RexKramer

One good reason to try to enter an orbit heading 90ish is if you are planning on docking with a vessel from the surface, when an atmosphere is present. For example, on Laythe and Duna the easiest way to orbit from the surface is to circle 90 degrees. Even on bodies with no atmosphere it takes less fuel to reach orbit by heading 90 than 270. So if you bring your recovery ship in heading 270, you just made it harder for your surface ship to match orbits. Also, if you enter a planet's SOI with the intention of orbiting a moon or landing on a moon, it's easier to capture a moon's orbit if you are orbiting the planet in the same direction as the moon.

You can reach Eve, Gilly, Duna, and Ike with probes almost immediately in career, the science return is really high. Dres, Jool, and Laythe are also reachable very early in career with probes. The only added technology you really need is solar panels and antennas. I prefer to bring every spaceman back home. So while one-way manned missions don't require much more effort than one-way probe missions, I prefer to wait until I have the capability of a return trip before manned missions to other planets. That makes probes an easy way to get a boatload of science early on. Nothing wrong with sending Kerbals on one-way trips, I just enjoy the game more bringing everyone back.

When was the last time you saw a real-world space vessel with it's batteries mounted outside the hull? Ever look inside aircraft equipment bays? Or a modern automobile engine compartment? In reality, stuff gets packed into every available space, often components are redesigned at considerable expense to fit into available empty spaces. This makes the final package both more aerodynamic and also lighter. In some cases, the primary reason is simply weight distribution. The reality is aircraft and even spacecraft have some structures which are mainly empty space. Why not pack components into that space if possible? I do understand the argument that putting fuel tanks inside other fuel tanks may not be realistic. However, in real-world aircraft, fuel is stored in all kinds of unrelated components, an option not completely covered in KSP. I've flown aircraft where fuel was held in wings, nose, fuselage, tailcone, vertical stab, horizontal stab, even in bladders or tanks in the cabin. Personally, I don't clip fuel tanks into other fuel tanks. But I don't consider that cheating, either. Rather, it's creating a vessel which tries to be as space efficient as physics will allow. In this case, physics means in game physics, which I'll admit does not exactly mirror real-world physics. Drives me nuts mounting batteries and RCS tanks on the exteriors of ships, those should be somewhat protected by other structures like the hull if possible. Same goes for sensors. The bulk of sensor components would be mounted inside an aircraft of spacecraft, with very small pieces actually protruding from the hull. Pressure sensor? Essentially a hole in the side of the hull, the actual sensor could reside literally anywhere inside the ship. So in many cases, in the game we end up taking a (usually small) drag hit for lots of components, which in reality would be wedged into available empty spaces causing no drag losses. I think creative part placement is a reasonable way to offset some of the limitations.

I have another possible solution, with no guarantees of success. It seems you have an upcoming encounter with Mun, with no ability to power the ship. In your case, the power seems to be lack of electric, for which others have posted possible solutions. Another possible way to keep the Kerbalnaut from exiting Kerbins SOI would be to attempt to put him in orbit around Mun, without his craft. You would be surprised how much delta V you have from a jetpack. The problem here is the difficulty controlling and aiming your jetpack RCS bursts, but it can be done. If you manage to put him in orbit around Mun, his retrieval is likely going to be much easier than getting him back from outside Kerbins influence. I've had success with a similar situation. Had a lander depart Mun, unfortunately ran out of fuel long before reaching orbit. The resulting unpowered descent would have been fatal, so there was nothing to lose by going on EVA and trying for orbit with the Jetpack. The orbit was far from circular, but the Kerbalnaut survived. Must have been a very long 5 days waiting for a rescue ship to come scoop him up, floating around in his space suit. Try very hard to save at least a tiny amount of jetpack RCS fuel so you can maneuver to the rescue ship' entry door...

Here's how I approached the issue. Until you have batteries and solar panels, antennas are nearly useless. I stopped equipping rockets with antennas without batteries. Even with batteries, it's difficult to manage power without solar panels. You just have to bring the ship back home to collect data. Also, don't use the small LV-909 engine- it doesn't produce power to recharge batteries. The bigger LV-T30 and LV-T45 engines will recharge the batteries while they are running. Try not to run your batteries dry before your next big burn... Finally, conserve battery power. Using SAS torque to control attitude uses electricity, so be careful with your adjustments. Running the automatic attitude control uses even more power. I haven't tried the solution of adding command pods, but I imagine this would work fairly well. Seems clunky to me, but if it works then why not?

Personally, I prefer the aircraft style ADI, with automatic reference to the body being orbited. I don't think it would be terribly difficult to have the scale or color of the ADI be customized, maybe from display settings. I think most users will prefer the reference continue to be automatically set to the body being orbited. I would guess that actual spacecraft would need and have the ability to change the reference based on the phase of flight. One benefit to the game automatically referencing the orbited body is you can always quickly determine basic orbital maneuver directions (prograde, retro grade, normal, anti normal etc..) with no additional cues.

Other posters have mentioned you need a power source to recharge your batteries- otherwise they will run out eventually, no matter how many you have. Adding solar panels to your ship will recharge your batteries, while the sun is shining on them. Usually, your batteries have enough stored energy to power your ship while its behind a planet or moon during orbit. One important step is you have to deploy your solar panels (in most cases..). I have forgotten to deploy solar panels, the result is an unpowered ship, which can no longer deploy the panels to recharge batteries. You may also want to watch your electric status as you orbit. It's normal for your batteries to go down while the sun is blocked, but you should verify that the battery status goes back up while the sun is hitting it. If not, check to make sure your solar panels are deployed and working.

I had Jeb test the limits of how long a space suit can keep a guy alive. He had been on Mun for a while, I was going to bring him home. Turns out I had almost, but not quite, enough fuel to make orbit from the surface of Mun. Ran out of fuel before orbit was achieved. No RCS, I had planned on the tanker performing the docking, and return to Kerbin. It looked real bad for Jeb. Since there wasn't much to lose, I had Jeb exit the lander, and was able to use his spacesuit thrusters to achieve orbit. I wasn't able to bring up an orbit screen for Jeb while on EVA, so the orbit was far from circular- about 33,000 peri and 95,000 apo. So Jeb was no longer in immediate danger of making a new crater on Mun, but he was now orbiting Mun with just his space suit. I had no ships near Mun capable of being occupied, so I hastily assembled and launched one with a HSC. Since Jeb's orbit around Mun was quite elliptical, the rendezvous with the free-floating spaceman was tricky. But I did manage to get the ship within 15 meters of Jeb. He was still alive! And real happy to see a rescue vessel. He'd been floating around Mun for days by then, it takes a while to get a ship out there.. Jeb's spacesuit 'orbit burn' had only used about 18% of his suits RCS fuel, so he still had plenty to maneuver himself to the HSC, and board it. In my haste to get a rescue container out to him, I forgot to put parachutes on his rescue vessel, so there will be at least one additional ship involved in returning Jeb safely to Kerbin.

One thing to watch for when replacing decouplers with docking ports is that by default the lower stage will now consume fuel from the upper stages first. Decouplers leave the upper stage fuel alone. I like to use docking ports instead of decouplers too. One way to solve the fuel transfer problem is to right-click the docking port, and 'disable cross feed'. Otherwise, you just need to check all your fuel tanks before you decouple, and transfer if required.

I also like to make every piece which doesn't fall back to Kerbin on its own controllable, to limit debris. As previously noted, this requires at a minimum a control module. I also like to tack on at least one solar panel, to keep the control module powered- otherwise it becomes junk when the batteries are depleted. Also, I've accidentally run lower stages out of fuel before reaching the atmosphere, which also leaves the ship stuck in orbit.

Here is another possibility. If you dock two vehicles together, it is possible one is now 'upside down' from how it looked during launch. If you are controlling the vessel from the 'upside down' module, like a lander', but the active engine is the main ship engine, then when you add thrust it will be thrusting backwards. If that is the case, you can correct it by right clicking on the command module of the stage with your main engine, and select 'control from here'.