First time landing on Ike, along with some questions! (Picture heavy)

[Evenger14]

I finally did it (In career mode)! I made it to the Duna system, landed on Ike and returned home safely! Originally I planned on landing on Duna, but that changed and I had to settle for Ike due to a lack of dV.

Originally I sent a probe to Duna, simply to get a feel for the interplanetary transfer process, but forgot to take pictures.

The mission started at 10:00pm local time, when I decided I wanted to do something other than the Mun/Minmus for science. I thought it may take an hour or two.. I was wrong. The ship originally was going to be the Transporter, the Command & Living Section, and the Lander. It turned into the Transporter, the Lander, and my LKO Fuel Depot's Tug. I had forgot to put RCS on the Lander.. The ship would all be pulled by the transporter, using two nuclear engines, and after I got into a parking orbit around Duna, I'd send down my lander using 8 radial parachutes to land, with two more for landing back home. The mission didn't go as planned..

Orbital Construction begins, with the LKO Fuel Depot being the hub:

As you can see, using my Heavy Lift rocket I got my lander docked with a mostly full core stage, which refueled the depleted station.

Orbital Construction continues, making significant progress.

Using the station's tug is a lot easier to dock the things together, in this picture you can see the original Command & Living section, later discarded.

Orbital Construction complete, planets are lined up, beginning burn:

Because I really suck at ship design, I added two radial fuel tanks in order to add more fuel. I don't think I would have made it otherwise, as the transporter was on fumes when I re-established Kerbin Orbit.

We have arrived!

The lander is away:

In my hast to get more juicy science, I forgot to take a picture of the crew on the ground, however, we did successfully land on Ike:

After a period on Ike, we launch and rendezvous with Duna Transport 1:

One more lengthy burn and we are back home!

Total Mission Time IRL: 6 hours

Total Science Return: 700+

Mechjeb was used in this, but only for certain things:

Take offs/Landings - Because taking off is repetitive and boring, and landing both because I suck at it, and I needed to conserve as much dV as possible

Rendezvous - Some people find rendezvousing hard, it's not. It's just as bad as taking off.

Some docking - I balanced the RCS thrusters wrong, and so docking was done Automatically most of the time, with the exception being the space tug pulling the Command Capsule.

I did all other maneuvers, which including quite a few saves and reloads..

If any of you have been to Duna and back, can you give me some recommendations on my ship design, what to lose and what to add?

[Geschosskopf]

I finally did it (In career mode)! I made it to the Duna system, landed on Ike and returned home safely! ...

If any of you have been to Duna and back, can you give me some recommendations on my ship design, what to lose and what to add?

Bravo! Congrats!

Obviously your ship worked fine because it got there and back again, so there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it. If I was to change anything, it would be to up the amount of science parts. 4x each of Goo and Material, plus 1x of everything else, will get about 95% of all available science points in a single location (location = biome, whole planet without biomes, high or low orbit, etc.) in 1 trip. You could probably have gotten about 1300 points on the same trip if you'd done that. Otherwise, maybe put the lander legs out on horizontal struts to increase the stability of the lander. It's pretty tall and skinny as it is, and Ike and especially Duna are quite hilly.