Saaur

Johno and Exaraxe, remember Alt-L is your friend. I missed this one ( I was playing SFB instead) but will definitely try for the next one once connector struts are in play.

Does the satellite have to be in that orbit by itself, or can it still have bits of spaceship attached to it? I was thinking of making it part of my third stage, then jettisoning the whole lump and use my 4th stage to take pictures and land. If it has to be alone, I'll have to enter orbit with the 3rd stage, get it PERFECT, then eject that stage, eject the satellite, then maneuver around.

Huh. This is exactly the same as the top two stages of my Kerbatta series. Gotta love convergent evolution. I put two stages worth of solid boosters under this to get up to about 10 km, then use the liquid to insert into orbit. All the advantages of your design, plus more fuel to play with once you're up.

Not right now, maybe. But when they introduce the research mechanic and you can make bigger engines with that same fuel, or research a denser fuel for the same size engine...

If you have enough fuel to deorbit, you should have enough to adjust yourself to stay close to the satellite. I'm going to download the satellite tonight and see if I can modify my Kerbatta Quatro http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=1279.0 to carry it. That thing's got lots of extra power, so I should be able to do it IF I can get my orbits to stabilize.

It's a great ship, considering it uses all stock parts. I left them orbiting all night last night. got up this morning and had enough fuel to do a deorbit burn (started just before perikee so there wasn't as much velocity to kill) and brought them safely home. Well, several hundred kilometers from 'home', but they were safely on the ground anyway.

It's just role-playing fluff for now, but when the full game comes out, they mentioned you'll be able to recover and reuse parts if they have their own 'chutes, so I decided to try it with this design. I built a Kerbatta Trio this morning off the same basic plan, but omitted the anemic three-SRB second stage. The 'orbiter' section (chute, capsule, decoupler, fuel, fuel, engine) still makes it EASILY into orbit with one whole tank left.

Maybe it's too easy to orbit with. By the time the boosters are done I'm well above 10 km, and by the time I get the orbit rounded out, I'm always at 150-300 km, with anywhere from 75% to 150% of a tank of fuel left. You know it's a good design when all three Kerbals are smiling! Must be a pretty smooth ride.