Tidebreaker Spaceplane Rev. 21

TACV-21 Tidebreaker

New exploration suite, Dragonfly rotorcraft, and rover!

Included is Vizzy GPWS (Ground Proximity Warning System), featuring callouts and alarms such as "Pull Up", "Sink Rate", "Gear Up", "Too Low, Gear Down", and a totally unique stall warning program functional on any atmospheric planetary body.

As a mainstay of the interstellar colonization program, the Trans-Atmospheric Colonization Vehicle (TACV), or Tidebreaker, is responsible for bringing base modules down from Interstellar Vehicles (ISVs) and deploying them on the surface of alien worlds.

The vehicle is a Mach 4.8, variable angle wingtip, SSTO VTOL spaceplane. The spaceplane features a spacious cargo bay, translating shock cones, retractable RCS thrusters, folding wingtips, and combined split drag rudder/trim tabs. Included is an auto-hover program.

Performance Specs:

Cruise Ceiling: ~24 km
Top Speed (airbreathing): Mach 4.8
Propulsion System:
- 8x afterburning zero-bypass turbojets
- 3x afterburning zero-bypass ramjets
- 2x gas core nuclear thermal rockets, water
- 44x mini gas core nuclear thermal rockets for VTOL, water
Wet Mass: 4487 metric tons
Dry Mass: 1962 metric tons
TWR (Earth, ~ASL, max):
- Airbreathing: 0.52
- Main Rockets: 0.61
- VTOL TWR: 3.32
dV After Attaining LEO: 13.5 km/s
Crew: 9
Dockable: Yes

Action groups are labeled

Slider 1: trim tabs ( +100% = up, -100% = down) and takeoff flaps (+100% = deployed)

Slider 2: variable angle/folding wingtips
(0% = folded in for VTOL, +50% = angled down for ascent, +100% = angled up for reentry)

Slider 3: cargo bay ramp
(~ +50% = deployed)

Slider 4: auto-hover control / Dragonfly piston / Dragonfly door
Autohover
(+/- 10 m/s range, 100% = +10 m/s, 0% = 0 m/s, -100% = -10 m/s)

Dragonfly piston
(Enable piston and turn on autohover to activate)

Dragonfly door
(Enable piston and turn on autohover to activate)

To take off, set the jets to full throttle, wait until very end of runway, deploy takeoff flaps with slider two, and quickly pull up.

Ramjets advised for speeds only over Mach 2.4.

For VTOL flight, VTOL rockets are grouped in clusters to allow adaption for lower gravity environments. For Earth-like gravity, clusters 1 and 2 are recommended. Located aft are 2 clusters of 2 each trim motors for instances when CoM drifts aft from its original location. Usually, only one cluster of trim motors are needed, but two can be used to increase thrust and counter pitch up thrust torques resulting from lower fuel loads. Clusters two is rarely used and only included for safety factor.

For VTOL flight, make sure to enable the "Attitude Motors" AG for attitude control without need for RCS.

To dock, the main thrusters are not recommended. When close to your target, ensure that the AGs "RCS" and "Docking RCS" are both enabled. The thrusters will automatically deploy.

To use the astronaut elevator, EVA the astronaut, walk to the elevator, switch back to the vehicle, ensure that the "Autohover" AG is disabled, and set slider 4 to +100%