Fearless Son

I can see why you would, but I didn't enjoy that mission much myself, so I don't really have good memories associated with that music. Mission: "You're going to need to flow low and very steady to remain focused on these targets." Me: "Okay, I'll take an A-10 since I need something stable at low speed that can absorb some damage instead of break off if it comes to it." Mission: "Ha-ha, just kidding! Hope you can fly real high really fast!"

"Daredevil" is probably the most epic piece from that soundtrack, but "Sol Squadron" is probably more appropriate to the fighter in the screenshot. Either that, or "Archange". "There are Kerbals like you in every generation, and I've launched every last one of them..."

"The battery was a lithium thionyl chloride nonrechargeable. I figured that out from some subtle clues: the shape of the connection points, the thickness of the insulation, and the fact that it had "LiSOCl2 NON-RCHRG" written on it." - Mark Watney, The Martian

"Rocket Royale".

Simple descriptive names. Usually of the [Destination] [Function] [Craft Type] format. For example, "Mun Science Lander", or "Duna Communication Satellite". It's very dry. On rare occasions I might get a little more creative. For example, I had a vessel that was designed to extract ore on the Mun. It was propelled by a pair of Vector engines mounted on either side of it, and their high thrust and high gimble range caused the craft to "wobble" a bit back and forth in flight as it kept correcting itself. Because of this characteristic, I nicknamed it the "Duck Driller", because it reminded me of how duck's look when they walk.

The prophecy has been fulfilled! (Because this scene from Serenity is so damn Kerbal): Wash: Well, if she doesn't get us some extra flow from the engine room to offset the burn-through, this landing is gonna get pretty interesting. Mal: Define "interesting"? Wash: [deadpan] "Oh, God, oh, God, we're all gonna die"? Mal: [over intercom] This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then... explode. Mal: [to Wash] Just... get us to the ground. Wash: Of that I'm fairly certain!

Yeah, that video was indeed awesome (I'm going to try and imitate the rotational mechanism) but the first place my thought went was with the Hermes from The Martian: Similar long radiator panels, similar front docking airlock.

This has to be one of the most plausible interplanetary ship designs I have ever seen.

Now I have an image of a Kerbal posing in my head and saying, "In the name of the Mun, I shall punish you!"

Oh my, I can hear that GIF. It sounds like this:

I noticed that you had a bunch of RCS nozzles on the bottom of the rover. Do you have similar nozzles on the top? This may be a marginal in Duna's gravity, but I have noticed that increasing the down force on the wheels helps translate more of their power to locomotion for the rover. So if you have some upward-thrusting capacity on the rover, you can temporarily activate that to push the rover more firmly into the ground, which will result in more greater wheel traction and help it climb slopes a little easier.

In my admittedly weak defense, I didn't even notice the typo until just now. Back to space travel! I just like the idea of having lots of open-space on the interior of the craft as part of the quality-of-life of long-term habitation. Since we don't have to contend with things like aerodynamic or aquadymanic considerations as we would for planet-bound vessels, we can make them as arbitrarily large volume as we want, assuming the overall mass is still reasonable.

They remind me of visiting the aquarium when I was a kid. They would have large tanks for large aquatic creatures, with convex windows you could lean into and peer out into the water on multiple sides. The cupola modules feel like that.

Per the other suggestions, raise the apoapsis, then at apoapsis lower the periapsis to somewhere in the low atmosphere. Lots of speed, lots of thick air to burn up against. While you are at it, I would also recommend sending your station into a rapid spin as you are approaching the atmosphere, then cut off any SAS. Even small reaction wheels will get it spinning at a high speed, if you let them run long enough. The purpose of this is that it tends to spread out the atmospheric compression across the surface of the station, instead of letting just one part take the brunt of it. This will delay the heat build up in some places, dragging the process out so it doesn't blow up too quickly, and hopefully giving you lots of nice smaller explosions instead of one big one that takes everything else with it. You might also get some of the looser parts of the station getting ripped off without exploding as the combination of torque and shearing forces tear weakly held chunks off of it. Think the ending scene of Gravity:

Is that a rotary cannon made up of rotary cannons? Yo dawg, we heard you like rotating gun barrels...

That was @NovaSilisko's original intent, as I understand it:

Magnificent! So little wasted mass in this.

I am assuming that Kerbin has a different ratio of metallic elements than Earth, and that is why their batteries tend to be lighter: easier access to different materials with which to store a charge. I mean, the planet is about the same gravity as Earth while only a fraction of the size, it would have to be composed of different elements.

Two recommendations: The Negative Gravioli Detector - Works over different biomes and different altitudes, so it should give give you plenty of new readings to store and take back home with you. Your own crew. Seriously, having a crew member get out of the craft and take an EVA report. EVA reports also have different responses at different altitudes and over different biomes, so again you get plenty of different reports. As a bonus, you can transmit them when you get back in the craft and because they are only crew recordings you can transmit them back to Kerbin with no loss in science value. You would need to leave the ship anyway to nab the data from the Negative Gravioli Detector anyway, so you might as well take an EVA report while you are at it. Though, uh, for obvious reasons you shouldn't send your crew out during the actual burn itself. But there will be plenty of unpowered flyby time near the planet before and after your burn.

Nice! I wasn't sure from your initial post what your apoapsis and inclination was, and whether that would (eventually) be affected the the Mun's sphere of influence. Glad you made that work.

With special equipment, like say a cup and a small vacuum board. I've had similar ideas, like putting little passenger cabins or hitchhiker containers on the end of several structural tubes. Allow them to rotate freely inside in a custom built hinge with some extendable docking ports that mate with the main hull to allow them to be fixed in place. Maybe put some wheels internally to accelerate them up to speed, that way they don't need their own internal electricity supply. Yes, time warp will cancel their rotation, but at least we can pretend. Or, you could just go simple and make the beams fixed and set the entire ship rotating. I mean, if it's not a continuous thrust design (and unless you are using ion engines and willing to wait years of play time, then it's not) then you don't need an elaborate rotational mechanism when the whole ship can just spin indefinitely, needing only power for initial spin up after finishing the transfer burn and power for spin down before the breaking burn. Should keep the crew healthy enough during the journey.

I need justification for that too, but since I can't really justify it, I dodge the question by adopting a self-imposed challenge of making my crew accommodations much greater than is technically necessary for game mechanics. So like, short trips to the Mun or Minmus, I leave them with small seats. They're only going to be like that for a few weeks, they can train for that kind of journey, like real astronauts, it's fine. But for interplanetary travel, I find that entirely insufficient to keep my mind from wandering strange places. So I over-engineer for that purpose. I'll put in Mk. 2 passenger modules that can accommodate four Kerbals and use them as a sleeping cabin for two crew. I'll then attach those to a Hitchhiker module and use it as a shared space. Probably add a Mobile Science Lab just to give them something to do and more space to stretch out. Add unnecessary copula modules so they don't feel so trapped in a big aluminium cylinder. Yes, the extra volume and mass of these accommodations makes interplanetary missions harder to perform, but I justify it as the extra mass being essential to making that journey (got to bring enough snacks and board games to make it there, along with enough lead foil to insulate the cabins against radiation.) And that extra effort in turn lets me justify how Kerbals can make the journey.

Geosynch orbiting communication satellites is often undesirable, depending on the planet one is orbiting them around. For example, trying to orbit Duna at geosynchronous altitude will virtually inevitably have an encounter with Ike, the gravity of which will slingshot one or more of them out of their orbital positions. In other places, the gravity of the body is sufficiently small that geosynchronous altitude would be greater than their sphere of influence, negating the orbit entirely (not realistic but some concessions have to be made to a reasonably performing simulation.) Generally, it's a better idea to have satellites that are equidistant on the same orbit at a stable altitude (which may or may not be geosynchronous.) Ideally three, since each one of them will be able to trace a direct (and fixed) line of sight to the other two, and between the three of them they can see every point on the surface of the body they orbit.

As others have said, probably limited control due to not being able to communicate clearly with Kerbin. If you want to control any probe on the far side of any extra-Kerbin celestial body, you are going to need some form of relay to bounce the signal around. Alternatively, a crewed ship with a pilot which has line of sight with the probe can also remotely guide the probe, even if neither can communicate with Kerbin. In your case, you probably just need to wait until your probe orbits back around Minmus so it can see your ground-based radio dishes again, you should have control back at that point. Then it's just a matter of timing right to rendezvous with your rescue target. Once the Kerbal is on-board, you should be good to go even if the probe goes to the far side again.

I tend to start a new save anytime there is a major change to gameplay. Now if it is just some quality of life tweaks or part updates, I generally persist. But when a new mechanic is added, it's back to the beginning for me.