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SCALE: 1/6 |
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INITIAL RELEASE: 2003 |
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MEDIUM: RESIN |
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RARITY: (3) |
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ABOUT THE DESIGN |
ABOUT THE KIT |
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On March 27, 2004, a
12-foot-long, unmanned remote-controlled aircraft equipped with an air-breathing
"scramjet" engine -- an engine that has no moving parts and uses
a mixture of hydrogen vapor and super-compressed super-sonic air to create
thrust -- became the first non-rocket-powered vehicle to go
"hypersonic" -- in this case, Mach 7, a full seven times the speed of
sound. This was just the second attempt to test NASA's revolutionary
scramjet engine -- the first attempt in June 2003 met with failure unrelated to
the vehicle itself -- and the short but
successful flight of the X-43A proved the feasibility of scramjet-powered
flight, a technology that may one day lead to an entirely new breed of
high-speed combat and civilian aircraft. The wedge-shaped X-43A was fixed to a specially modified Pegasus missile and then carried aloft by a NASA B-52B bomber. The Pegasus boosted the X-43A to an altitude of approximately 95,000 feet, at which point the hypersonic aircraft separated and boosted itself to Mach 7 -- in all of about 10 seconds! |
This 1/6 resin model was
made by ShadowAero, a company specializing in the manufacture of actual
full-sized rockets. The kit was first released in 2003 prior to the
first X-43A test. It was then re-released in April 2004 in celebration of
the craft's first successful flight. The model consisted of a single-cast resin fuselage/engine piece; the control fins were "printed" on sheet styrene and the modeler was required to cut them out by hand. The kit also came with a separate resin base and a plastic support rod. This model was built from the 2004 re-release. This was a bagged kit with no box art. |
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X-43 Scramjet Artist's Conception |
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X-Planes & Prototypes |
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