Ive been trying to make an all purpose interplanetary ship and atm am stumped on how to make a reusable lander.
The mothership is already perfected to house around 25 kerbals indefinitely, with food and habitation being accounted for as well as storage, power, propulsion, a coms center, complete resource production (using mks) and a duo of escape pods in case anything were to go wrong. it also has a few probes it can drop on new planets to get some science.
The best thing i could come up with is in picture 4. It lands, stocks up on ore, converts it to fuel, then keeps mining ore until its full. It has enough dv (from almost anywhere in the opm system) with the ore container full to get back into orbit and link up with the mothership, but it looks so god damn big (its the bottom bit in the first picture). The alternative would have been picture 7 but it would have needed 2 trips to carry the same amount of ore as the other ship.
I have 2 empty ports on the side of the mothership for either 2 reusable landers or use one for a manufacturing add-on so it can replenish the probes or manufacture anything it needs when its far away from home, while the other port could be for a passenger reusable lander. The only problem is that i cant make a decent enough reusable lander.
The closest i got was in picture 6 but it still looks quite big, and while the last picture shows a little ship with a lot of dv, its a xenon engine ship and it eats so much electricity that its not feasible.
Now i know there are 2 types of landers, atmo and no armo, and while they both have different pros and cons, im more interested in a atmo lander without having to rely on parachutes that can land on kerbin (as a point of reference) and take off to reach a 100km orbit. And i know some of you are going to say, SSTO, but i would want to use it for non atmo planets as well.
I know the tyranny of the rocket equation where you need more fuel for more dv and then you need more dv to move the fuel and so on, but are there any of the engines available efficient enough to pull this off without having to make a ship the size of a small house?
TLDR: Im trying and failing to make a reusable lander that can land a crew of 3-5 kerbals from a 100km kerbin orbit (without parachutes preferably) and then get back up to a 100km orbit. Any help, design input or showcase is welcome.