Strange Phenomena on 1st Mun Mission

[eliterrell]

Summary:

I just launched my first (semi)successful Mun Mission. I got there before when I was playing with the demo a while back but never with anything that had a chance to come home. A couple of interesting and bizarre incidents occurred during the course of the mission which warrant further investigation.

The Plan:

Similar to the recent ill-fated mission to Minmus, my intention was to get 3 kerbals to the Mun, bring back one of them, leaving the others in a suitable habitat with all the scientific facilities of the stock parts library. A picture will make my design apparent to the people of this forum:

Execution and first incident:

The first part of the mission went fine, although it took me a few tries to land. I planted the flag, zoomed around the site, and so on. It was everything I dreamed it would be. But when I was ready to go, something went terribly wrong. I was sending my pilot back to the Command Module for his solo flight home, using his jet pack as ladders are so tedious. He collided with it at a speed which was apparently excessive, though it certainly didn't seem to be at the time. The result was that the CM was detached from the Service Module.

Solution and second incident:

This naturally scrubbed the return flight. I decided that all three Kerbanauts would have to remain on the Mun for the time being. It was necessary, however, to remove the extraneous stages in order to deploy the habitat's solar panels. On the picture above you can see the SM's engines hang down by the side's of the habitat. While everything is on the surface, power comes from the command module but wouldn't work any more.

My first step is to get rid of the Command Module. I know it's possible to push unconnected parts but my SM is going to be taking off uncontrolled and the last thing I need is for it to drop the CM on my habitat or start spinning too soon. Fortunately, I equipped my CM with small separator rockets, because why not? So my pilot was able to gingerly board the CM, taking care not to dislodge it, activate the separators, and fly the useless capsule to a safe distance.

Once I got him back to the habitat, I dialed up the rockets on the Service Module up to the point where the could almost lift the whole assembly and fired the last decoupler. It rose majestically away from my habitat and a started to fly away. That is when the second strange thing happened.

After a few moments, the SM's path started to curve due to slightly imbalanced weight, which didn't concern me as it had already cleared the habitat. It arced across the crater before appearing to lodge in the crater wall, intact. I thought "That's funny, I thought it would at least explode or something." I could still hear the engines firing (In space, no one can hear you grind your teeth at the unrealistic sound effects) so I sent a kerbal out to investigate.

As my perspective shifted, it became apparent that the SM had NOT lodged in the crater wall, but was floating something like 50-100 meters up, engines firing. When my kerbal started to get close, the laws of physics started working again and it very quickly crashed and boomed.

Now if only I could get some earth moving equipment up there. I bet there's some kind of crazy monolith buried in that crater.

PS- is there a way to prevent incidental EVA collisions from destroying my spacecraft?