SRV Ron

Built and modified your design. Changes were to use Skippers instead of Mainsails. That eliminated six tons. Added some parachutes. Fixed is the bracing. Flight was stable with just enough power for launch. Flew into orbital turn until first stage burnout at an apogee near 100k. Second stage used to finalize orbit. Lots of fuel left over for maneuvering and return. The Giga solar panels could be easily replaced with 3x4 Ox Stats which would further reduce weight. Note the Pitch, Yaw, Roll, indicator is dead centered throughout the flight. Actually, staging was done earlier then this first test flight. Note the clean ejection of the two boosters. In orbit;

Using Skippers in place of the Mainsails will reduce a lot of the flight control issues as well as the reduced weight will increase the Delta V of the design.

I'm sure that Jeb's Professor Kerbenstein sky sailor, fitted with instruments, a ladder, Goo capsule, and a couple more barrels of Whale Oil, could fulfill the mission. However, it could take days of real time playing to reach all the biomes.

Any pod, placed upside down, is going to have control issues. The same with vectoring engines placed into a pulling position on top of a rocket.

Lower struts are uneven which will cause the spin issue. A simpler design would get you into orbit with far less hassle.

Even Professor Kerbenstein's wonderous Vertical Propulsion Emporium does quite well as a two stage design to orbit.

A note that you don't need to go to an Apollo design for landings on Mun and Minmus in KSP. The direct approach is much easier for first time efforts and don't require a lot of rocket. For return missions from the other planets and moons, the Apollo lander design will become the practicable alternative.

You need struts on the ring of boosters. They are twisting on the one low radical decoupler. One even looks crooked on the first posted pic. In addition, the fuel line on the asparagus setup is causing uneven bracing. A brace on the opposite side will help control the spinning. Although hard to see, here is how to brace an asparagus design. Bring all braces to the center tank. Don't forget that a fuel line acts as a brace, so place one opposite of the fuel line to stop your rocket from spinning. Even if braced, if one breaks, it can be disastrous as in the example below. Note the yaw, pitch, roll indicator. Cross bracing is used for onion and ring designs. A broken strut caused this; Note proper operation with no twist issues showing on the yaw, pitch, roll indicator. In orbit.

A early career design for orbit; For a 100,000 orbit. Go straight up on the SRBs, stage and start the orbital turn gradually using the NavBall to guide you. You should be nearly horizontal at about 60,000 meters when apogee hits 100,000. Cut power. Aim for the horizon. At about 15 to 20 seconds before apogee, start burning again. You will need to stage and use a short burn to reach orbital speed. It will have more then enough fuel left to go to Mun or Minmus orbit and return. Fly this one property and it will go into orbit without staging.

Start out simple and go step by step. Land in different areas of Kerbal to collect soil samples, observe Goo, and reports. You can even do this research from the launch pad and runway. Do selective contracts to gain funds and science points awards. Combine contracts with various missions to gather additional funds and science points. When you get the Explore Mun, Minmus, etc... contracts, wait until you have unlocked the Stayputnik, Ox Stat, and Too Hot Thermometer. Then fulfill the contract with it placing the probe back into orbit to fulfill future requests for data from orbit. If you need to get the Science to unlock those needed items, do some manned flyby and orbits to gather the required science. You don't need big complex rockets for those missions especially if they can be done by probes that don't need to return. Early tech examples; Mun or Minmus flyby Mun Minmus contract landers. Early Mun Minmus lander Replace the manned pod with the Kerputnk and it can be sent to fulfill a Duna and Eve contract.

A ship from a 10 part challenge fully capable of such a mission with slingshot maneuvers, direct intercept from Kerbal orbit, and taking advantage of when Eeloo crosses Jool's orbital plane. Using turbojets could easily place the LV-N payload section in orbit with far less fuel then what the Skipper needed for that challenge. (It was even done with five parts by elimination of all safety devices including solar panels and explosive staging of the orange tank using the LV-N.)

Perhaps some specific challenges for records such as how high you can get the basic three piece Career rocket to go and or how many contracts it can complete. ( Have set three and came up short the fourth altitude record with this one design using tweakables.)

Turn off destructible buildings or the launch pad will blow up when you place your Eve rocket on it. Everything else with the exception of the small SAS part will be fine.

This very basic ship, flown carefully for a Mun free return trajectory, has an LV-909 third stage, will gather a bunch of science for you to unlock additional tech. If playing hard mode, only spend research funds on those parts you will actually use.

Before even entering the SOI, set up a maneuver node and correct as much of the error as possible. It will take very little fuel at that distance to do so. Additional correction can be made when you enter the SOI of the planet. Major corrections can be done using slingshot maneuvers around a moon of the planetary system. The node for a final correction in orbit should be set where your orbit crosses the equator of that planet or moon. Example of a bad Duna encounter corrected using Ike for the slingshot.

The LV-N is great for long range interplanetary burns. That is where its efficiency comes into play as an advantage. For landing and takeoff from moons and small planets, its mass becomes a disadvantage compared to less efficient but much lighter engines. Far easier to push a 1/2 ton engine to a destination then one that weighs 2.25 tons. And, overcoming that extra mass of your lander on takeoff to orbit will burn up as much fuel as the much lighter but less efficient engine of comparable thrust.

A fine balancing act when constructing a scale shuttle. Due to the design of the real one, SRBs were used to boost much of the fuel load until staging. Then, the Shuttle main engines finished the burn just short of orbit. The real key was the tilt of the three main engines and their ability to gimbal over a range far wider them most stock KSP engines to compensate for the ever changing center of mass as fuel is burned during flight. That is going to be difficult to simulate successfully in KSP. Don't expect to do that with stacks of SAS's. The flight has to be controlled with vectoring the thrust with the main engines.

For landing, use the Navball readout for meters/second in Surface mode. To counter drift, use the WSAD keys to tilt the craft towards the retro marker as you slow down to under 10m/s descending. When you can get your craft and the retro marker lined up with vertical, you will have the horizontal drift under control. This takes practice to perfect. You will eventually reach the point where you can land using far less fuel then in your first attempts. Ideal landing speed, under 5m/sec with nearly zero drift. The retro is drifting in the photo below but at the descent rate well under 2 meters almost at touchdown, it can be ignored. In this Mun example, descent speed was so slow that the drift could also be ignored. Practice your first landings on the seas of Minmus. The low gravity and altitude of zero in the flat seas will make landing much easier there. Once you get good at that, you can then attempting landing on the slopes of Mun where the altitude readings will be meaningless.

Some early designs. Early Career Mun flyby; Later probe contract lander; Some manned lander designs; This is from the demo; Minotaur 5 probe that could easily go to Duna or Eve; Build and test to find out what works.

For testing SRBs, you can tweak all the fuel to zero and still complete the test. You can even use the fuel in the tanks for testing some liquid boosters by attaching radical engines or fuel lines to external booster engines. No need to boost all that extra weight in order to meet test conditions.

They can still wobble if tall and thin mostly during a maneuver. Or, if not properly braced especially when using mods.

The inside of the VAB in Sandbox should look something like this. If not, you had a bad install; In early Career, there will only be the one pod available until you have gained enough science points and cash to unlock additional parts on the tech tree.

It is a bug from an earlier version. If you don't land in the ocean, the ship explodes.

Redesign the ship so you can stage away the material labs after taking the data to you return pod. That will help you when you fly the same mission in the future. Meanwhile, you can try the suggested method of getting your Kerbal to orbit and rescue or send a rescue ship to pick him up with the experiments.

It has its advantages in launch efficiently in Sandbox especially when using mods. With drop tanks on the fusion powered payload