Aubri

I encountered a bug in the current version of KSP2 (0.2.0.0.30291) where the solar panels on my spacecraft start claiming that Jool is blocking them when at extremely high apoapsis over Jool and Jool is far from their line of sight to Kerbol. https://imgur.com/nE5XnIV https://imgur.com/8ijD6vQ I have a savegame called "Jool Solar Bug" after it started and the latest quicksave is from before it began. Starting from that quicksave, it seems to happen consistently as the spacecraft reaches about 12 Mm altitude. JoolSolarBugSave.zip Once the bug occurs, I don't think the panels will ever work again (at least, not while you're within Jool's SOI.) Exiting the game and reloading did not resolve the issue.

Well, for my money, once I've launched 50 or 60 rockets from the smallest flea to the biggest heavy lifter, under all kinds of conditions and approximating a gravity turn, I'm happy to let MechJeb handle the ascent guidance. I also like using the maneuver planner's porkchop plot rather than scrolling a maneuver node around, trying to find a decent departure window. It's also handy to execute maneuver nodes when you have a long burn time, like NERV-powered heavy vessels or anything with an ion drive. And I use the dV meter all the time, though I know that's also available in other mods. There are a few handy tools, like the RCS balancer and the CoM visualizer, but those are just conveniences.

I can't really tell from the picture -- do you have those tri-couplers bolted together with struts? If not, remember that two parts will generally only connect at one point, so those couplers are probably only linked at one corner. That may be the source of your problem, because it will tend to flop around violently under any kind of acceleration. If you zoom in close and carefully increase the throttle, you'll probably see that the two tri-couplers are flexing through one another in flight. The probe cores are another possible source of oscillation. It's a bit better, since they're centered, but they're also quite small compared to the rest of the stack, so they could also be a culprit. A set of struts bridging the gap might help that, too. For the record, multi-docking is terribly tricky. If you don't have the alignment perfect, and I mean pixel-perfect, it won't link more than one of the ports. Even if it does, the docking ports get bugged half the time, so be sure you never want to undock again. You're almost always better off just using a Clamp-o-Tron Sr., or even just a regular C-o-T and a gentle hand on the throttle. Of course, there's also Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, which makes your rockets look and feel a lot more like professionally engineered spacecraft.

So it does. I just learned this to my chagrin this evening. Hey guys, I found a bug fix...

*Always shut off the battery in your first pod. I've never been disappointed that I didn't have 5 more EC to spend, but I've often wished I had enough to deploy a solar panel or get just a bit of rotation started. Also, as long as there's EC somewhere on the ship, you can still tweak tweakables. *Big drills are mostly useless. Unless you're limited on your drilling time or need the extra reach, the small drill will do everything you need with less weight and less radiators. *In the last moments of a powered landing, Surface mode Radial Out is your best friend. Doubly so when you realize you're coming down on a hillside. *Learn how to use bi-elliptical transfers to make large inclination changes. It's counterintuitive until you turn your head and squint, but if you're going more than 45 degrees, you'll be glad you did. (P.S. From 45 to 60 degrees, your target is to double your current semi-major axis. Otherwise, go to the edge of the SoI.) *Speaking of which, learn the difference between altitude and semi-major axis.

The MESSENGER probe did this too -- before it settled into Mercury's orbit, it got gravity assists from Earth, Venus, Venus, Mercury, Mercury, and Mercury.

I had a similar problem when I built a skycrane for moving structures around on Duna. It turns out the game has some trouble gimbaling "backwards" engines; the down-facing claw on my crane was taking control when it undocked (an artifact of the way I carried it to Duna), which caused the whole thing to spin on its axis when I lit up the radial engines. When I switched control to the up-facing probe core, everything worked fine. I'd bet that your backwards core is the issue here. Try controlling it from a forward-facing part like a clamp-o-tron (with the gimbal free and all your reaction wheels online) and see if it steadies out.