01-04-2014, 09:29 PM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironnerd
You had to go there, didn't you?
I have been wanting to make a rocket version of the Martin-Marietta X-24B or the Sierra Nevada Company's Dream Chaser. This may give me something to ponder.
I figure the X-24B will have the best glide of the two.
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You're right--one of the X-24B's pilots, John Manke, reported in a "Popular Science" article that of all of the lifting bodies, only the X-24B had positive lift after separation from the B-52 launch aircraft; the others all fell like a bomb until they were moving fast enough to "hit their lift stride." The Dream Chaser is based on NASA's HL-20, which in turn is based on the Soviet "Spiral" and BOR-4 lifting bodies. The jet-powered, piloted Spiral test vehicle and the Cosmos SLV-boosted BOR-4 re-entry test vehicles flew well, so a Dream Chaser model should as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironnerd
I also want to "rocketize" my Facetmobile, which is a really great little lifting body.
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Thank you for those links! I didn't know about the unmanned Payload Return Vehicle versions of the FMX-5 Facetmobile, which have gone supersonic while returning payloads from Skyhook-type stratospheric balloons at space-equivalent altitudes! I also found his airflow visualization method (wet paint on a Facetmobile R/C model) very creative!
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