How to activate custom action groups

Docking clamps have very little shear strength, so I suspect if we just changed the decoupler into two docking clamps, your cockpit would fall off during the ascent.

It's a bit more complicated to replace decouplers with docking ports; decouplers just fire off of your current stage, and stick to the stage you might want to return to. That doesn't work so well when you want the decoupler to detach from BOTH stages, leaving the docking port free for later use.

So what you want is:

• A docking port on top of your fuel tanks.
• A decoupler on it, upside-down, so your lander detaches from your extra fuel.
• A decoupler on top of the other one, right side up, under your engine, that will fire both decouplers off of your lander, and into space somewhere.
• A docking port somewhere on your lander. On the nose, if possible. Anywhere else will require you to dock on your side, which will make controlling it more difficult.

Pictures of this will be forthcoming shortly.

This setup will allow you to take it back to Kerbin (if you have enough fuel remaining), and leave it in orbit for future use.

The Kerbal Space Program wiki says that the default key binding for executing the Emergency Abort is Backspace.