bewing

What version of the game? Yes, this does sound like a mod issue, because I haven't heard of this happening for the stock game. It sounds like you think the craft is stock (which is good). So if you can use any file-sharing cloud server (kerbalx, pastebin, dropbox, etc.) to post your craft then our best bet is to try it ourselves and see if any of us can also make it fail.

Get your rescue ship to high Duna orbit first. Get your doomed ship as close to orbit as you can over Duna, have the pilot go EVA, have the pilot grab all the science data from the pod, let go of the ladder, turn on your RCS jetpack, face prograde, and burn like hell until the pilot has circularized himself. Then have your rescue ship rendezvous with him. He has almost 600 deltaV in his RCS jetpack -- and this is one of those times when you really need to use it. If your spacecraft is "wobbling" then you probably need to turn on autostruts via Advanced Tweakables. Either that, or you built it non-symmetrically.

Attaching a strut requires two clicks. If you click the decoupler first, it will attach and stick.

You probably have a Communotron 16 antenna, but you need to "extend" the antennas to make them work. Look in the context menu for the antenna. If you do that, you will have communications all the way out to Minmus.

That's probably not the right button. You want the "new post" button at the top left of the website. Once you click that, you get a "drag and drop your image here" window. Once you drop your image there, the website processes it into a proper sized image (probably jpg), and gives you a URL link to the image. You can either paste that link into your comment, or you can try to get tricky with it to have it display automatically (but that takes more steps).

Did you take your KSP download and make a new copy of it in a different directory? And then mod that copy in that directory? If so, exactly what are you doing to launch the game? In any case, posting a screenshot of the contents of your GameData folder of the modded copy of your game would probably be very helpful.

First, since you are playing stock, I assume you are on the current version of the game? There is a known bug in the current version that causes a small amount of bouncing for landing gears on low-G CBs, by reducing or eliminating the effect of the suspension damper. Friction control has almost nothing to do with bouncing in the current version. Does your payload have any fuel or other transferrable resources in it? Pumping fuel around to change the weight distribution can have a major effect on bouncing. The rigidity of your craft can also affect bouncing. Springy joints between parts can amplify bouncing. The only real method for minimizing any bounce is to tweak those damper and spring settings, and see if you can find a sweet spot.

This game is about discovering things on your own. Squad will never give you anything more than a hint or two.

Yeah, that works.

OHara has it right, and Rocket In My Pocket, too. Open your parachute on the way up -- the extra drag will keep the speeds low enough to prevent parachute destruction.

No, savegames (or craft files) can't be transferred either to or from a console.

It's a known bug for docking ports. If you "target" a docking port, it actually targets the CoM of the craft instead. So if the docking port is on the centerline of the stack, you have no problem. But if you stick the docking port way out on some radial arm, then SAS is going to point to the wrong place. I don't know if there are any mods to fix that.

That's not the reason. It's perfectly fine not to launch a contract vessel in one piece. It's more likely to be a problem with how you put it together. Did you use a space tug that was already in orbit to maneuver the pieces together, perhaps? Are you sure it has an antenna and can generate power?

Signal strength goes as 1/r^2. So if the range where your signal goes from 1% to 0% is 8Mm, then at 5Mm the signal should be 64/25ths bigger -- ie. not quite 3% I would expect. (And the antennas are called HG-5s, not -01 )

Now you need to send a rescue ship.

Ah, you're right. I was just going by memory. It still doesn't matter though.

Why don't you want to go to Duna? Duna is a fun place. It has giant canyons and cute little polar ice caps and stuff. Is there a kerbal in your craft, or is it a robotic probe?

If you are using semi-standard CommNet settings on this game (ie. you didn't click the "no control on signal loss" button like a masochist), then you can still partially control a probe anywhere. Partial control is always good enough to fulfill a sat contract, just so long as you plan ahead. So you probably don't need to do anything special about comms. Additionally, just because you can't complete a contract with the tech you have today doesn't mean you shouldn't accept the contract. Maybe you need to upgrade Mission Control, so that you have more slots and can keep this contract on the back burner for awhile.

You said 120 m/s. He said six m/s. And how do you get a bare lab out of the bay without wheels attached? Also isn't a 2.5m part way too big to get down the ramp? The ramp is only a couple meters wide at most. If it's too wide for the ramp, then of course it's gonna blow. Or do you not mean the MPL when you say "lab"? If it were me, I'd be using an interstage fairing on the cargo plane, and forget about the ramp.

Except that it doesn't. The requested orbits are just defined as ellipses in space. They are only reported to you using Keplerian orbital coefficients on the contracts because that's the most standardized format. Yes, you are supposed to match the visual orbit. If you really want to play games with LAN then you can have your inclination up to 2.9 degrees off, and the contract will still complete. But since the inclination is then non-zero, those Keplerian values will still be defined. Additionally, the Argument of Periapsis has nothing to do with specifying the orbit. That number is about specifying time and location. If you are already in an orbit, sometimes you want to know exactly what point in that orbit your craft occupies. That's what the Argument of Periapsis tells you. You feed in an exact time, and you get out the exact position of your craft on the ellipse. Or vice versa, of course. But that value is not tested at all for contracts. More to the point, those Keplerian values are completely unnecessary. They are shown on the contract for your amusement only. The only values you really need are the relative An and Dn on the requested orbit, and maybe the Pe/Ap. Depending on the number of stars on the contract, you may need to get everything matching to a high degree of accuracy. But "10 meters" is way closer than you need. 10 kilometers is about the closest you ever have to get. Note that most of the time when people have the same problem that you are having, it means they are orbiting in the wrong direction. Even the ones that swear they have their ship in a retrograde orbit suddenly discover that retrograde is not the direction they thought it was. So really, snark had it right. If you are in control of the proper craft, and all the checkmarks on the contract are green, and your orbit is right on top of the requested orbit, and the An and Dn values on the requested orbit say ZERO, then the contract should complete. If it doesn't, then that's a bug -- but we've seen it happen. There are a few things you can do to force the contract to complete. Sometimes a tiny burn will do it. Sometimes switching focus to another craft and then back again will do it. Sometimes you have to use the Debug menu. But really, it's best to take a screenshot with as much info showing as possible and then post it here.

No idea. I don't mess with config files.

Well, that's on ascent. Which is kinda the most important phase for a spaceplane. Horrible amounts of drag are a bonus on descent. So, MK2 looks awesome and is easy to land. But yeah, none of the benefits of MK1 or MK3.

Try landing it in the water, offshore. The water is flatter, and has a higher speed rating. Bring the thing down to 5 meters altitude, and try to fly exactly horizontal, and wait for it to splash down by itself.

CoP is Center of Pressure, aka Center of Drag. It is the sum of all the drag vectors at any moment for your plane/rocket. If your CoP moves in front of your CoM, your rocket flips. But your CoP moves when your craft changes speed, so it can't be easily represented with a simple little dot in the editor. It's usually fairly close to your CoL.

Well, you've heard of the square-cube law? MK1 is about going to space with a sleek, cheap, elegant design. The advantage of MK3 is more. An MK3 design has plenty of room for more engines, and more fuel, and more lifting surfaces, and more cargo, and just more. So yes, in fact, with the extra fuel and engines and heat resistance -- it is easiest to go to space with an MK3 design. If you are in career mode, it costs a fortune. The advantage of MK2 parts is that they are pretty. Otherwise, they suck. Yeah -- it's not a bad solution. Depending on what kind of probe cores you have, or whether you have piloting covered some other way, crew cabins can generally a better way of packing kerbals around. Yeah, veering on takeoff is a very common problem for planes. There are a handful of causes and a handful of fixes. It's discussed in the FAQ thread on this forum. As said above, my favorite fix is manually reducing the friction on the front wheel.