buzzles

A monstrostity?

Sadly, without docking equipment you're stuffed on the transfer of energy front. Now, as to get Jeb and the Science back, that's now actually doable thanks to the latest patch as you can transfer science results between ships when EVA'ing. Just get Jeb outside and right click on the part. Move to a new capsule and it's happy days once again. As for your problem of only having a one kerbal capsule, it's not a problem: start a new rocket with a probe core as the first part, and then add a capsule underneath. You can launch with an empty capsule as long as you've got a probe part for control. The Stayputnik can be your fourth science unlock (Flight Control is the section), and handily to get there you have to unlock radial parachutes, so taking up the top of the capsule with the probe core isn't a problem. Hope that helps. [Edit: Derp, yes. Below posters are correct, you don't need charge for a manned mission]

Sadly, having to get out and push in order to lower periapsis enough to do some Kerbin aerobraking and then decent isn't unheard of.

As they've all said, if you get get to the Mun, you can do Minmus with ease. In fact, I'd probably say Minmus is all round easier than the Mun, mostly because landing is much easier and manouver nodes take away all the pain of the different inclination.

They can repack parachutes?! Why has no-one mentioned that to me before? *goes off to redesign (lighten) Duna landers*

If I remember correctly (someone can correct me), ships/objects that aren't under control of the proper physics engine get deleted if their path takes them under 25km from a planet/moon surface.

You might like the fact if you right click on the antennae and click transmit, it'll transmit everything sequentially from one click

I wing it to start with. For me a lot of the fun involves seeing what'll happen, so I tend to slap things together with a rough goal and see what inevitably goes wrong. I can then go back, look at what went wrong and improve it, which I suppose is planning.

Stick one of the smallest 2m tanks (Rocko 16?) between the Mainsail and any other fuel tanks. Heat issue solved

Depends on the rocket and if I've been bothered enough to keep tweaking to get to the lowest possible engine amount. Normally it's a varied throttle amount on a per rocket basis up to 10-15km, then full throttle while turning until 65-70ish km.

No, it had far outlived its life span. Besides, I think it's probably a good idea to continue using the near enough bullet proof Russian Soyuz capsule for LEO along with all the developing commercial craft, and let NASA and the ESA focus on stuff further out. Personally though, what I would like to see is for NASA to revisit the X33/Venture Star projects, not only because they've built the infrastructure to support it over at Edwards AFB and they have a nearly complete prototype + spares sitting in various hangers, but because the biggest technical hurdle was the hydrogen tank, which seems to have been solved thanks to the the rapid advances in carbon composite technology over the last 13 years.