Kryxal

Optimal takeoff profile is to burn east, actually ... add the planet's rotation to your orbital velocity. Oh, and repack your chutes before you try to take off, of course. Once you're in orbit, your return profile will have you burning to leave Duna's orbit in the retrograde direction, assuming you launched to the east probably shortly after you come on to the day side in your orbit, shouldn't be much of a problem if you have the fuel for it. If you don't have the fuel to break orbit, better you don't try, just send an in-space rescue.

Everybody seems to like the retrograde Free Return Trajectory ... note that there's a prograde one too, basically you pass apoapsis, start your return to Kerbin, enter the Mun's SOI, get tossed BACK up, and return that way.

Then again, if something is really bothering you, .24 coming is not really a good reason to let it go...

Might it be more efficient to aerobrake the apoapsis down instead of going straight to the target altitude? Certainly you want to match planes ASAP, but as for the rest...

The converter's weird in that way ... it "consumes" negative fuel. You don't HAVE to connect directly to the converter, but it's the safest bet (my miner's fuel tanks connect to one of the big kethane tanks, which is stacked with the converter).

If you want to manage finer control, you could also use multiple small engines and set an action group to toggle out half or two-thirds of them. So long as the active engines still have symmetry, you should be good.

Some of the added parts are a generator and the medium converter ... basically, I land, mine kethane and convert to fuel for the run up, dock and transfer kethane out, rinse and repeat. I don't need to refuel, I use about 2/3 of the fuel getting up but the miner is a LOT lighter on descent. Still, whatever works, I suppose.

Blip and turn off RCS ... otherwise, you're going to get counter-thrust.

I don't know why, but I do know you could just switch vessels from the map screen or (in such close proximity) by pressing [ or ].

I read a neat little trick somewhere about using separatrons ... basically, you place them low on the booster and pointing straight up, it pulls the booster down and rotates it clear.

Why have a tall ship for mining? I use fuel tanks mounted radially around a central kethane tank (the 8000 capacity one). I have a few more things extending up, but there's not all that much weight there really...

I think it's a mistake to run your miner back and forth like that ... consider putting a second station around Minimus and maybe running fuel down to the 200km station from it while you do all the work there. After all, you're probably looking at 1000 m/s in delta-v each way between semi-low Kerbin orbit and Minimus orbit, it's a bit of a waste to make that run with any mass you don't have to.

I usually set the drogues and mains to part-deploy ASAP (and the drogues deploy quite a bit sooner than the mains) then tweak full-opening altitude. Do note that drogues don't slow a ship down as well, though they do it sooner.

Try a suborbital hop ... it won't hurt anything since you're using probe-ships. That or reload the quick-save if you made one before starting your landing. Oh, by the way, for a precision landing, try setting up an orbit at 8 km that passes over the spot you want to land then drop a node to zero your velocity over it. Start your braking burn half the time to the node of the length of the burn, then just bring it straight down (honestly, I'd probably burn a bit earlier and a bit less, but more practice here). Also, your Kerbals have plenty of monoprop to get themselves out of craters, so don't worry too much about being spot-on, just fairly close.

Some things did seem impossible till you get the hang of them ... then there are things you just learn to plan and design for better. Of course, there's a fair chance it's a bit of this, bit of that ... what does your rocket look like anyway?

Why not make a craft with symmetry, make a copy and do what you have to do WITHOUT symmetry, then edit parts on the without version to match with the with version (depending what exactly you're doing)?

I'm sorry, but all I could think was "My god, it's full of stars..."

Quick-save/quick-load works too.

I can see the point here as proof-of-concept, though...

Better yet, sortable fields, so you can pop what you still need to do on a given body to the top!

Actually, I take that smaller converter down to top up my fuel tanks, while it lands easily with quarter-full tanks (for lower-gravity bodies, of course) you need lots of fuel to lift the kethane ... better safe than sorry, and you have the generation anyway for the drills...

Exploding nearby ... all I can say is, MOAR BOOSTERS! (one on top of another, to make the bottom one cook off)

You'll want to stay fairly close to the ground really ... 45 degrees for short hops, and the angle gets shallower the further you mean to go. You could probably do a fairly good job by noting how long you burn for initially, then reverse your angle and wait till that length of time before impact and do a full-power burn. You'll end up a ways above ground at pretty close to a standstill, then just ease yourself down, or ease off a bit earlier when you have the feel for it.

I have a kethane drilling ship, it basically consists of the BIG kethane tank, 4 radially-placed T-400 fuel tanks (with fuel lines to the kethane tank), 8 of those tiny engines attached to the fuel tanks via cubic octagonal struts, RCS ports and monopropellant, the smaller kethane converter, the kethane generator (IMPORTANT on outer planets!), a probe core and some solar panels, landing legs and two drills. On second thought, here's a previous version, fuel lines are a touch different:

Possible "enhancement" of a manual fuel transfer from the bottom-center tank to the top-center if the top one should start draining, I don't know if it will or not...