Reactordrone

The clouds parted for about an hour around sunset so managed to get a shot of the conjunction, https://imgur.com/gallery/pcDp20S

If there's a red x next to the part requirement the game doesn't think you have that part. I'd check that first.

As I understand it you can't have loops in vehicle construction so only one set of docking ports can attach.

Just tested a ship with no other means of directional control and they seemed to work fine.

If you want ideas for small ships that can get to the Mun you might consider looking through the Kerbal caveman challenge thread.

Cursed launch week.

I built a version of the Minmus rocket. It's a little hard to fly deep in the atmosphere with fixed fins and engines but I managed to get it to Minmus and land on a few biomes so it's probably a piloting issue. Early on I had to make stupidly large rockets to land on the Mun and Minmus but practice makes perfect...or at least better.

In my experience the contracts for Duna and Eve come up as you are approaching the first transfer windows. If you've been playing around the Mun and Minmus for a long time you might have missed the Duna window so it brings up the Eve contract first.

For Mk3 planes there are a couple of fuel tanks you can use at the back, the Mk3 to Mk2 adapter and the Mk3 to 2.5m adapter.

You can effectively ignore the Mun to determine where you need to burn to reduce the altitude of the other side of your orbit. If the Mun wasn't there you would burn retrograde to lower the other side of your orbit so with the Mun in the picture you want the escape from the Mun to be tangential to the Mun's orbit and retrograde, i.e about 90° further around than you're doing it. https://imgur.com/W8XnKRb

You're burning on the wrong side of the Mun but the new orbit is the one in Kerbin's sphere of influence rather than the Mun and you do want to see where the orbit will be relative to Kerbin.

Get into the same orbital plane as the target spacecraft and have your orbit touch the target spacecraft's orbit at one point. If you're behind the other vehicle you want the rest of you orbit to be lower so that you orbit slightly faster and close the range with successive orbits. If you're ahead of the other vehicle you want your orbit to be higher so that you orbit slower than the other ship and they catch up a little bit with each orbit. If you have your tracking station and mission control upgraded you'll be able to select the other ship and see where the two ships will be in the nex

If you have any other part right clicked you won't be able to transfer fuel so make sure you don't have any science instruments , engine or command pods open.

Minmus to Kerbin to Eve (165m/s to Kerbin + 110m/s boost close to Kerbin) can shave off a couple of hundred m/s compared to a Minmus to Eve transfer. It does make timing more difficult though.

You can also try going up hills in a zig zag. It reduces the effective incline by increasing the distance travelled for the altitude gain.