Well… kinda.
So, history quiz: what did aeronautical engineers do when they wanted to get a good understanding of a new configurations flight characteristics over a wide range of speeds and altitudes in the days before computational fluid dynamics made the process complex, expensive and prone to error? Why… sometimes they’d just build a model of the thing, jam it on the nose of a big solid rocket, and shoot it into the sky. Take, for example, these NASA-Langley photos of a rocket-model of the Convair “Pogo” tailsitter turboprop fighter from the early 1950’s.
The instrumentation boom sticking out the nose would provide information on angle of attack, roll, yaw and such forth. If they found the model lawn-darted into the beach, they’d know that the natural glide slope of the vehicle is kinda steep.
In a way, NASA continues to do this… witness the X-43, launched atop a Pegasus. But with the relatively easy availability of high power rocket motors and supplies, it would seem that tests such as this would be fairly easy at the university level. It would give the students not only a check on their designs, but would also give them experience with actual construction, and with the rules, regs, and practices involved with rocketry. Plus… it’d be a hell of a lot more exciting that CFC runs.
3 Responses to “Rocket Powered VTOL Fighter”
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They did the same with the CF-105 Arrow….3 of the 5 tested I heard the last time I read are still at the bottom of Lake Superior.
They did a lot of shots like that when developing the B-58 Hustler.
Odd they’d do the rocket tests with a subsonic aircraft like the Pogo; they were normally used to determine how an aircraft would respond to supersonic flight, because that was hard to determine accurately in a windtunnel.