There ARE commercial launchers in the same ballpark as the Ares 5, as mentioned above. Falcon X - 125t LEO Falcon XX - 140t LEO in comparison Saturn 5 - 119t LEO

Redstone, being an evolutionary development of the V-2 was liquid fueled.

Unfortunately, such a measure would not have prevented the World Trade Centre attack. At least one of the perpetrators was already on the Flight Deck before departure.

Works on everything, syncs to iPad and iPhone (mobileorg). The more you use it, the deeper the rabbit hole goes.

This seems to have more in common with tin-foil hats and paranoia ..

I am most familiar with Debian and less so with Slackware. Either these, or any one derived from them should give you what you want. The key is "Package Management". I certainly know that you can achieve what you want in Debian - its package management gives you control to the finest degree if you wish. Slackware does as well, though you may need a little more thought since there is no dependency management in Slack (not that this is a bad thing). I also would have thought that any of the Distros you mentioned would have enabled you to chose as well .. Rgds.

Well, we just sit up all night in the middle of the Pacific, trying not to touch anything, hoping it'll go off ..... :) (yes, they have them on aeroplanes now ... ) N