Reactordrone

It wasn't too bad and I didn't really have any stability or manoeuvrability issues but I did pretty much run out of fuel getting into Minmus orbit and had to send another ship to refuel it before landing. Fortunately I attached the BACC with a docking port so I could undock and redock in orbit while I fueled up. the lander was a modification of the "test a mainsail on Minmus " rig I'd used earlier but with LV-909s on the outrigger tanks and a science junior and goo tanks slung where the mainsail used to be.

Tested some engines in various places.

Ideally the inclination should be NaN or 0° and when you're close and have a low relative speed turn on RCS and use the IJKL keys to move the prograde marker into the centre of the target prograde indicator and speed up or slow down with the H and N keys (or use the docking controls which remap the WASD shift and ctrl keys to do the same thing.) Pointing at the target prograde marker and burning should move the ship's prograde marker into the target prograde circle

The basics are, To orbit you need horizontal speed, going straight up doesn't do it. Go up until you're out of the thickest parts of the atmosphere, about 10-12km then tip over slightly from vertical and head east (90° on the navball), the rotation of the planet adds to your orbital speed, decreasing the amount of fuel you need to burn. As you get about 70km altitude keep tipping the ship over until the heading and prograde markers are on the horizon(in between the blue and brown part of the navball. Blue on the navball represents sky and brown represents the ground, the line between is the horizon.) Increase speed until your periapsis is over 70km. (about 2200m/s)

You could also offload excess fuel from capsules on recovery missions before de-orbiting them to slowly keep topping it up.

You can hit the M button to bring up map view during EVA in order to select the ship as a target then go back to stage view and just rotate your camera until you see the targeted object, point at the target and use fwd, back, left, right and up down controls to burn towards it.

Tested some solid boosters splashed down....they go a lot slower than I was expecting.

I just stuck an LV-1 pointing upwards on top of a probe core and it contributed nothing to the mission apart from the test. The test parts don't have to be useful, they just have to be activated and small engines like the LV-1 have almost no penalty as dead weight on a mission.

I certainly had to do another burn after the one that's already set (which is one orbit ahead of where you are) in order to get an intercept somewhere near the apoapsis.

Yes, apoapsis and periapsis are measured from sea level or the planetary equivalent.

You can also make a new stage ahead of the part and stage back through to it to complete the test when you've hit all the test parameters.

Tested a KR-1x2 in orbit and thought I might as well leave it up there as a fuel station. Later got a contract to test a skipper in orbit so got an unintentional two for one.

When you go to throttle up your engine and accidently stage it instead.

Make sure the camera is behind the ship looking forwards, then if you've lined up the level indicator in the centre of the navball with the purple circle the yellow diamond target indicator and target range should be straight in front of your ship. If there is a close intercept the prograde marker should also be fairly close to the purple target circle.

Blipping the RCS thrusters rather than doing long continuous burns will also help since the SAS will correct orientation in between thruster firings.

You could try switching to IVA before touchdown. That usually lets me land safely on Kerbin even if the ground has black holed.

During the final stages of a rendezvous and docking the relative speeds between the target and ship should be low so it shouldn't really make much difference whether you're orbiting at 2200m/s or 150m/s but practice makes perfect and patience is a virtue.

When landing always centre up in the middle of the brown side of the Navball. Easy way to remember is, when heading up aim for blue, when heading down go for brown.

You can just jump in the air or do an EVA report while on the ladder or using the jetpack to get the "low over" EVA report. For example, when you land on the Mun's midlands you can get out of the ship, do an EVA report from low over the midlands, store that in the command pod then climb down and get an EVA report from the Mun's midlands. With the Negative gravioli detector you can take a surface reading from the Midlands, store that in the command pod, take off and get a reading from space low over the midlands, then increase the radius of your orbit and get a reading from space, high over the midlands.

You could expand that, EVA reports can be done from on the surface and just above the surface and Negative gravioli detector can get three hits from each biome, surface, just above and high above.

I've found switching from outside view to map view or IVA can resolve the black hole crashes. I have also had the unexplained explosion on landing as well. Came back from the Mun, all going well gently parachuting down just west of KSC, terrain looks good with no black hole and boom when I gently touched down. Had to refly the whole mission cause I hadn't save the game.

Spring cleaning today. Got rid of all the spent boosters and debris in Kerbin orbit. It certainly polishes up the rendesvous and docking skills. The best part was, every time I caught an RCS tank I could refuel the debris claw with it

Sent my first probe to Eve and Gilly.

Early days in my Mun program but with the RCS thrusters and SAS turned on you can get quite a turn of speed out of this little guy, There have been occasional incidents though,

Still playing around with the demo but I'm getting the hang of Mun missions.