Hello Everyone,
This is my first post. Yay! Here is a video of my first fully retrievable Duna colony mission. It's 100% stock parts. I based it off two things I love, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and the book "the Martian" by Andy Weir. Based loosely at best since i'm not an engineer.
You will notice I have a vertical ascent until I drop the boosters, so I can bring them back down near the launch pad, a little more delta V was needed to accommodate that. Next I have to land the second stage on the next continent, which took a little finagling. Fortunately, the amount of time between stages allowed me to switch back and fourth and pilot everything.
This was a huge endeavor for me. I spent about a year designing and testing and about a month filming. I hope you enjoy.
Let me know what you think!