I forgot to explain the limitations! (Silly of me) I play in full sandbox with nothing too particular. I like to keep the limitation of "make it as reusable as possible" not for any particular reason beyond my own attachment to the challenge. As a baseline: before I deorbited the last space station I sent up a rocket with 4x command pods on it and EVA'd the kerbonauts to it. Then used RCS to deorbit the pods. Worked fine but felt a bit ridiculous. I guess an overly-large craft would be a "turn off." I also don't want to install too many mods to achieve it. I'm mostly stock parts with a space station pack, real chutes, etc. I run 1.3.1 if that matters?
These are both interesting. Since I didn't place any restrictions they certainly look like they would achieve my goal, however, they both seem quite a bit larger than necessary! Like I said I'm looking for inspiration as much as craft files so keep the suggestions going!
This is very interesting... How does it dock and/or return to Kerbin?