Super-Realistic Dragon/Falcon! (Probably not the kind you're expecting.)

[BagelRabbit]

Putting a Dragon on a Falcon in KSP!
This probably wasn't what you expected... instead, it's far better.
~~~

Designing a falcon-shaped craft and a dragon-shaped craft that worked like the "real thing" was incredibly difficult. I've had this idea for a long time, but only recently attempted to make it a reality. It sucked up hours of my time, and even now, I don't consider it complete. It's come a long way, though, and I really love it.

I'll treat this thread as a "build thread" to demonstrate all of the decisions and pain that went into this silly design.

~~~
Initial Objectives:

I wanted to build a Falcon and Dragon that looked enough like the real thing that people would easily be able to identify them. It was important that the craft would be capable of going to orbit, maneuvering around, and returning to Kerbin while carrying Kerbals. Finally, I wanted to make the craft 100% reusable. Otherwise, Elon Musk would be ashamed of me.

~~~
Building the Falcon:

I started by building the falcon. I needed to make sure that this bird could carry the Dragon up to a high altitude - a minimum of 25 km at 500 m/s, I decided. I also wanted the Falcon to be able to glide down to a safe landing. I was going to give it big bird wings, after all.

Building the body of the Falcon went relatively smoothly. The only thing I was really unhappy about (and still am) is its beak, which is very unfalcon-like. Trying to get the Falcon to fly stably was another matter. The bird flew fine until you tried to turn it, whereupon it would lose all semblance of normal flight and pirouette around like a deranged ballerina. I added SAS and vertical wing parts clipped into its body. I also increased the dihedral of its wings. The resulting flights were not totally mishap-free, but the Falcon behaved much better.

Choosing the proper engine(s) was even more difficult. I tried two ramjets. I tried four of 'em. I tried two of 'em with two Thuds. I tried four Vector engines. I tried two Vectors. I tried aerospikes. In the end, I settled on a weird combination: two Vectors and two RAPIERs, all ignited at the beginning of the flight. This combination met my needs, though I acknowledged that the whole changing-modes-on-the-RAPIER matter would be a little difficult to do in flight. I considered the Falcon "done" and set out to build the Dragon.

~~~
Building the Dragon:

I started with the head and immediately was pleased: within minutes I had a very derpy but very dragon-like face on the craft. The majority of the build was smooth sailing: I wanted to keep the Dragon small, simple, and light.

There were two big problems with the build: uncontrollable flipping and the choice of what engine to use. For the former, I made the craft slightly overstable, ensured the center of thrust was in line with the center of mass, and compensated for the remainder of the problem with SAS. After trying several runs with a nuclear engine, I opted for an Aerospike. The Dragon had a surprising amount of Delta-V, which came in useful later.

~~~
Putting the Two Together:

I naively thought that the two craft would work harmoniously from the very beginning. I was wrong.

Putting the Dragon up top raised the CoM, which required me to move the Falcon's engines higher up on the airframe. The center of lift for the combined craft was also in a weird place, and I had to tweak both the Dragon and the Falcon before it settled into a place I was content with.

As the Falcon's tanks drained, the CoM of the combined craft shifted upwards towards the Falcon. The craft would struggle to pitch downwards, even with all the SAS I added. As a result, I needed to light the Dragon's engines earlier than expected to raise the CoT. As expected, the RAPIER engine mode change was a little awkward, but I could actually use it to my advantage to squeeze every last drop of fuel out of the Falcon.

Worryingly, the Dragon/Falcon combo was topping out just shy of orbit. Rather than further modifying the design, I took the easy way out and added two SRBs under the Falcon's wings. This actually worked surprisingly well, and I made it to orbit for the first time! In celebration, I took a few pictures of the craft on ascent:

I had forgotten completely about adding on the Kerbal seats, so I just tacked two of them to the top of the Dragon. This, too, actually worked! (If you're wondering: yes, the Falcon has Claw talons; yes, I did put Kerbals in them; no, I did not get to orbit on that run.)

Finally, I added RCS ports to the Dragon, tweaked the fuel lines, and added disposable Lander-Cans to make it easier for Kerbals to get on the craft.

~~~
Figures and Specs:

Part Count: 239
Wet Mass: 108 Tons
Crew Capacity: 2 (4?)
Hours Spent on the Craft: 8
100% Reusable (in theory)
200-250 m/s Delta-V in orbit, on a good flight

~~~
Video:

 

 

~~~
.Craft File?

Not yet.

There are still some scenarios I need to test (docking; high-speed Dragon landings) and there's still a little bit of cleaning-up to do on the craft. Expect the .craft file soon-ish...? I'll post the link when I'm content with the design.

 

Thanks for reading through this! I hope you enjoyed this peek into my crazy imagination. Please let me know if you have any comments / improvements / glowing praise for this design. Have a great day!

Best,
Upsilon

Edited June 11, 2016 by UpsilonAerospace

[Heckspress]

Brilliant.

[Orky Kultur]

That is truly stonking

[Heckspress]

this needs a sticky

[Majorjim!]

I lol'd when I saw it, then I saw a quite creative little craft! Nice job on this, it looks really cool.

[Ozymandias_the_Goat]

good pun. Great craft!

[The Optimist]

I AM SATISFIED

[TorchedForever]

Wow... the shaping on the Falcon is really impressive for a functional craft and the dragon is really recognizable for its small size. Reading all the design challenges was a pleasant departure from the 'pics & .craft drop' style of thread.

[BagelRabbit]

On 6/11/2016 at 9:39 AM, Heckspress said:

Brilliant.

 

On 6/11/2016 at 0:09 PM, Orky Kultur said:

That is truly stonking

 

On 6/11/2016 at 1:12 PM, Heckspress said:

this needs a sticky

 

On 6/11/2016 at 1:53 PM, Majorjim said:

I lol'd when I saw it, then I saw a quite creative little craft! Nice job on this, it looks really cool.

 

On 6/11/2016 at 2:07 PM, LetsGoToMars! said:

good pun. Great craft!

 

21 hours ago, TorchedForever said:

Wow... the shaping on the Falcon is really impressive for a functional craft and the dragon is really recognizable for its small size. Reading all the design challenges was a pleasant departure from the 'pics & .craft drop' style of thread.

There's not much to say except: Thank you all for the kind words and imaginary Internet points! Also, I'm glad some of y'all liked this more text-heavy explanation of How It Was Made, rather than simply releasing the finished product. That's personally something I would love to see from some of my favorite builders. I think it would not only make their efforts seem even more impressive (for me at least), but also give others the chance to go behind the scenes and try a similar project themselves!

Just my $0.02 USD 

-Upsilon

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Amazing!  The dragon is so perfectly recognizable!   

On 6/12/2016 at 4:33 PM, UpsilonAerospace said:

There's not much to say except: Thank you all for the kind words and imaginary Internet points! Also, I'm glad some of y'all liked this more text-heavy explanation of How It Was Made, rather than simply releasing the finished product. That's personally something I would love to see from some of my favorite builders. I think it would not only make their efforts seem even more impressive (for me at least), but also give others the chance to go behind the scenes and try a similar project themselves!

I'll keep that in mind, thanks for the idea!

[Majorjim!]

On 06/13/2016 at 1:33 AM, UpsilonAerospace said:

I'm glad some of y'all liked this more text-heavy explanation of How It Was Made, rather than simply releasing the finished product.

I would like to see more people doing this too!

 I think I do this every time I release something complex. If it takes time to make, it's worth explaining properly.

[Ultimate Steve]

I can't see the "Probably not the kind you're expecting" from the main page, so I clicked on it thinking it would be the real dragon/falcon. Well, it was a real dragon/falcon...

So then I see the picture, glance up at the title, read the page, and start giggling, my mind filled with images of Elon Musk finding this and deciding to build it in real life

Great job! It looks positively amazing, as well as being completely functional! Can't wait for DL!