That's what it was--that'll teach me for trusting the symmetry tool. 2 of the three fuel lines were not properly hooked up (they were on the thruster casing and not the fuel tank, disconnected when the launch stage is dumped). Given the last four busts, I am calling the final in-transit travel system the Munterbator V.
I am using a slightly more modernized version of the poodle Mun lander I posted way back. I saw they upped the poodle's efficiency and decided to give it another try. I was a little inefficient with my lawn-darting, but had only enough fuel to shrink the orbit around Kerbal and not land on the first pass. Three upper atmosphere braking sessions later, though, my kerbals finally splashed down safely. I think I'm going to go back to using nuclear engines, just need to find a way to make a lander with a docking bay, nukes, and a parachute system. I might start making landers that only have docking modules and nuclear engines, and use a station to transfer kerbals from a homeworld ferry to the landing modules and back.
Bob and Bill clones died horrible deaths test-driving space-planes, I don't think much work has been done on those since 0.18 or I am just a terribad pilot. I sent a gas-powered probe to Dres and parked it in low orbit (around 12 km). Jeb has been living in my mini-Skylab using the new one-seater cylindrical command module and a habitation module for something like a year or two while all the other action is happening.