magnemoe

Kerbal only need to enter craft for science to be copied, you could have an one man capsule have pilot leave, kerbal with science enter enter for an moment to copy science.  Rover seats also work. If you have some sort of unmanned probe who will pick up science its an good idea to put an rover seat on it so kerbals can collect it.  Docking also copy science. 

But why simply rescue the poor kerbals unless its Eve, then why drop 3  

The legs should not transfer heat. Either they burn up or not so this is an bug. Might be related to docking ports inside fairings heating up.

Was just about to post about this, you can hover over to see value but that require you to leave the node check, modify and go back who is not very user friendly I say. 
Fortunately you can just look at the values in the burn so if pe is 60 but you want 30 you just burn a tad longer, but see this will be an serious issue trying to chain nodes like an Minmus intercept with mid flight plane change. 

That works, this eve accent craft uses it to keep balanced. 

Note that its two layers for double drag, the rear tank is almost empty. 
Now this is exploiting KSP drag model, biplanes works because of two wings, layered parachutes does not double drag. 
You could also add airbrakes on the tank to adjust drag. 

Here its seen with an Eve orbital tug and its rover still connected. I dropped rover first it did science and then the return rocket to get kerbal out. 
Had to do lots of passes to get into an reasonable circular low Eve orbit as the orbital velocity is high. 
 
Use drag plates a lot on ships going between Minus and LKO. 
Another way is rear heat shields to generate stability and drag. 

Here I launched the two extra heat shields separately and docked them to the tug at the rear. I reused the RCS thrusters on the tug as I forgotten to add them  

Alt F12 and complete the mission its bugged. 
 

An kerbal on eva can pick up science data from a pod and store at another pod, or simply enter the compartment.
Note that you can only store one copy of an experiment like an surface sample from biome. An kerbal in an rover seat and science labs can store unlimited