Raven.

Let me clarify, the shuttles such as the STS/Buran that are "piggy-backed" onto a massive fuel tank are not easy. As far avoiding the asymmetric thrust problem, you can also stick the shuttle on top of the rocket and then strut it down to prevent wobble.

Shuttles in KSP, even with the listed mods, are not easy by any stretch of the imagination. Shuttles is pretty much where the men are separated from the boys. What I did with my Marlin shuttle (I can provide pics later on this evening, as I'm not at my gaming rig), was I designed it in the spaceplane hanger and then saved it as a sub-assembly, and then attached it in the VAB. I did all the balancing in regards to the aerodynamics with the assumption that the fuel tanks were going to be empty on re-entry. This means that if you have left over fuel, you will have to burn it up somehow. This seems to have done the trick for me as far as the unpowered flight is concerned. Now with the wing design, I did not do a realistic, classic shuttle design. I used more of a gull wing type configuration stuck straight on the side. It's not realistic, but in KSP it works wonders. A quick recommendation, grab the EVA parachutes mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25305-0-23-Vanguard-Technologies-EVA-parachutes-23!-Sry-4-not-fixing-earlier-%28Dec-30%29 That way, if worse comes to worse, Jeb can say "screw the landing" and simply bail.

I use to run Ubuntu with KSP. There's a certain startup command that you have to use in order to get the 64 bit version to work: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/50022-Steam-on-Linux-using-KSP-only-32bit Keep in mind that the 64 KSP on linux is not the most stable application to ever run on a computer, and some mods will not work with it. I'm running B9 with the new dlls, and they do not break the basic functionality of the engines; all of my VTOLs work perfectly fine in 0.23 with the new dlls. What is broken, however, is the customization menus for the VTOL engines.

In my opinion, this is probably not a good idea. Real world nuclear reactors are typically located very close to a body of water for the purposes of cooling (Fukishima for example). These reactors will pump water in from a nearby body of water of which they will then superheat; the water is instantly turned to very hot steam. If you put a reactor on Mars, you would have to have a way to cool it. There's no fluid water on Mars, meaning that you would have to mine ice in order to feed your reactor or use a much different cooling system, such as a gas system using either helium or CO2. Another thing to consider is that a cooling system merely relocates the heat. You still have to have a way to get rid of it. On earth, that means dumping water from your secondary coolant loop into a body of water. On Mars, this means radiating the heat, which not as effective. Basically, you're right. Keeping things warm stops being a problem. But things getting way too warm becomes your new problem; it would be a martian bar-b-Que. The reactor would very quickly melt down I would imagine. The good news is that Mars is a dead planet, so if your reactor melts down and radiates the landscape you're not killing anything except yourself.

As people have already mentioned, if you have a base set up on Mars, then preventing a pipe from freezing is child's play. We already have the technology in use in various parts of the world. We would just need to pack it, fly it, and land it (easier said than done). Also, with very little magnetosphere and no UV protection, I imagine that you can use the solar radiation to heat the pipes and to provide heat for your base occupants.

No, they would not. And if we did have tails, they would serve no purpose. Our inner ears already provides balance control.

In Texas meteorologists report something called a "Heat Index." Same thing essentially, except in parts of Texas 90 degrees is considered a cool day during the middle of June and July. The press here in the States are funny. If they are overhyping this "polar vortex," as they do every other weather phenomenon, it's usually because they're bored and tired of reporting that the President walked his dog. They'll come out in the spring and say that the mid west had an unprecedented tornado outbreak, when the said tornado outbreak happens every year. I don't think it's dumping down our society as much as it is that our TV weathermen here in the states are nothing more than news anchors reading off a chart. I remember growing up in Texas, they had one TV weatherman on the local news channel that got on every time for the local news. But then they had a completely different weatherman for when there was a tornado (who actually knew what he was talking about). We also had a saying back in Texas, "don't trust the weatherman."

A planet like this is theoretically possible if it had a strong enough gravitational field to hold it together. But we're talking about an enormous amount of kinetic energy here. Asteroids are able to spin fast because it takes a much smaller amount of kinetic energy to drive that kind of mass. We're talking about an object much more massive than an asteroid. More mass equal more kinetic energy. This planet just simply is not realistic due to the enormous amount of kinetic energy involved. Not unless there was some kind of catastrophic event.

Yes to both. Check out this thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65163-Seaplanes-and-Sea-Vehicles

No such thing as over-engineering

Not that I'm aware. There's a few things to take into consideration. 1) 0.23 released just in time for the holidays. When the holidays hit, I temporarily dropped all of my side projects because I was more interested in three things, family, girlfriend, and food. I reckon that it's a similar issue with Bac9; he's likely still out for the holidays and probably didn't look at the stuff until just recently. 2) B9 features a lot of content that would need to be updated in order to work with the new tweakables system. This, will take a while. Not to mention, but I also think that he may be coming out with new parts? All in all, B9 is my favorite mod for KSP, and I am very grateful to Bac9 for creating and sharing this content with the community. In fact, of all the mod friendly games that I have played (ranging from Morrowind all the way to X3), B9 is probably one of the most well done mods that I have seen released for a game. And Bac9 should know that. To me, it is worth the wait for an update. In fact, I would even be happy to help, either helping with the plugins or with helping test the thing.

The "ion" drive is an actual, real-life engine that's being developed. However, not only is it expensive, but it's a very young and unproven technology. Investing in a young technology is not a smart move for several reasons, at least not until its reliability has been proven more than what it has been thus far. If you think about it, orbital decay is not a bad thing in some cases. If a satellite has stopped functioning, then the cheapest way to get rid of that piece of space junk is to let it fall back down to earth and burn up in the atmosphere. Of course, this may take a while, but it's like they say, "what goes up, must come down."

Yeah it could be. It's 8 meters wide and 24 meters long. The ship as a whole is 80 meters long (a US Navy Oliver Hazard class frigate is 138 meters long). I was going to use that area to store kethane tanks, but I can always stick those inside the super structure instead (or even move them closer to the bow) and leave the top clear.

Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not even sure if I'm going to put the landing pad on it or not. If I do, the landing pad would be dead small, 8x8 meters. The VTOL would have to be akin to a motorcycle. What my dream is to build a cruiser class ship that's not unlike the French cruiser Jeanne d' Arc because of it's massive helicopter deck (8 helis total): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_cruiser_Jeanne_d%27Arc_%28R97%29 However, a ship of that size is extremely difficult to make even with mods.

Can we post mod craft? Specifically B9 Aerospace?

No, I do not work for Norton nor any of the large tech companies. I'm just an IT guy. You do raise an extremely good point about anti-viruses; they are not 100% effective. There are several reasons for this, one of which is because the entire concept of anti-viruses is flawed to begin with; anti-viruses are a reactive measure, and do not take any action until the security breach has already occurred. With that being said, I still recommend paid anti-viruses for businesses for two reasons: 1) the corporate grade anti-viruses will send log reports to a system administrator to be reviewed and 2) they can be part of what the industry calls a "defense in depth" strategy (more on that here in a bit). The government, when requiring businesses to provide adequate protection for client's data, does not dictate how that data is to be protected. FERPA for example, simply states that disclosing a student's information, whether intentionally or unintentionally (this includes security breaches), warrants a very hefty fine. Attach to that several pages of jargon written in some language other than plain ole' English that adds exceptions, loopholes, etc. How most businesses approach this is push anti-viruses out to the entire corporation followed by an access control list defined in Microsoft Active Directory, and then forget about it. Even this is not considered best practice, but it's what most businesses do. My guess is that this is what Target did. What is considered best practice is a concept called "defense in depth." This concept dictates that no single security approach can provide adequate protection, but rather a combination of security software and procedures that are applied in "layers." The idea is that if one layer is breached, the other layers remain in place. One layer might be requiring all corporate computers having anti-virus software that reports to a centralized server. Another layer might be requiring that all laptops have full disk encryption software along with a remote location software such as Prey. Yet another layer might be training users to not download stuff they shouldn't be downloading. All three of these layers are layers that can be easily implemented by both a small business and a large corporation. Other measures include firewalls with white/black listing, UTM servers, setting up dual authentication, "always-on" VPN connections, etc. Typically when a large company such as Target suffers a major breach it's because the proper security measures were not taken, such as failing to provide multiple layers of protection. Target is not disclosing all the information about their breach, so the best that anyone can do is speculate. My personal theory is that they only implemented one layer of protection, and that layer was breached. Typically POS systems are not connected to the internet; they are completely isolated and they authorize their payments through a locked down proxy that is put under a microscope. The fact that malware was found on their POS systems and was able to forward information tells me that either 1) their POS systems were not isolated or 2) their proxy was breached in addition to the POS systems.

This is something that I've been working on off and on for the last month or so. It has taken a lot of redesign and testing to get it right, as there have been a lot of little quirks of it. There is actually a balance to it, to where if the balance is not right then it does not move correctly in the water. The original idea for this frigate design was that of a kethane driller in the littoral. The current iteration of the frigate does not serve that purpose, although it will eventually. Currently it serves more as a large, general purpose science vessel, and a stopping point for small, short range VTOLs and helicopters. It contains just short of a staggering 600 parts. The ship is equipped with an 8x24 area that is used to land small VTOL craft and helicopters. KAS is used to secure small craft while the frigate is in transit. There is a 6 DOF (degrees of freedom) robotic arm near the stern, again equipped with a KAS winch and electromagnet for loading purposes. There are six rockets up front that basically fires probes equipped with parachutes and science equipment. The KSC figured that firing science equipment at a shoreline with rockets was more fun than gently transporting the science equipment. Essentially, the rockets are sea launched probes that are intended to be fired at a shore line. The helicopter pictured was the craft that I produced for the frigate, the H-1 "Bumble Bee". It is pretty basic and simple at only 30 parts; it's a helicopter built using Firespitter, B9, and KAS. The variant shown is the science version configured with mystery goo containers, atmospheric analysis and sensor payloads. It has a 0.625 docking port on the bottom for expansion that has in the past been used for dropping probes. Minus the advanced sensor payloads that are located way up the tech tree, this would be a great career mode craft. It's range (about 100 km) and top speed (60m/s for an experienced pilot) are not great, as it is not intended to be a long range or a long endurance flier. It is intended for missions launched from the frigate. Mods used to construct the ship are: Boat Parts R4 (hull of the ship) B9 Aerospace (structural Paneling, lights, and helicopter) Firespitter (helicopter) Lack Luster Labs (ship super structure and antennas) Infernal Robotics (prereg for Dromoman) DROMOMAN (used for robotic arm) Figaro Global Navigation Satellite System (Navigation system) Stack Inline Lights (used on the robotic arm) Kerbal Attachment System (used for robotic arm and heli-deck)

Security Essentials is actually a stripped down version of Microsoft Forefront, which is another corporate level anti-virus that is part of the System Center 2012 & 2012 R2 suites. What they stripped out was the central management components that reports to a UTM (Unified Threat Management) server. It is also built into Windows 8 and 8.1 and renamed to "Defender," which is not the same Defender that we knew from Windows Vista and Windows 7. The big four when it comes to corporate level security is Symantec (they bought Norton), McAfee, Sophos, and Microsoft Forefront, and those four are usually locked down to where you cannot uninstall them. And if you do have those, you also would not be able to upgrade to Windows 8.1, as that option is disabled on corporate machines that are domain bound. JumpsterG is correct, if you're just using your computer for personal, non-commercial use, then a free anti-virus option is more than enough; there's no need to pay money for a paid anti-virus product. However, if you have a personally owned machine that you use for a business purpose, then: 1) You should be running a paid product, such as Nortons or McAfee. 2) You should be running a Professional edition of Windows with an encryption product installed (encryption not supported on home editions). You are required to protect any client data that you have stored on your computer, especially if the data is education or medical related (FERPA & HIPAA regulations). 3) You should have a IT technician on your payroll or on contract if you don't know much about computers. There are plenty of them looking for jobs.

My personal opinion, uninstall Norton 360 and leave it off; get rid of it as fast as you can. You can save quite a bit of money by switching to a free anti virus, such as AVG, Avira, and Microsoft Security Essentials. Zone Alarm also has a decent anti virus/firewall that's free, although it has some annoying ads.

Even if you were to jump with enough power and change in velocity, you would still be killed from the debris. However, like someone has already mentioned, there are a lot of safety equipment in elevators. I believe that modern elevators have an arresting device that holds the elevator in place if the main cable was to somehow fail.

This comment brings up another idea. Now, I am not suggesting anything to do with aliens, so hear (read) me out. One of the purposes of the Curiosity rover is to search for evidences of previous life on Mars. It makes perfect, real life sense to mimic this kind of mission in KSP. One thing to do with the biomes and the science system with Laythe is to leave inconclusive evidence that life may have been there, and then leave it up to the individual players to use their own, deductive reasoning to hypothesize whether or not there is life, or has ever been life on Laythe.

I just read out there that a planned feature addition for Eeloo was to add working geysers. I wonder if this feature can't be adapted to implement a volcano system for Laythe as per your suggestion? Implementing a super volcano is something that I honestly do not see them adding, but adding a seismically active area (with the geysers, lava fields, etc) is very feasible if they ever choose to implement such a feature. Would also make a good, high risk biome to explore.

I second having a Saturn analogue added to the game. One possibility is recreate the Saturn system; having a Saturn analogue as the parent gas giant, located beyond Jool, with the A and B rings implemented. For the moons, have a Titan (retrograde orbit), Dione & Helene (Trojan moons), and Phoebe (captured asteroid) analogues. Basically one gas giant plus two rings and four moons. This would present a good challenge with some good eye candy for the more experienced KSP players, and it would present the Saturn system in such a way that each individual moon is unique from the other in more than just simply terrain.

A working economy would be extremely nice for those of us who enjoy career mode. Me personally, I second the notion of more celestial bodies, though not limited to solely planets. What I think would make a great addition to the game, in addition to the economy, is a asteroid belt located between Duna and Dres, with Dres being on the outer edge. I would also love to see a second gas giant system located out further beyond Jool. And maybe, for the sake of eye candy, have the gas giant be a mimic of Saturn with actual planetary rings. This would give the end gamers additional challenges and content to play through. Unfortunately though, I don't expect this to happen for a while. The software developer in me says that while I want more planets, Squad needs to add the biome system to other planets such as Laythe before adding additional content, such as the economy system.

The Stayputnik, along with other probe cores, will not allow you to perform "crew reports." In order to generate science from unmanned craft, such as those powered by the stayputnik, you need an appropriate science part such as the materials bay. After that, you need to recover the vessel after it's landed on Kerbin, or transmit the science with an attached communication device. What good is it? A lot of good. For one reason that you've already mentioned, you're not risking the living of your kerbonauts. Another advantage is that unmanned probes, if designed right, are incredibly light. This means you can send much farther with the same amount of fuel.