Nightmare Stealth Satellite Interceptor

[DynaSoar]

I saw a picture of an HPR bird called Stealth, and it set me off. I decided to put together what I imagined would be a manned satellite interceptor. This was at the height of my experimenting with styrene cutting and folding for fins, etc.

Here's an overview of the result. Details to come.

 

[DynaSoar]

Detail of the nose section. The body seperates just fore of the canards. The body fore of that is packed with putty, for stability.

The nose is flattened on 3 faces. One has a canopy glued to it (the hand end of a clothes pin made the perfect slope), the other two have missiles in launchers, made of the pointed ends of bamboo skewers inside two pieces of styrene L beam.

This same styrene L beam is used throughout for flanges on fins as well as longitudinal piping.

 

[DynaSoar]

A better view of the canopy and one missile, with the top piping section showing. It's the only one that's full length. The rest stop at the body seperation point.

Sorry it's so hard to see. It's very, very flat black. I used almost an entire can on it, making it heavily layered and smoothed, as I thought a stealth should be.

 

[DynaSoar]

The launch lug is hiding inside the scram jet scoop on the bottom of the bird. The scoop is built out of thin styrene sheet built inside a frame of L beam.

 

[DynaSoar]

From the business end. The stabilizers are twin rudders with an additional vertical stabilizer. The latter has the other two glued together under it, and it's all held down with L beam flanges. The MMT is set for 24mm 3.75" (Estes E size). Weight considerations (10.8 ounces, 6.9 of that in the nose) dictate this thing fly on a high boost D such as AT D21 or better.

 

[DynaSoar]

Finally, the wing detail. The wings were cut out of thick styrene sheet. The zig-zag stealth dsign was added by cutting very thin styrene in that design, mirroed at the leading edge, then folded at the leading edge and slipped over the wing. The design is the same top and bottom.

All the other L beam flanges were 0.1", but those for the wings were 0.125".

One thing I learned by ruining one set of body piping: don't pack styrene full of glue with no exit for fumes. It might glue better that way, but the trapped fumes will eat away at the plastic. The body piping is actually the second complete set glued over the top of the previous.