Landing and leaving Laythe, how?

[mcbmaestro]

I've been bolstered by my recent successes using only stock parts and mechjeb to get to planets. The problem I'm having now is, how do I land on then have enough delta-v to return to orbit on Laythe? Since Laythe is sort of like a mini Kerbin, it seems to make sense to test landers on Kerbin, but I can't get anything even close to a lander that can land on Kerbin then make it back to orbit. I know Laythe would require less but I'm not comfortable going there with a lander that can only land on Kerbin then make it about 10,000 meters up before running out of fuel. I've tried so many combinations of parachutes and rockets and radial couplers, even tried making the lander detach into literally just a seat strapped to a fuel tank and some thrusters and nothing is even close to anything I'd attempt.

Anyone got some tips on how I get off of laythe without having to build a whole dang rocket on Laythe to do it? I haven't messed with jet engines and wings yet, they only cause massive headaches when you are trying to take off of Kerbin and transition to vacuum, and can't imagine the headache of trying to use them to exit Laythe and have something go wrong that requires restarting the entire journey from scratch.

Edited June 5, 2013 by mcbmaestro

[Sᴄɪɴᴛɪʟʟᴀᴛᴏʀ]

Laythe has less gravity and a thinner atmosphere than Kerbin. Use a few parachutes for descent and have around 3.5 km/s of delta-v to get back into a low orbit.

[Uberick]

I'm pretty sure it only requires about 3000 d/v to get to orbit. A 2 man lander can with two 360l fuel tanks can do that with an aerospike. Use the wide 360l fuel tanks, stack them under the lander can, add engine and landing legs and you've got it. You might want to add a 3rd fuel tank to give some wiggle room, check the thrust to weight ratios though, I can't remember off the top of my head if an aerospike can lift that much on Laythe. . . I want to say it can though, if only barely.

[chemieglennie]

The other thing to think about is that you'll probably land on water, so don't make a tall thin lander like I did the first time! It just falls over.

My second version looked like this,

I used the nuclear engine as the return part to get back to Kerbin. It has plenty of dv to get back. The six little engines (909s?) are asparagus staged to give it enough thrust for take off.

My full mission log is here,

http://imgur.com/a/rhEUS