02-10-2010, 07:04 PM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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Powered backslider rockets were also considered for Mars missions. The original Estes Mars Snooper was one such design, and it was not a fictitious one (see: http://www.plan59.com/av/av254.htm ). It was a 1950s design proposal for a nuclear rocket powered spaceship that would also have been capable of flying backwards through Mar's atmosphere as a nuclear ramjet powered airplane.
I first saw a painting and description of it in an old late 1950s book on full-scale rocketry (whose name I unfortunately can't remember), and the Mars Snooper's design was also familiar enough that it appeared in "The Last Martian's Story" (a short story in an early 1960s elementary school reading book) as the "Martian Princess," a Mars shuttle spaceship. For atmospheric flight, the Mars Snooper's rear rocket nozzle would have served as an air intake, and the large rear fins would have provided lift as wings. The forward canards would have acted as tail surfaces. The Estes Mars Snooper and Mars Snooper II kits might make good backslider rocket gliders. |