This week I travelled to D.C. to present at a conference on spacecraft anomalies. I flew back yesterday, but before I caught my flight out of Dulles, Joe Minow and I paid a brief visit to the part of the Air and Space Museum located very near that airport (it was his idea - a very good one, I may add). The place is pretty awesome, filled with all sorts of planes including the Enola Gay, a Concorde, and a beautiful, beautiful Pan Am Clipper. There was also some space stuff, located in the Space Hanger. The big draw there was the Space Shuttle Discovery; seeing it evokes sadness when I realize that the magnificent machines are no longer flying. There were also some rockets and missiles on display, and I was drawn to the inert round of the U.S. ASM-135 anti-satellite missile. Back in September 1985, one of these was launched from the belly of an F-15, taking out Solwind P78-1, an gamma ray satellite orbiting at 555 km altitude. Even though successful, the program was cancelled in 1988 - yet another government head scratcher (why cancel a successful and obviously important program?). The ASM-135 looked like it could be easily scaled down to a flying rocket, and I took some pics to establish the dimensions and markings.
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| ASM-135 anti-satellite missile on display at the Air and Space Museum (click to enlarge). |
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| Another view (click to enlarge). |
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| Information plaque on the ASM-135 (click to enlarge). |
Today, I measured the rocket pieces (in pixels), and tried to work out a scale. The rear has a smaller thickness, and it turns out the BT-60, ST-13 body tubes are perfect for the top and bottom parts of the rocket if I make it a 1/13th scale model (The original is 214 inches in length). The scale being established, it was fairly easy to create the rocket in Open Rocket - it should fly pretty well on a standard Estes 18mm motor. Only problem is going to be the nose cone, which will have to be a custom job.
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| Open Rocket 1/13th scale design of the ASM-135 (click to enlarge). |
Time to call my friend Gordon (The Sandman)…
That would make an awesome scale rocket Bill! Would also be great as an L2 project ;-)
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