Fortunately I'm even closer to putting Diaspora R1 to bed so I should be able to give this serious attention in the near(ish) future.
I'd be interested in knowing who'd be willing to work on this with you and me. With the possible exception of TopAce I don't think there are any former members still actively modding.
I think the best thing to do would be to recruit a new team. We don't need much, a few FREDders, a table guy and one modeller to make up the 2-3 custom mods we absolutely have to have.
I'm more determined than ever to only use already released assets for MG (with the exception of the small ones we really need). It was the modding side of things that really stalled us last time and we won't be making that mistake again!