Shrike42

Yes, but with less pilot capability and more craft durability. The other alternative (if you have just a few parts, not things that will shotgun on breakup), make missile probes or a sturdy ram. Of course, you might end up adding more debris with that approach.

Maybe a small box made of the structural panels, along with lander legs to form a 'gripper'?

I just built a simple rolling crane that can pick up and move full rockomax X200-32 tanks and even dock them. It's rather lightweight, so I MIGHT be able to get it into orbit via spaceplane, but it's possible. The weight is balanced in the middle, with the excess batteries on the back providing tons of power for doing operations at night. Note to self, add lights. Here it's attaching to the Rockomax tank, fully loaded. There's two tanks joined together. Important to note that the rockomax tanks have the clamp-o-trons mounted to a radial attachment point for the necessary height. Here's me NEARLY getting the tank back up onto the runway. I got distracted, and the tires burst after some excessive bouncing. Note to self: Add ladders so that the system can be fixed, consider moving the command module to a lower mounting point.

I rebuilt my mun buggy base, got it to the mun, and, for the first time, located an anomaly, the great mun arch. Discovered to my bemusement that the previous munbuggy had blown up quite nearby, after driving 1/4th of the way around the mun. Parked my rover under the arch, and will try to finally start a mun colony! If successful, I will start moving on to other planets.

Imagine flying over a town or city, and seeing all the little kerbals run away in terror. "FLEE! THE KSP IS COMING!"

In order to maximize your speed off of the turbojets, you need to cruise between 20,000 and 30,000 and keep your engines running as long as possible without stalling out. If you employ the turbojet intake stacking trick, you can keep your engines running for much longer, and keep pushing. It's possible to get to 2000 m/s velocity on turbojets alone, and wind up on suborbital 'hops'. Hitting the rocket engine once you're on a 60,000 m + 'hop' should let you get into orbit a bit more efficiently. But you've got the right approach. If your plane can climb at 45 deg off the runway, do that and then start to level off around 18,000. Try to aim for the horizon and maximize intake air, building up speed and slowly going higher. Throttle down as your intake air starts to approach .08 per turbojet, and then throttle down further and further. Then kick on the Rocket engine and go for it.

I've managed extremely stable ASAS flight at all altitudes, but only on craft where the elevators/flaps are at almost the back end of the craft, and very close in to the main body. Everything else seems to produce the oscillations that make the ASAS module practically worthless. I've also got a bit of an idea that the number of moving control surfaces causes the ASAS PID controls to overcompensate. As an addendum to what ZK posted above, I try to move things with constant weight forward, to move the CoM up and keep it as steady as possible. I also used tilted tail fins (no moving surfaces/canards) at the nose to increase my lift without adding additional control surfaces.

It's worth noting that, especially as you get close to 0 m/s, the retrograde can start moving around significantly. Don't panic. Also, depending on your lander's design, you might be able to right your lander by retracting and extending the legs... but this might also hurl your lander up and crash it down. Also, the lander can control module is built for doing landings in IVA, and has a radar altimeter(maximum distance 2000 meters) and vertical speed gauge, as well as a (way too shiny) Navigation ball. This might help you manage your descent, since you can see both the vertical motion numbers and the ground itself in better detail than you can from outside the lander.

I don't know if there are any mistakes, but I really like what you're going for here. It provides an excellent visualization of numbers that casual players can use to improve their chances of success.

The idea that putting the ASAS closer to the engines might improve the stability is an interesting one, I'll have to try it myself. However, I do have a sort of related example. This primarily applies to planes, but I've found that ASAS wobble seems to come from having the control surfaces away from the central body. I do a lot of biplane configuration jets, and if the flaps aren't up close to the body, the wobble is enough to completely destabilize the flight path, even if the plane is capable of ascent angles over 45 degrees. Placing the flaps close to the body, on the other hand, makes them all work together and maintain both the heading and the ascent angle quite well. Very useful for speed attempts. As it is, the reason for the wobble is because the code for the ASAS is a PID controller that doesn't change parameters from craft to craft, and can't be altered in-game. It's a one-size-hopefully-fits-all solution that doesn't actually fit everything the kerbals can dream up. So, there's 'ringing' when the rocket or plane is too unstable/has too many control surfaces & active RCS/is long and slow to turn, as the controller will overcompensate, correct, overcompensate, correct, etc. and shake rockets to pieces. I can see the idea that, perhaps, Squad implemented the ASAS module to do guidance based on the ASAS module's position, as it would be a known location/facing. Wonder if it might be best to put the ASAS close to the CoM...?

I'd suggest trying to be less ambitious for your payload. You'll definitely need to use the asparagus system with the orange tanks to get into orbit, but once you're up there, you can use just one tank of fuel and a few engines (LV-Ns are very fuel efficient) to extend your orbit out to the Mun. You'll want to use the asparagus system and reduce the amount of fuel you're taking up, because that stuff is heavy.

If you're having a lot of trouble, you might have an action group with some Rockomax radial engines to give you an extra bit of thrust. But I've certainly managed to safely land on the mun and return using 2 LV-Ns.

Munbuggy 3 update: Mun testing has shown the design very stable, able to stay firmly on the ground for quick turns, even at 22 m/s. However, a sharp turn at that velocity did cause a roll, but quick deployment of the self-righting legs had it 'cartwheel' its way until it came to rest on its wheels, with NOTHING broken. I'm quite pleased with this design. I can get it up to 15 m/s and then just let it cruise, and hit the brakes every so often if it starts going too quickly from an incline. It takes small, controlled hops off of rises, doesn't go spinning off wildly, and stays in a pretty straight line, even with uneven surfaces to traverse.

Thanks for the compliment! I should note that I was able to mount a reactor inside each girder segment, which added more weight for stability. You could also add a second battery pack down there. Keeping the CoM low will help you turn with less... drama if you're at speed.

I made a rather simple rover design based on the lander can. Sure, it's not much for docking/return, but if you want to mess around in a mobile base or lab, it'll serve very well. I give you Munbuggy 3. Completely vanilla, using the Rockomax X200-8 tank to keep the center of mass low. It's exceedingly difficult to roll, and can't lift off on Kerbin, but it can use the radial engines to slow descent. The wheel base is just the 650 I-Beam with girder segments, secured to the rover with struts above and below. The landing legs on top can fully right the Rover Base, as I tested on the moon. No pictures, I'm afraid. And, of course, you get the unparalleled IVA view of the landercam. I haven't sent this version up to the mun for testing yet, but the previous version (not as reinforced with struts, and with a higher CoM) did quite well up until the point that I was gunning along and managed to blow up on something. It is certainly possible to add docking ports and such to the design, but I'm quite happy with this lil' dunebuggy.