What follows is a tale of sheer stupidity. After my first "successful" Mun landing, the ship ended up stuck in a highly elliptical polar orbit because it didn't have enough fuel to get back home. I decided, reasonably, to sent a rescue mission up there to retrieve Jebediah and the science stored on the ship. I build the ship, click "Launch", and find that Bill managed to get aboard. There is only one spot on the ship and it was reserved for Jebediah, so I EVA Bill out onto the side fuel tanks. *facepalm* Revert flight. Bill is still on the ship. Well, I honestly have no idea why I didn't expect that. This time I have the incredibly Kerbal idea of intentionally leaving him on the side tanks and then depositing him in orbit. (Perhaps a slightly smarter idea would have been to leave him in the capsule until the ship reached orbit.) A slight staging error meant the side tanks fell off and Bill plummeted to his death. Revert flight. Everything is exactly the same as before, but this time Bill overtakes the rocket during a staging process and then falls to his death again. Oh well, at least the side tanks are still on. During the next staging, something explodes (I don't know what, but there were multiple explosions) and the entire middle section of the rocket is gone, apparently having been torn off by the staging and destroyed by the temporary flailing-around of the other fuel stacks. The rocket still makes it into orbit fairly well and is now in a nice little Kerbin orbit, perfectly ready for the next stage of the journey.