Traches

OP, see if you can get to the mun without having mechjeb plan your maneuvers for you. It's more fun, and not difficult at all. I promise!

I can think of a pretty good reason:

Kerbal engineer and mechjeb will give you that information as well. But you're right, it would be nice to have a stock readout of that information without going IVA.

Few things you can try - Move your center of lift further back. This makes you more stable. Move your center of mass further forward-- same as above. Picture an arrow shot from a bow. Add a bigger vertical stabilizer (I can't see one at all!) As far as your intakes - ramjets are the only ones worth using, don't mess with the others. Mount them further back; if they're mounted forward they'll pull your nose around. Also, quit airhogging so bad!

Sounds about right! You might have a plane change to hit Jool to the tune of about 300 m/s, but Jool's SOI is a big easy target so it shouldn't give you too much trouble.

You seem to be perfectly competent at building rockets - go for the grand slam brother. You will probably need a bigger lifter, but once it's designed you can save it and use it for other things. Eventually you'll want to do a manned return mission somewhere, and you'll need some pretty serious payload for that! It may be easier to stick a small engine and fuel tank on each of the probes, so the transfer stage doesn't have to travel to every single moon. For the bus, Asparagus fuel tanks with a single nuke engine in the middle is tough to beat for dV. Speaking of dV-- Have you consulted a map, and compared mechjeb's reported stats?

The trick is in the timing. Anyway, RCS comes in handy for setting up perfect orbits, geosync or otherwise.

I haven't had much luck with gravity assists from moho-- it's too light to affect my trajectory at the speeds I'm moving when I intersect. OP, it's a whole lot easier to get an eccentric orbit that passes close to the sun than it is to get into a low orbit. Either way, a Bi-eliptic transfer will probably be the most efficient way to do it if you're aiming for really low orbits from kerbin. Start by raising your solar apoapse up high (like you're going to Jool), then when you get there burn retrograde to lower your periapse as low as you like. That actually doesn't take an insane amount of dV, but if you want to circularize at periapse that'll be a different story.

To speed up the actual transfer, if you set up 4x physics time warp (Alt+.) before you start it'll go a lot faster.

Sounds like your high speed planes on kerbin aren't as high speed as you think-- it's possible to circumnavigate the planet in an hour or two game time. For the Mun, I haven't tried it yet. If you can build a high speed, easily controlled rover that stays stable at 4x time acceleration I think that might be the way to go.

If you didn't go into the debug menu and turn on part clipping, then it's not part clipping if you ask me. The game's build UI is finicky enough and limits you enough, don't give yourself headaches by limiting yourself further. Looks like a great solution!

Sal's right-- you'll get forward (same direction as your engines) thrust from your RCS with the H key. Caps lock puts you in fine control mode, which lowers your output, but beyond that you don't have much throttle control besides firing thrusters in small bursts. Aside from docking, RCS is great for making very precise orbit adjustments, such as setting up a perfect geosynchronous orbit, or fine-tuning an aerobraking pass weeks or months before the encounter.

What are you doing with it that requires 3 nukes? Engine clusters with stages below are difficult-- you can pull it off with docking ports and some finagling, but most of the time it's not worth the trouble.

OP, you should look into a mod called kerbal alarm clock. You can set alarms for specific times (Apoapse, periapse, maneuver nodes, SOI changes, etc.) and it'll automatically drop you out of warp at exactly the right time. That, or mechjeb has a warp helper that works pretty well too (but it's not as good as KAC).

... Are you running the remotetech mod?

Landed a probe on tylo, practicing for a future manned mission.

TAC fuel balancer, yeah. I don't know if it's updated, but I had problems with engines stuttering when I used the "keep balanced" option.

Ions pointing up work decently as downforce to keep your low-grav rovers under control. Kinda.

Easiest way to edit a save file is to work with the quicksave - hit f5, tab out, open up quicksave.sfs in notepad, make your changes, tab back into ksp, and hold f9 to load the new changes. You get pretty good at it when you need to fast forward for years...

The RCS build aid mod can help-- it shows both your full and empty CoM, so with some clever design you can put them on top of each other. It'll also let you balance your engines more precisely.

Overall excellent post and I agree with every point. I use a joystick too, I think it's easiest to bind momentary SAS toggle (f) to the trigger-- hold it down to turn it off, change pitch, then release to reactivate. Seems to bounce around less than just leaving it on.

Install some realism mods that make it harder and do it all again.

Mine's not either, but I don't turn settings down.

Intakes and parachutes (even un-deployed) generate more drag than other parts, so if they are placed forward of the CoM they will cause a lot of instability. Can we see a few more pictures?

I pulled off a single launch, manned mission to eeloo with KIDS on the FAR -> real life setting. It took like 17 years game time and needed a big ol' gravity kick from jool to make it. (If only I could see encounters for orbits further ahead...)