Your mission costs

[tsotha]

Heh. That's exactly my design, too, right down to the antenna that points off to the side.

[Anquietas314]

Heh. That's exactly my design, too, right down to the antenna that points off to the side.

Well, I stuck it on top and used 2 batteries (they're only 80 funds, who gives a damn ) instead of 1 and 2 solars, but in terms of probe core / tank / engine choice it's identical

[eddiew]

I don't know if it would work in your case, but here's trick I've used to give small probes a very low-mass propulsion capability: Use a small RCS fuel tank and place two or more 'place-anywhere' RCS ports around the perimeter angled rearward. The ISP is low but you have no engine mass. The downside is that for long burns you have to continually hold down the H key.

That's an interesting idea, I might give that a try! I did spec the same probe with an ant engine, but the weight saving didn't make up for the lost ISP, so it keeps its overkill TWR for now

[Dispatcher]

In career mode, ever since funds and budgets joined the game, I've gone from lowest mass combinations to fully recoverable craft. Essentially, one general strategy is to use SRBs only for early flight efforts. I then switch to LFRs (with SRB supplementation) for controlled suborbital and orbital flights. Of course its good to have a scientist onboard to get more science, but sometimes it may be necessary to have a pilot in order to fly challenging craft designs. For multistage craft, lower stages which make it to orbit are designed so that I can control them, deorbit and parachute them safely down for recovery; before resuming the mission of the payload craft still in orbit.

[Anquietas314]

Dispatcher: the StageRecovery mod would probably save you quite a bit of time/effort

[OhioBob]

I just sorta wondered if 105k to land three guys, goos, a materials bay, etc, on the Mun was about what other people were spending. Nice to have points of comparison, is all.

I haven't flown a mission with exactly the capabilities that you spell out, but I just slapped together something in the VAB with comparable capability. I used 'middle-level' technology, i.e. a Mk1-2 command pod, Rockomax brand parts, etc. I was able to throw something together for about 67k in funds. Of course this included only one Mystery Goo and one Materials Bay. Adding some of the more expensive science instruments and we can easily exceed 80k. The vehicle has a delta-V of a little over 8,000 m/s, which should be plenty to fly a basic Mun landing and return.