me it's an annoyance but I understand why it bugs th outta some people. This game does attract a higher grade of OCD than say, angry birds:D

If you take a bunch of blood curdling screams; mix in a few rebel yells from Jeb; track it to just about any death metal. yup that'd be mine Launches however can get by with Boston's Third Stage, ...sometimes depending on who's driving http://www.last.fm/music/Boston/Third+Stage The Launch A) Countdown Ignition C) Third Stage Separation Cool The Engines Works better with up scaled RSS so launches last long enough

hmm, didn't see a "hells weight" part, but I was on a career save it may still be locked. Custom parts can hide too darn easily sometimes . I'll look again later. EDIT: I do have one small suggestion, The 1 part requirement is cool if the weights were considered command modules. However it de-rendering when switching to other parts while clearing up debri can make this annoying. Luckily I had a screenshot close to the altitude I left it at. It would be more logical imho if either the weights were modified to act like command modules, or perhaps allowing a command module attached to the "weight" not to be considered a factor towards final part count.

1kton 3.75 APO 1,059 km Peri @ 100,014 m all debri cleaned up