Small craft capable of landing and liftoff from a planet?

[Tassyr]

So, since I keep running into a brick wall here, I wonder if anyone else can figure this out. I'm attempting to make a small craft that can land on a planet from about 100KM off the ground, then return to that orbit. I know this is probably impossible but it'd still be nice to see if anyone can pull off- my intent is to use this as the lander for my interplanetary craft, and then rendezvous with the main ship to 'return' the crew member for the trip home. Anyone think they can pull this off?

You can use mods; just list which.

Note; This would be -just- the lander, re-ascent module. The rest of the craft is the easy part to design!

[Apotheosist]

I can do this on Eve. Stock parts.

[macintux]

I just do CFG edits to have a massive amount of fuel and use some of the parts from the Kosmos pack.

[Person012345]

How small are we thinking?

[Jesrad]

The lander I used to get to Duna and back might work, you can get a pretty clear view of it (all stock parts, save for that mechjeb on top of it) in this screenshot:

It had plenty of fuel left after deorbiting from 287 km high onto Duna, and rendezvous-ing back with the interplanetary stage for the trip back to Kerbin. I'll have to check the total thrust or test it again with different engines and see if it would work on Eve too. It's probably overkill for Jool's moons.

[Tassyr]

Basically I'm just thinking an one man craft that -wouldn't- need to have the kerbal-standard of tons of boosters and fuel tanks. I've got a docking mod- my plan is to make a sort of 'tug' that can take any small craft to a planet, for a mission. But I can't make a small craft that can land and then take off from eve or duna easily. >.<

[Exclipse]

Eve, is somewhat difficult. Duna is a piece of cake though. I have an spaceplane with outstanding performance on Duna that can land from orbit fly around, shoot some rockets and then go back up to orbit.

Spaceplanes are the ideal way of lifting off of Eve as well/most efficient, however not time efficient. To go from surface to atmosphere fall off on eve took me hours with my spaceplane, and that was using some time compression. After reaching orbit I did have plenty of fuel to return to Kerbin though.

[Markus Reese]

One thing I like to use is srbs on my initial launch off planets. A pair of the 400s aren't too bad to land and lift off a lander and interplanetary stage.