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Old 03-02-2020, 10:09 PM
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blackshire blackshire is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
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In his fact-filled video of six days ago ("Astra's Secret Rocket Project Finally Reveals Itself," see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUzDTV1JEWQ ), Scott Manley mentioned that the DARPA Launch Challenge website (see: https://www.darpalaunchchallenge.org/ ) has numerous videos of Astra Space's "Rocket 3.0" They certainly do, and they're quite interesting, and:

I wonder which model rocket company will produce a kit of Astra Space's "Rocket 3.0" (and perhaps also its two suborbital test predecessors)? :-) The way the rear section of the first stage was/is constructed on all three vehicles, an (optional, for realistic flame & smoke; the MRC FX Smoke motors would have really "shone" here) cluster of five 13 mm or 18 mm motors (depending on the scale chosen) should--using M. Dean Black's “Finless Rockets Using Engine-Driven Gas-Dynamic Stabilization” (see: http://www.apogeerockets.com/educat...wsletter379.pdf ) method, and with a larger "tractor" motor up inside the airframe--give the model(s) excellent stabilization and (unless such models were very heavy, a situation that could easily be avoided) even engine-out capability (perhaps curving over a bit with one failed-to-ignite cluster motor, but still reaching a safe parachute deployment altitude).
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