- Joined
- Mar 18, 2022
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- 133
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I hope you didn't think it was criticism in any way. It was not. I was just curious as to 1) whether you had considered it and 2) thought you might know if there is a "right" answer to the shape of the sustainer.Hey Duncan - while it may be true that the sustainer is truly a Sears-Haack body, my experience building this Nike Hercules is that getting to true scale is about twice as expensive as Sport Scale. Unless you are 3D Printing the fuselage, I can't imagine the cost of that structure being cheaper than a three-body surface like what I did, Wedge Oldham did and @dbpierce did.
The lesson I learned is SCALE = EXPENSIVE. There are a number of other cons with SCALE too - like the chutes and drogues, but money runs out fast on something like this.
I wish you the very best.
I imagine it must be that cost does not scale linearly with size - I see exactly the same thing even with LPR - MPR. It's all the art of the possible, right? And I haven't (and honestly might not) ever built to the size and complexity that you HPR guys do. Again, fabulous work and I hope to see a great flight out of your Hercules when you get a launch window.
Best regards.