DangerDave

That seems like a really good idea.

So far as I know, it's all in the wrist... You just have to finesse it. The only time parts will "Lock" into a specific spot is when you put the green checkered connector nodes together. I'm a bit new myself, so I could be wrong, of course.

So is it just not possible to split a ship into two separate parts like that? Mostly, I'm curious if you would have been able to do this if you had staged it differently or something.

I believe the Subassembly Loader is what you want...

I often see videos where someone is putting together two vessels in orbit and there is a Distance to Target reticule and indicator painted over the other vessel. How do i turn this on? At this moment when I want to find out the distance to the target I have to go into the orbital map and mouse over the other vehicle. Example: http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/97228/how-do-i-rendezvous-and-dock-with-a-ship-in-orbit Thanks in advance!

That's just it. everything goes smoothly until after reentry and then the nose inexorably begins to swing below the horizon and I can't get it to come back up. =P

I thought that might be the problem at first so I changed it several times to use different pods (Both Lander cans and Command Pods), it didn't seem to make any difference so I went back to the cockpit just cuz I liked how it looked. I'll try several of these suggestions out tonight and let you know.

I gave that a try and still nothing. It did give the nose quite a bit more control, but still not enough to get above the horizon. I dunno, it's like the nose of the ship weighs 20 tons. I'm just gonna start from scratch with a different design.

With some experimentation (Mainly, trying to land it manually) I've determined that the ship simply won't keeps its nose up. No amount of input (with or without Mechjeb) will allow me to bring the nose above the horizon and now I'm totally stumped.

I just downloaded Kethane last night, and to test the concepts of it I'm simply trying to mine some of the Kethane that occurs on Kerbal itself. So I built a small drilling lander and put it into orbit, but for some reason whenever I tell Mechjeb to Land At Target (Specifically, the Kethane deposit) he crashes it. Admittedly, he crashes it dead center of the landing zone, totally sticks that part, but once he starts to enter the atmosphere he goes all wonky and tries to land it upside down. He drops the landing gear and does the braking maneuver he's supposed to right before he lands, but since he has the lander upside down, it just smashes into the ground. Now, I know I can land it manually, and I don't even mind doing so, but I'm worried the problem is a design flaw and I'd like to know where I borked it up. For the record, I'm using the Impossible Innovations parts for this particular lander, mostly so that I could test the Kethane drilling without worrying about fuel and control, and the pure black piece is just a Deuterium tank that doesn't load the texture for some reason. ::shrug:: I've even tried loading four of the S.S.A.S. from the I.I. mod, but it didn't seem to help and was probably counter productive anyway. Thanks in advance!