Dragon Moth - Taildragger SSTO (not for the fainthearted)

[FlipNascar]

TLDR Easy to get into orbit. Will kick you in the face when you try to land unless you follow the destructions, and even then it will drive you mad. Can put stick shapes in orbit. Has some dV left when, er if, you get there. 129 parts. 45.6T ready to fly (before payload). Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/195ib3r7siwyp1x/Dragon%20Moth.craft?dl=0

Popping my Spacecraft Exchange Cherry with a little something different... Presenting the ultimate in landing frustration - the Dragon Moth. With oodles of power, the chances are if you can fit it in the cargo bay and keep it more or less on the Centre of Mass it will put it into LKO. During flight testing an empty Dragon Moth will happily make a 100x100 orbit with around 1,000 m/s dV left. Throw a meagre 2.5T payload in, and you're still looking at 850+ d/V.

Getting into orbit is the easy part. You can fire up the engines, engage SAS, go full throttle and have no need to touch the flight controls until somewhere around the 15,000m mark. This thing will take off by itself. Best bet is to follow the standard-ish spaceplane launch profile, MechJeb (or your preferred supplier of supplementary aids) is a touch recommended due to the positioning of the engines and the danger they pose during flameouts. If you're going hardcore, suggest you start watching the engines very carefully as you approach the 20,000m mark. Let them wind down until you're no longer accelerating - probably around the 24/25km mark, switch rapiers to rockets and keep those turbojets running as long as you can. Probably around 30km. Full power, and off you go. Intakes have been balanced with the wonderful Intake Build Assist Mod.

The harder part, getting this thing back on the ground... Its handling can be likened to the taildraggers of the 20s and the 30s, you must try and keep the thing flying in balance where possible, otherwise you're asking for trouble. It's delicate, you cannot bash the stick around - and don't forget to lock the steering on the tailwheel for take offs and landings! In testing, what I've found is that you're best bet is to not touch anything control wise until you're around 150m/s, even better, wait until 100m/s. Gentle turns will keep her the right way up. The final approach that will give you the highest degree of success is actually a flat approach, and a slow approach. Give yourself plenty of time. Oh, now would be a good time to add: always keep a trickle of power on for any handling manoeuvres - it really helps. As you cross the threshold of the runway you want to be aiming for about 70m/s, slowly reduce whatever trickle of power is still on and try to maintain level flight. Your speed will start to drop slowly, keep her steady. You want to try and keep her in the air for as long as possible with zero power. Make sure you are flying slower than 60m/s before attempting touchdown. And you definitely need to make sure you have zero sideslip, else rapid unplanned disassembly may occur. It will take practice, but there's a certain element of achievement when you get the thing on the ground. And be gentle with the brakes, she'll tip over plenty easy! Practice will make perfect! Have only tested with 3-point landings (all wheels touch down at the same time).

It does have two shielded docking ports, but they were more for aesthetics, so there is no working RCS system. I may revamp at some point and add that in, but why would you want to dock a scrawny cargo ship to anything? One must dock to the Dragon Moth. I haven't optimized the oxidizer loadout mainly due to differing requirements in each launch profile I've had. Dry and Wet CoMs are offset by only a small amount, and with more TWR than is healthy, I follow the old adage that "the only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire".

Action Groups:

1- Switch Rapier mode

2- Toggle Turbojets

3- Toggle Rapiers

5- Toggle intakes

8- Decouple/Undock vertical docking port in cargo bay

9- Toggle solar panels

10- Toggle cargo bay doors

I built this because after a quick search, I hadn't seen any SSTO taildraggers. And it seemed an absurd thing to do, almost Kerbal-esque, to recreate the handling qualities of a bygone era for a spaceplane. May you have as many frustrating crashes as I had trying to land this piece of crap, er I mean fine space-faring craft. Flying by keyboard? Don't worry, all testing was done with a keyboard. Anyone with a stick should have a much easier time of it. But expect to crash, and don't take your favourite Kerbals. About 30 Kerbals were killed, er did science on rapid disassembly and sadly went to Devon, during testing. Feedback and comments welcomed.

Get your Dragon Moth here.

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