hammyhamm

Duna requires little dV to achieve orbit at 50km but be aware that although parachutes and drogues help slightly, you WILL need to retro-thrust your landing. It will be easier than a mun landing though as your chutes should keep you perfectly vertical so you need only worry about speed control. Don't forget to use Ike for the gravity-assist both into and out of Duna's SOI - I typically do my best to use Ike to scrub off as much velocity as possible and tweak it to give me an aerobrake periapsis onto duna - just make sure you do a good plane correction during the interplanetary transit and you should arrive on a low relative inclination approach with Ike (and it costs relatively little dV at the edge of Duna's SOI to get into a good path). Of course if you are running Mechjeb all of this is exceedingly simple to pull off, and if you use kethane you can just use Ike as a service station on your way to/from Duna if fuel is a concern.

Why don't you put your reinforcement strut/truss structure on top of some radial decouplers and set up an action group or stage to remove them when you want to decouple that point? otherwise you should have enough force to break the struts with some sepratrons. You can also put less bending stress upon the docking port by having the heaviest section of the upper payload as close to it as possible (think of that mass as a "lever" on the docking node when it swings about)

Imagine the Alcubierre drive as the ultimate middle finger in terms of time taken to reach a destination. The ISRU stuff is great if you aren't running kethane and are alot more realistic. This mod needs its own wiki/tutorial as many things aren't obvious from the OP outside trawling through this thread for someone with a similar issue.

I don't have any fuel lines running - it has full crossfeed access to the engine via girders so I didn't think there would be a connection issue whatsoever. Will attempt it now as the dude I have to save is stuck in a kethane-free area but I'll likely just redesigned the rocket with kethane in the future (which is a pretty overpowered mod, let's be honest).

Made a forum account specifically to make a post here! First of all, thankyou so much Fractal for this mod - the level of complexity this adds to KSP has made the game even more rewarding! Now to my issue: I have attempted to electrolise on the Mun with my Al-oxide rockets, and have come to the following problems: - electrolysis produces aluminium, but no oxidiser is produced - attempted multiple times. (do I have to wait for all of the aluminium to be replenished before oxidiser is produced? I was expecting it to be an even split) - running the rocket with no oxidiser still activates as "burns" aluminium as a fuel yet no thrust is achieved as it is oxidiser-deprived. Possibly just an oversight?