maybe some kind of indicator to show which level of acceleration/speed is best would help.

the unintuitive behavior is that it is very difficult to find that balance. if i am to slow i crash into the planet, if i am to fast i leave orbit with no chance to get back in time. being gentle always results in being to slow. in other words there is no gentle way to reach the balance. and if i don't know where that balance is, i don't know what to aim for.

you may argue that finding that balance is the goal of the game, but then i guess the game is not for me. i lose interest if i have to try 10 times and still can't figure out how to do it right.

Understandable. That's kind of the goal, the gameplay is very shallow complexity-wise, so raw responses/difficulty is one way to put some playing time into it.

There are some methods that help a lot, like keeping a completely perpendicular or parallel viewing direction, and adjusting the distance with the corresponding set of thrusters. Even slight angles mean you have to randomly mash forward/backward/left/right and hope to keep a steady orbit, it's not gonna happen.

For what it's worth, even for me now, it would take more than 10 tries probably to beat Master on Mission 1.