Prepper-Jack

Heh, got krakened last night with the smaller service bay on a probe a few times. Unfortunately, I couldn't see the issue because the entire upper section of the rocket was under fairings. 11k up, I start making a gentle turn and BOOM. Service bay has collided with fairing. Every time. The fairing was 2.5m, and the bay 1.25m - that's quite a jump. An hour earlier I had another small bay (configured in a similar manner) shimmy left and right on the pad half a meter in either direction like there was a pack of Gremlins in there. Wish I could say what caused that kind of behavior, but it seemed to be resolved by just putting a new bay in with the same configuration.

Yes, I use them often - even when going to Mun. It's useful for determining precision approaches, and can save you a ton of fuel. Going for a polar approach or a low orbit is far cheaper when you make tiny changes millions of km away. Can't do that eyeballing. Standard orbiting maneuvers, including rendezvous/rescue I usually do manually though.

When the first stage of your asparagus launch remains unharmed on the launch pad.

Mun is kind of a challenging landing as a first time body. If you want to practice, try for Minmus instead. The gravity is significantly lower, so you can take your time with it, and gain some practice before heading to Mun. Also, even with the extra fuel it takes to reach Minmus, it tends to consume far less to land, meaning it's easier to make it home. Otherwise, what is your rocket design like? A good starter moon lander could be a basic pod, a mid sized fuel tank, and a terrier LV-909 engine. Throw some landing legs on the fuel tank, add some science stuff, some solar panels, and you're set. It's not a large payload, and should be able to get into Kerbin orbit fairly easily with a small asparagus lower stage of Reliants/Swivels and an even smaller upper stage of LV-909s to get you into orbit and at least partially on your way to the Mun. The trick to landing is being efficient about it. Coming in low helps quite a bit, as you spend less fuel fighting gravity, so set up a low orbit by going to navigation mode, and burning retrograde at your lowest points. Just have to be careful, as the Mun is a rocky place. Sometimes you can cut an orbit down to about 5-6k or lower, but I usually prefer 9k-10k to be on the safe side. Once you've plotted where you want to land, head to navigation, and carefully burn retrograde (use shift/ctrl instead of full burn) on the far side of it until your shallowest point is around 2k over your intended target. Time warp to a spot nearby, set the auto to retrograde, and head again to navigation map. Hit full burn (Z), and watch your angle head to your target. Once you start getting below 100 m/s, the line should become more straight, and you should ease up on the throttle until you hit close to 0 m/s. Switch to regular view, and you'll notice you're flying pretty much vertically, and heading slowly straight down. Keep autopilot on retrograde, and let it build a little speed on the way down, though sticking below 150 m/s might be a wise idea. When you start noticing the shadow of your craft, it's time to hit the gas, and if you haven't already - the landing struts. Once below 20 m/s, cut throttle and use shift/ctrl keys to bring you slowly down to 1-4 m/s. Going over 0 m/s will cause your retrograde autopilot to disengage into stability assist, so reset that if you do so. After that, landing at <1m/s is quite easy.

Yeah - at the earliest stages of the game it's a simple matter to run around the Space Center itself and collect a fair chunk of science. Visit each building and do a crew report, an EVA report, science and goo study. Each building should net you around 15-20 science IIRC. You can create a cheap vehicle to do this with at the space-plane hangar with a jet engine and a tiny fuel tank. Just keep the speed low. I recently tapped one of the street lights outside of mission control at around 8 m/s, and to my surprise the entire building exploded - only an unharmed plane and a startled scientist left in the wreckage. Later on you can slap some decent thrust on and do a quick survey of the biomes nearby. Highlands, Grasslands, Oceans, Shores, and Mountains will all yield fresh science. Unlock the thermometer and barometer at the first available opportunity. Also, surface samples yield a ton of data, so upgrading science center should be a priority. Afterwards, you can build some very cheap probes. All it takes is a cheap auto-pilot with a small fuel tank and efficient engine, attached to a decent sized booster. Slap on a couple solar panels, some batteries, the thermometer and barometer, some goo, a science lab, and a radio. You can do the science lab once per flight - but thermometer and barometer can be done over and over. Probing Duna wasn't too hard early in the tech tree, and yielded good results. It's also not difficult to probe both Mun and Minmus on a single flight, and sending it off into solar orbit (which yields good science results). Otherwise, taking a lander to Minmus can be done fairly early, and provides a ton of research. You can even visit multiple biomes per visit, as gravity is so low. Mun is a bit more difficult, as it takes so much more fuel to land and all that.

If you're coming in very fast - enough so that parachutes burn off, consider slapping an appropriately sized heat shield on the front of the craft. Had a desperate entry at around 3900m/s last night, and luckily I had a large heat shield smack under my service bay. Pointed it to the approach, and nothing else heated up at all, including 5 chutes and a couple of goos.

Yes - if anything, you should throw some LV-909's on the pod headed to the moon. They have very poor performance in the atmosphere, but can really shine in getting to, and landing on, Mun and Minmus. Their low profile make them good choices for landing with the basic landing legs, and they're quite light as well. Going nuclear (although there's a mission to use the experimental engine on the Mun) is not one of the best options for early landers. They are heavy, slow, and with super small crafts they can't dissipate heat very quickly. I came way too close to exploding just trying to land on Mun with the bloody thing. Otherwise - try to minimize weight and drag in the pod. Not sure which command module you are using, but if it's the one that houses 3 Kerbals, know that it's really heavy. In lower stages, you might want to work on some asparagus staging with some Reliants and/or Swivels. Dropping a couple empty fuel tanks per stage as you ascend makes for a pretty large gain in both efficiency and speed. For basic early landers, like the one you are referring to, I tend to use 6 Reliants and 1 Swivel, with a couple FL-T800's per engine. That will generally get me into orbit, with a few LV-909's getting me to Munar orbit.