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Rescue Pod XIV

Single ship containing 14 individual rescue pods.

I made this because I usually take a lot of rescue contracts, to increase staff.

Transport has 5km/s, plenty to reach Kerbin orbit with the payload of 14 rescue pods (and the relay).
Pods have ~800m/s, enough to rendezvous and deorbit.
Push G to toggle pods engines.
To perform a rescue, undock a single pod (manually, right click on separator), put the HEX core out of hybernation (and make it the control point). Rendezvous, occupy the seat (you have to be using the kerbal, get near the seat and right click on it), and deorbit.

Pods have an antenna, battery and solar panels, a parachute, and a heat shield. Whole ship is only 236pc & 110t to be doable in a tier 2 hangar & tier 2 launchpad (and needs only tier 2 lab techs). The 4 solar panels eliminates any "blind spot" and makes them hard to run out of electricity, and they very low ratio weight/size allows them to survive the most hard reentries (I've tested quite a bit): you can add them to your ship to ensure a safe Kerbin reentry from ill-planned interplanetary missions.

67k funds per 14 pods means that you spend less than 5k per rescue, and you can get ~2k back if you deorbit aiming to land near KSC. I could have used OCTOs to save some money, but the HEX makes the rendezvous much easier and it's a recoverable part.

Drop 9k funds more and set up 3 more relays in low orbit, with this super-cheap relay sat:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1823680177