SST-2707 Cloud Cutter

[kapteenipirk]

It's been years, but it was finally time to bring back and redo one of my first craft i showed here on the forums. My Replica of the Boeing 2707 Clipper, Americas best bet for a supersonic commercial airliner, witch unfortunately didn't make it.

 

SST-2707 Cloud Cutter

 

While i was again scrolling trough the list of all the stuff i wanted to make using Braking Grounds, i suddenly got reminded of a design i made years ago that i could try and recreate a little more authentically.

Ive always found the Boeing-2707 to be a better looking and more interesting design when compared to the mighty Concorde and the not so safe TU-144. The 200 version to be exact, as the 2707 went trough a lot of design changes before it was cancelled. The 100 and 200 versions are the most interesting to me as they included the variable geometry wings, aka swing wings, while the later version had more traditional delta-wings as the swing-wing mechanism was far too complicated and heavy.

 

As mentioned above, the Boeing 2707 sadly didn't make it even tough it was clearly given a lot of time, care and attention, and a hefty government funding to boot.

But when you look at the characteristics and the demands they had to meet, it's not that surprising the project fell flat.

First of, the aircraft would have had a top speed of around mach 3, and would carry around 250-300 passengers at those speeds (mach 2 on the concorde and 128-144 passengers).

And then there's the SIZE of the thing, 93.27 m (2707-200), that's more than the AN-225 (only 84 m). A wingspan of 54.97 m when fully spread ain't half bad either.

Also there where all the sonic booms to consider, witch turned the people of the town (using speakers) they where tested on, quite mad.

 

But man, it would have probably been the aircraft of the century if it ever got made, and would have made even the Concorde look weak in comparison. Or at-least that's how i think.

 

 

Some reference pictures

Spoiler

 

A view of the different design variants. 200 is missing as it's really just a 100 with some canards and a nose that only folds from a single point.

 

A better look at the Boeing-733, that turned into the 2707. To me the 733 looks more like a civilian version of the B-1 Lancer or the TU-160 Blackjack.

 

A better look at the 2707-100 with it's swing-wings and double folding nose.

 

Here you can see the canards that where added to the 200 version. This illustration still shows the double folding nose of the 100.

 

A lovely comparison between the 2707-300, Tu-144 and the Concorde.

 

This time with the help of BG i would have the chance to create something truly spectacular and create a pair of working swing-wings on an aircraft that is 74m in length (the KSP version).

Unfortunately, like in the real 2707 project, my swing-wings didn't work out so well. I truly gave it my all and threw a whole bunch of different design changes and improvements in a hope to get them working, but i feel like they are simply too big to ever really work, no matter how well you design them (well, with the help of some mods you could propably do it).

 

The best i was able to do as far as standing still goes, was to get the wing tips slightly off the ground.

 

That's not too bad right...

Forget the rapid disassembly, but when Jeb and Val are both terrified, you know somethings wrong.

Basically, when i hit about 100m/s, the plane had an identity crisis and started flapping it's wings around, witch doesn't really work.

 

The wings where connected to a freely rotating servo that would be the swiveling point. for the movement, i had two sets of freely rotating servos and pistons connected to the back of the wing root, and the wing-tip.

The servos/pistons inside the fuselage where also heavily reinforced. But it just wasn't enough. Oh, and i also created counterweights on sticks on the swiveling point to try and help get the wing-tips a little further off the ground.

At one point i also played around with offset plates, that would act as a sort of guide-rail/channel connecting the wings together. It was a pretty silly idea, but if the wing panels didn't want to get away from each-other so hard and create a messed up wing segment, it may have helped a little better, as the the slot's did sorta work.

 

Same vessel interaction wasn't on at that point anymore, but i think you get what i was going for.

 

After those experiments i gave up and removed the mechanisms and strutted up the wings to make the aircraft something that actually works. I guess i can really only blame myself for making the aircraft so huge.

 

So, a bit of a set-back, but i personally don't really care as it still looks and flies like it should, the wings are just fixed now.

If you want to pose them you can easily rotate the wings in the hangar by just rotating the servo they are attached to. There's no need to do anything extra, as i have strutted the thing in a way that it works when the wings are folded in and when they are folded out.

As you no doubt guessed by now, i added a working folding nose in it as-well. Unfortunately the servo can only keep it pointing forward up to a certain speed, after that the faster you go, the more it starts to droop. It won't come off or anything like that, it will just point towards Kerbin.

This time around i was able to reach the supersonic speeds i was missing last time around.

I went with the MK-3 fuselage system for this one as i wanted to make the aircraft usable as a commercial airliner. I even added some lander-can doors for loading and unloading of passengers.

 

NOTE: When flying at top speeds, be careful when you change attitude even a bit, as the aircraft tends to catastrophically brake apart if it loses control at those speeds.

 

 

 

More picks of the aircraft

Spoiler

 

A look at the aircraft with the wings posed open and with the interior layout being shown.

 

 

As i mentioned earlier, the nose doesn't like super high speeds too much.

 

I adjusted my attitude a little too hard and lost control, causing disassembly due to aerodynamic forces.

 

And for nostalgia sakes, here are some picks of ye old design

Spoiler

 

 

Other than the pretty cheaply made nose/cockpit, id say the design still holds up pretty well. The fact that it uses the old Whiplash engines gives you a pretty good idea of the age of the aircraft.

 

Technical specs:

Top speed: fastest i was able to go was 860 m/s at a little over 12000m

Stall speed: 36.2 m/s with wings folded out

Length: 74.9m with nose folded down

Wingspan: 43.4m with wings folded out

Height: 11.4m

Mass: 247.8 tons

Parts: 356

 

You can operate the nose from the Translate up and down axis group.

 

Download link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bcljdy6qxr2nab1/SST-2707 Cloud Cutter.craft?dl=0

 

And there it is for you, a large SST for all your high speed passenger transport needs. I hope you enjoy it