Dragonfly VTOL! (Looks like a dragonfly.)

[BagelRabbit]

Hello once again, Individuals!

After the enormous success of my Dragon-shaped KSP craft, it was time to test my skills with an (arguably) more difficult piece of subject matter: a dragonfly. Yes, for this design, I had to make a small craft that could VTOL and yet fly safely, and that was very small. And that was shaped like a dragonfly. Challenge accepted.

After some hard work... here's the result. It doesn't look too bad, it flies really well, and it does have VTOL capabilities!*

*The takeoffs are well and truly vertical. The landings, if done right, can be at less than 4 m/s horizontally, which is close enough to a vertical landing in my book.

.craft file!

Here are some pictures of the Dragonfly. I may add more, depending on whether I can get any good ones.

Testing out the Dragonfly's landings by putting it on top of the VAB Helipad... Success!

Here's a nice picture of the Dragonfly up above KSC, looking down upon the world below.

While the Dragonfly is an infiniglider, you probably shouldn't fly it at more than 50 m/s (instabilities happen if you get too fast. Hooray for backflips!) so most of my testing has been around the Kerbal Space Center. It should work at any altitude and could probably even fly on Duna, if you're careful.

Also, sorry for the unsightly linear RCS ports. There's really nowhere to hide them with a craft of this small size. RCS was the only way that I could get a craft of this size to be a VTOL, given my somewhat limited skill in these areas.

Let me know if you have any questions! Enjoy flying the Dragonfly!

Edited August 5, 2014 by UpsilonAerospace

[soulreaver1981]

The tale seems a bit sort for dragon fly.

But its a nice looking craft

[LvL]

Nice one Bagel Rabbit! plz youtube vid on it? (BTW, +rep+)

[Darthzeus]

Wow, just wow rep'd. You do some stellar aesthetics

[BagelRabbit]

Hello everyone! Good to see that the Dragonfly is pretty well liked.

The tale seems a bit sort for dragon fly.

But its a nice looking craft

The reason that the tail seems short, so far as I can tell, is that it's relatively thick compared to the overall Dragonfly. A thinner tail would look a bit longer and be a bit more realistic, but it would also be quite a bit more part-heavy. I was trying for minimal part-count with this design... the result came out to under 100 parts but that's still quite a few, considering the Dragonfly's miniscule size.

Nice one Bagel Rabbit! plz youtube vid on it? (BTW, +rep+)

Thanks for the +Rep!

I actually made a YouTube video with a few other craft in it, but the entire second half of the video was devoted to Dragonfly-flying.

Note that the craft is missing its RCS-port "eyeballs" but is otherwise exactly the same as the initial pictures. Also note the way that it lands. That actually took a long while to figure out, but I think that the result was quite cool, even if it means that the craft isn't a "true" VTOL.

Wow, just wow rep'd. You do some stellar aesthetics

Thank you! I really enjoy some of the VTOLs that you've created, yourself. I think that building VTOLs is one of the most challenging, and the most rewarding, parts of the game.

Oh! By the way!

Andrew Hansen said that he was inspired by this craft to create a massive VTOL SSTO Dragonfly! Stay tuned for that... I'll post a video link as soon as it comes out.

.craft file coming later today, I promise!

[BagelRabbit]

At long last, it is here.

Dragonfly .craft file!

Let me know how it flies, and happy testing! (I'll also provide the link on the OP.)

[EnterStyx]

:huh:SORCERY!!!.

[BagelRabbit]

:huh:SORCERY!!!.

"Most magic tricks are not actually magic. Technically, they are sorcery." -Space Core, Portal 2 (is it a bad thing that I know many Space Core lines by heart? I hope not.)

I'm currently in the middle of a half-hearted effort to upscale the Dragonfly. It's not working very well... I think I'll scrap it.

That being said, while I'm showing this craft off, do you have any suggestions for other animals that I could create? (I've already done a dragon and a dog.)

Thanks