Reactordrone

My first thought is that it might just be the thrust/ Isp difference between sea level and vacuum. Is the actual vehicle performance on the launch noticeably different?

Inspiration 4 will bring us to 14 people in orbit, with seven on the ISS, three on the CSS and four free flying on Dragon. There have been more people in space with the suborbital flights but not more in orbit.

A hitchhiker with a 2.5m heat shield should survive re entry from Minmus without any problems and the physics bubble within the atmosphere is 25km so that shouldn't be a problem. If multiple objects are under their chutes you can use physics warp but can't time warp without destroying their chutes.

It's worth noting that the parts don't need to work for the test so you can use the solid motor earlier in the mission and drag the empty case to the Mun, reset it in the staging sequence and you're good to go.

Career games start at year 1, day 1 so you can check your time in the top left corner.

Pirs just about ready to detach. The Progress cargo ship has extra fuel to give it the delta-v to deorbit with the extra mass.

You may need more repair kits. The largest solar panels need four kits to repair (all four kits fit into one inventory slot on the engineer).

Even in the main game getting into a nose down attitude with that design will cause the capsule to go too fast and for the chute to tear off or not be able to deploy. Going more horizontal, rather than straight up will help and using the WASD controls to get into a tail first or sideways configuration to increase drag will also help. If there was a decoupler on the ship the capsule by itself gets into a stable, high drag descent so it's not much of a problem in game.

You just have to get withing a couple of kilometres of the other ship I think. You definitely don't have to dock for the rendezvous to complete.

The lack of ap/pe markers is a bit annoying now. Ended up bring a Mun flyby back with a periapsis of 65km. That took a while to bring down so I've stuck a stayputnik in a low orbit to help me eyeball my altitude.

You could add launch clamps if it's tipping over. Go back to build, look in structural and select TT18-A Launch stability enhancer. Don't forget to move them to the launch stage.

It's the practical application of this effect,

Drop a second manoeuvre node at the descending node to correct the inclination, then fine tune the first manoeuvre node.

You can save some weight by not bringing the 4000 fuel as fuel/oxidiser tanks. Bring the 4000 payload in aircraft fuel tanks and the station can be a refueling point for NERV powered ships in the future.

If you right click on the fuel tanks you'll see that the only tanks draining at the start are the first two booster tanks, so you have seven engines feeding from two tanks. Once you drop two engines you have five engines feeding from two booster tanks, then three engines feeding from two booster tanks then the mainsail feeding from full core tanks. The rate at which the tanks drain varies depending on the number of engines using the fuel.