The HovMoth or Hover Moth was my first attempt at a Moon (Mun) lander. I wanted to see a Hydrogen Ion driven, VTOL, single stage to orbit vessel capable of lateral atmospheric flight, but built to gently touch down and navigate multiple Lunar encounters. It took some adjusting but the HovMoth hit every mark as a prototype. It didn't have lights, airbrakes for reentry, and the thrust configuration wasn't the greatest, but worked as a first round draft.

​     If you look close you can see that I changed the nose cones from the funky mandible looking ones, to a much smaller dome shape in the videos. I unfortunately don't have a hangar photo of that configuration.   

     VTOL Takeoff to lateral flight

     "Skidding" to a stop

     Helipad landing

     The little ship was really stable as a VTOL machine, but was really unpleasant to fly aerodynamically. That was okay to me as I designed the optional wing functionality as a mechanism for Earth (Kerbin) reentry to fly laterally to a landing zone, once within atmosphere just in case reentry position ends up not being optimal.

​     The HovMoth touched down on and navigated Lunar encounters really well, but the thrust configuration angles were a little too aggressive in the slight gravity of the Moon (Mun). Between the thrust angles, and not having lights for better proximity orientation, there were a few more Lunar crashes than I care to mention, but the successes guided me in my next Lunar lander design. 

More on that  later.

Enjoy.

-NR

To those that inspire and urge us to carry on. 
Check out:
​https://www.artstation.com/louarteaga9

An honorable mention is this little guy, the Fruit Bat. It was one of my early designs in KSP and is mostly aesthetic rather than innovative or extraordinarily capable. An all electric atmospheric plane, the fruit bat is not particularly fast and is not designed for orbit. It is fun to fly though, and performs like a solid little jet. It was designed to familiarize myself with the all electric propulsion systems in KSP and to proof the onboard electric generation systems for long range flight. 
The Fruit Bat is reliable and fun to fly, plus it looks like something straight out of a sci-fi anime, and that was kind of what I was going for. 

​-NR