Ohm is Futile

Short answer would be to watch my video on encounters, as I do that exactly in it I believe: you can watch it here. Longer text version: during interplanetary transfer, probably around your apoapsis if you're transferring from Kerbin, you should make a correction burn. (EDIT: basically, you don't want to be too close to the planet, but doing the adjustment burn too close to Kerbin is impractically efficient.) Put down a maneuver node and make sure the icon are showing, that will make the next step easier. Next, you want to find the celestial body you want to encounter on the map and click on it. Hit focus view or whatever that message to center your camera on it is. Scroll and wiggle until you can both see your maneuver node and the planet. Look for your trajectory from the original encounter you set up. Use the maneuver node to move that line around until it is at the desired height and inclination. Be very mindful of the direction you're coming in, you don't want to be on the right orbit in the wrong direction. That's it about it.

...and the question is? Anyways, I'm going to guess you might want tips for re-entry. Well, beyond having heat shields and maybe something capable of holding retrograde, you may want your return vehicle's CoM to be closer to the heat shield than the other end of the craft. That prevents your vehicle from flipping around during re-entry, mostly. Also, not unlike real life, there's a sweet spot for re-entry. As you have noticed, stay up high too long and you burn off the ablator of your heat shields and skip off the atmosphere back into space. Bad. Go in too fast and too sharp an angle and you might as well be landing on the sun. The trick is to drop to an altitude low enough that your craft will slow down at an appreciable rate as heat builds up over time, but not so fast that you crash on the ground before you can open your chutes or instantly explode upon reaching a low altitude (usually about 50km). Of course, there is a point at which no amount of skill can save you without a heat shield and some ablator. Be mindful of which parts are exposed to the air flow as they have different heat tolerances which can be viewed in the VAB. Be prepared to burn off some bits in bad situation, sometimes saving part of the ship is better than nothing.

I usually play career, leave the settings with a "normal" difficulty level until I can get enough science to shoot for the Mun or Minmus, at which point I turn up the difficulty. Note that I play mostly stock and will keep doing so until I feel that I've "conquered" the stock game. So, once I am Mun or Minmus capable, I usually do a mission to each, with maybe a repeat for Minmus so I have enough science to go interplanetary. As far as science goes, I usually aim for Nukes/engines along with science/electricity/probe/antennae branches before anything else. Then I set up a relay network around Kerbin and an interplanetary relay. The I usually plan out big missions to other planets, with or without space stations and such. I tend to stay away from ISRU and space planes. First, ISRU takes up valuable science points from me and second they are slow and heavy, which bothers me. Spaceplanes, well, they're efficient but slow and require more fine-tuning and fiddling to make them work well, so I stick to rockets. Yeah, I tend to have that problem too. So I started a let's play series to motivate myself. Not the best for motivation though, because the let's play gets the least views out of all my videos. Still, I'm set on having a manned mission visit every celestial body before either moving to a modded career or shelving the game until I find myself other goals in it.

That's what I meant by "It's the Oberth effect". Since you are unable to burn only or mostly at the most efficient point as per the Oberth effect, you end up needing a lot more fuel to achieve the target maneuver than the UI reports. That's due to low TWR.

Has a KER part: https://www.dropbox.com/s/twamkkz9oat7yxv/DLV - Mk I.craft?dl=0 Works like a charm, launches from and docks back with a station at 100km orbit with one tank. The antennae die on entry if they are not pulled back in, but much to my surprise, the can's integrated comms are enough to reach a relay so I don't need a pilot, I can send a scientist down. Science canister hidden between the engines allows to bring back up multiple copies of the same experiments for maximum efficiency. Re-reading the topic, I feel as though you might be addressing the wrong person, but hey, it wouldn't be polite not to reply.

Great reference, but it's a bit outdated. Most notable problem with this guide is the section on drag. KSP now accounts for what's "in the airflow". Still a good starting point. Also, welcome aboard @jonpfl ! From the picture, I can also tell your plane may have problems taking off, this is because it looks like you put a landing gear near the tail of the plane, but it limits pitch control very much by pushing against the ground when taking off. Move your rear landing gear closer to the CoM (but keep it at least a little behind the CoM or it will just fall backwards) and that should help. You will also need an extra crew cabin or a probe core to control the plane if you plan on bringing a tourist since you need something/someone to pilot the craft and somewhere to seat the tourist. The cabin you currently have works, but it seats only one, so only room for the pilot or the tourist. You have way too much fuel. Replace at least one of those tanks with structural fuselage (and or that crew cabin I was talking about). Mind the movement of the CoM, depending on which tank you replace. I think most of the other problems were already mentioned. That's hardly an issue, although it might steer backwards... but the gear is too far back.

But why does it have a parachute? Also, this topic just puts a smile on my face. Good luck with your project.

I see the merit in your suggestion, but I think parachute mass shouldn't be that significant anyway. Parachutes also affect your terminal velocity without any added cost over time, whereas engines do cost fuel. It's also worth noting that Duna's geography is not flat either and if you land on one of the higher areas with very few chutes, you may have... surprises... I guess that could also be an argument for landing with minimal amount of chutes. That said, given that you can quite realistically achieve a final descent speed in the 20-30m/s range with chutes, I have to wonder how that compares in fuel tonnage to slow the vehicle down. Also, OP may reuse those chutes on Kerbin if he has an engineer to repack them. Anyways, I would say it's mostly a matter of preference with a pinch of confidence in suicide burn skills. You're kind of making me curious, though. I have a Duna lander that weighs about 8 tons, fully fueled, of which 4 tons is fuel. It has almost exactly 2000m/s dV. It uses 4 of the radial Mk 2 chutes and 4 of the smaller radial drogue chutes. It reduces my dV by about 25m/s per chute, but its final descent speed is around 15m/s, allowing me to land for practically free beyond deorbit costs. You might be right that the extra chutes are somewhat pointless and cost you extra dV on the non-lander stages. With that said, my lander docks with a space station where an engineer repacks the chute, saving me the braking fuel every time I land, which probably more than makes up for what it cost me extra to send it there in the long run. I'd have to test how much speed a parachute can shed on descent.

If you are using them mostly for orbital maneuvers and to soften a chute landing, I'd say you should be more than fine with the average torque a small reaction wheel provides, even maybe only the pod. I wouldn't use the Mk 2 Command Pod ever as it is horribly weight inefficient. You can bring 4 kerbals instead of 3 if you use a Hitchhiker's crew quarter and a probe core instead and it saves you nearly half the tonnage of the Mk 2 Command Pod. Note that parachute landing is quite viable for Duna and will save you a ton of fuel (thus, weight) if you do so. Just make sure you go with at least double what you would use for a Kerbin parachute landing due to the thinner atmosphere.

To be honest, Zheetan's assumption is likely correct. It's an issue common to most low-thrust vehicles. It's not a bug, not even a display bug, it's the Oberth effect. Possible fixes include splitting the burn at periapsis on multiple passes. For instance, burn for a minute before and after periapsis for a total of two minutes every orbit until you reach the desired orbit or escape trajectory. Another fix is to make your orbit bigger (much bigger) so that the time you spend accelerating is less significant compared to your orbital period (but that's gonna waste dV either way, but probably less than say, doing your burn from LKO). For a maneuver that requires more than 2000m/s of dV, you may feel like swearing as you will reach escape velocity from Kerbin long before your maneuver is done and ask yourself why people use low-thrust high-Isp engines. I know I did.

Not sure what to say, either treat it like a very large spaceship which means a very big rocket with lots/large engines and a lot of fuel or do as @Starman4308 said and split it in smaller, docked pieces.

This can also happen since your orbit is not different enough from the Mun's. It's basically the concept of gravity assists. By re-entering the Mun's SoI, you end up in orbit around it because its gravity is strong enough to modify your trajectory. Again, if you burn more, this should no longer happen.

Preaching my own stuff here, but I've done two videos that are related to docking, especially for interplanetary missions. Namely "How to dock" and "Getting and tweaking encounters" (to get into specific target orbits). Here's the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlNSkke84Au42uwbN6L_xUum2Vxf1SsYU ...and direct links to both videos: Docking Encounters

***Haven't toyed with mods much yet, because I still feel I need to conquer the stock game yet. AKA, put a kerbal on every possible surface ever and bring them back to Kerbin. I also like to challenge myself to do something more efficiently, possibly restrict myself on some fronts and plan things out to perfection. Trying to compile information and make it accessible, aka recording videos and writing guides as I simply love to spread the awesomeness of pixel rocket science and semi-realistic orbital mechanics.

I'm thinking there's a lot more drag on the bottom than the top. Also, is that the dry CoM or wet one? Does it move a lot? Also, it looks like your CoL is actually slightly ahead of your CoM. If burning fuel makes it the CoM move further backwards, then it's no wonder that it gets unstable, especially with the engines off.

A lot of good advice already, although perhaps a bit technical for someone trying to make orbit for the first time(...efficiently?) While it's very cute to follow instructions that tell you how to make orbit with minimal use of SAS, I don't think it's a good habit in the long run since it's actually a pretty intense balancing act and a lot of it depends on several different factors: drag/shape, CoM, TWR, etc. What I've found to be efficient enough is to keep SAS on, experiment with tipping the rocket east (very important, changes your dV requirements if you try to go for an orbit in the other direction) between the 500m and 1km mark and try to keep it tipping slowly so that you reach 45 degrees around the 10km altitude mark. (For maneuverable rockets, turn fine control on (caps lock) to avoid brutal changes.) Keep tipping slowly (idea is to not leave or go very far out of prograde, keep your attitude inside the circle as much as possible, but along the "right edge") until you reach 30km. Then, the atmosphere should be thin enough for you to switch to map view safely(and make significant attitude adjustments depending on the situation). From there you can watch your apoapsis and time to apoapsis. As soon as your Ap gets above 70km, you can pretty much turn 90 degrees (towards the horizon). Also, if your time to apoapsis gets above a minute, you may want to throttle way down or stop your engine depending on your altitude and wait until you are closer to apoapsis (less than a minute, or even closer as TWR allows) to turn your throttle back up. ...and that's pretty much it with any rocket. With 3,8km/s dV and a reasonnable design, you should make orbit every time like this. The key is really pacing your turn from the pad to 45 degrees at 10km.

Except early on you have neither wheels, large antennae nor good structural parts to make a nice ground station. Ground stations also get occluded by the Mün and you will require relays anyway to get the signal from the KSC to the stronger ground relay. It's anything but an efficient solution.

This makes sense to me with your later example. The way I understand the numbers is simply that you gained 10 rep and paid an additional 10 to gain more money. To me this looks like you would have gained 20 rep if you didn't have the strategy implemented.

Pretty good, I approve. Quick note on the use of mods, it's entirely optional. As you pointed out yourself, inclination does correspond to either "just above" or "just below" the 90 degrees line on the NavBall. That's not a coincidence, that's because the NavBall does provide a decently accurate idea of your heading, which does translate to inclination. It even shows numbers. "Just above" and "just below" should then be something along the lines of 95-96 degrees heading or 85-84 straight from the launch pad.

All you really need for your ground station are three satellites in high~ish orbit around the Mün. Much more effective than ground stations. Satellites need to be equal distance apart and have the same orbital period and be far enough away from the Mün surface that they can constantly communicate with each other... that way your surface base would be able to constantly relay back to Kerbin. The idea of powerful ground stations is cute but really impractical. EDIT: Or you could do as Panda said to get polar coverage.

As Rodhern pointed out, if you are trying to get into an inclined orbit straight from the launch pad, you need to wait for the Kerbin's rotation so that the target orbit more or less crosses the KSC over the pad. Otherwise, as you noticed, your inclination will be the same in degrees, but your position will be different which results in orbits that don't match at all.

I've tried going for bad transfer timing missions with the 140T limit before and trust me it is a frustrating endeavor. Best dV values are achieved, as mentioned previously, with higher Isp engines and a higher mass fraction of fuel, but that leads to low TWR issues and a loss of efficiency in the maneuvers (and consequently, loss of dV). Even without the 140T limit, it's going to be annoying. Best bet is probably asparagus staging, or just giving in and waiting for a better transfer window... or refueling locally by bringing mining equipment.

Hmm, did not notice re-entry being much "easier" than it was before. I mean, it could be. It's not like it's especially hard with stock settings, even with a terrible descent profile as long as you're equipped properly... but I can also say that you can definitely burn your ship up real good if you underestimate it, too.

Welcome to the forums! There has been some great advice, I absolutely must recommend Streetwind's work on mass fraction. It is incredibly useful once you start getting interested in the more technical side of things. Norcalplanner has also given you great advice, not to mention DrLicor. If you are more visual and interactive, I must also second Scott Manley's stuff and I will, again, do a bit of shameless self promotion in the sense that I've done up-to-date video tutorials for specific elements of the game and I make a point of trying to not overload the viewer with the physics behind everything and stick to the practical stuff. You can find the link in my signature.

So, I've been a lot less active on the forums, mostly because of university. However, I am still posting videos. I have also not abandoned the idea of a written guide, but it will be on hold at least until the end of the semester, so at least about a month. I have updated the OP to reflect what I'm going to work on in the near future and to provide specific links to topics I've covered. I am starting to feel as though I've already talked about most of the big, obvious topics so I would appreciate requests for more specific things, although I will keep looking for ideas on my own! Any and all feedback and support is welcome!