TopGull

As far as general design guidelines, I recommend you search for the "reverse rocket equation". It's useful for designing any sort of rocket-powered craft, not just interplanetary ones. GoSlash27 has posted some great threads explaining what it is and how to use it.

There's lots of good advice in here already, but I'll add my 2 cents about the Duna lander. It's absolutely possible to safely land a small probe on just a parachute, and in my opinion it's an elegantly simple solution. I flew a mission where I stacked up a bunch of drop pod-style landers, and once I got into low orbit around Duna I popped them off one by one for pretty much automatic landings. Each lander was built with the 1.25m payload bay (containing probe core and instruments), a 1.25m main chute on top, a couple of solar panels on the sides, and 4 cubic octagonal struts for landing legs. A couple of angled sepratrons gave ~200 m/s to deorbit, and since I was already in low orbit I was only dealing with 600-700 m/s in atmosphere. Heating was no issue even without a heat shield. I think those landers were about 1 ton, maybe a little less, but they landed slowly enough that the struts survived.

I decided to try out the 1.2 prerelease last night by starting a new career game, and it looks like the difficulty options have been expanded quite a bit. While I was digging through them I noticed an inconspicuous toggle button on the advanced options page, in the lower left corner, which said something like "allow upgrading part stats when more advanced parts are researched." I haven't seen this before, except maybe as a rumor or in the suggestions forum somewhere. Has anyone else noticed this option? Any ideas on how it works exactly, and which parts it applies to?

There's another way that no one has mentioned yet... When you're close to Ap, burn normal/antinormal so that your orbit becomes MORE inclined and crosses the equator closer to Ap. Then burn again when you cross the equator to get your desired inclination. I can't say for sure, but this might work out cheaper than the other options here.

Hmm, I guess I missed that thread, but I ran some experiments with different nose parts and I've convinced myself that you must be right. The shape of the leading edge seems to have a big effect on the amount of convective flux, leading to skin overheating. Case in point, I tried using the 1.25 m fairing to make a pointy nose and a flat nose, and the pointy one exploded while the flat one was fine. It also seems like this effect is very sensitive to the exact shape of the nose. The short blue nose cone isn't much sharper than the shielded docking port, but it generated a lot more heat under the same conditions. I also noticed a very strange effect when I tried using the FL-A10 adapter as a nose cone. There were two very distinct heating modes that seemed to be triggered by a combination of speed and altitude: one where little heat was generated, as if it was a blunt object; and one where an insane amount of heat was generated, enough to raise the skin temperature from barely overheating to well over the max in a fraction of a second. At 1000m altitude, it would flip suddenly into the high-heating mode at around 1370-1380 m/s. Any ideas why this might happen? Some quirk of the part geometry, maybe?

I'm pretty skeptical about the shock cone and ablation effect explanations for why this works to protect your ship from atmospheric heating. It looks like you're using the stock aero model (I don't see FAR among your tabs, sorry if I missed it). As far as I know, KSP's aero model isn't sophisticated enough for all that and the "shock" effects you see are purely visual. I do have an alternative explanation though. Check out the maximum temperatures for the Mk2 Cockpit, the Communotron 16, the Klaw, and the Shielded Docking Port: Part Max Skin Temp Max Int Temp Mk2 Cockpit 2500 K 1400 K Communotron 16 2000 K 2000 K Advanced Grabbing Unit 2000 K 2000 K Shielded Docking Port 2600 K 2600 K The obvious weak point is the low max internal temperature of the Mk2 Cockpit. I suspect that in your first test, the internal temperature built up enough to exceed that limit. The Shielded Docking Port, on the other hand, has a higher max skin temperature and a much higher max internal temperature. I think that's the real reason the second craft doesn't explode. I don't have KER installed right now so I can't be certain about this, but it looks like you do. You could run this test again and watch the critical temp readout to see the actual temperatures of both parts.

Are you playing with a joystick? I had a similar problem several months ago with my rovers. It turned out that the throttle on my joystick was mapped to the wheel speed, and 0% throttle was actually full reverse.

I've encountered the same sort of thing since before 1.0, although it's definitely more pronounced now. Even with lots of control surfaces and SAS modules I tend to get random oscillations that put my rockets slightly off due east. The only way I've found to combat it is to constantly watch the navball during ascent and steer the prograde marker back to where I want it. It's annoying, but easily correctable with vigilant piloting.

I can't say I've seen that phrase before. Can you give us some context?

Looks like you mounted your wheels sideways. I wouldn't think that would stop you from rolling, but it certainly won't steer properly.

I'm away from my computer so I can't test this, but maybe the 1st click selects which group of parts to change the root of? For example, you build a stack under a command pod, then detach the stack so it's not part of the craft but still in the editor. Can you use the root tool to change the root of the detached parts?

Aircraft design really hasn't changed since 0.25, so the wiki and older videos should still be good sources for figuring things out. If there's a specific problem you're having, it will be much easier for us to help you if you provide more information about your craft and the behavior you're trying to achieve. Pictures are helpful, too.

First, make sure you have a docking port and RCS thrusters on each vessel (if not, redesign and relaunch), then go watch Scott Manley's orbital rendezvous tutorial on YouTube. He does a great job of explaining the maneuvers.