Valentine Angel protects KSC from devious Mysterons in the Angel Interceptor Replica!

[Goddess Bhavani]

The Angel Interceptor

Inspired by Gerry Anderson's Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons

In my favorite Facebook hangout there appeared many, many reposts of planes that never flew, and the most beautiful of fantasy aircraft such as the Angel Interceptor from Captain Scarlet is a frequent sight among such real-world cult favorites like Avro Arrow and TSR.2.

It was only a matter of time before I tried to assemble one in KSP to 'test the aerodynamics'.

I was also curious about the design of this aircraft - Gerry Anderson aircraft models are usually, way ahead of their time and it was unsurprising some elements of the Angel Interceptor's design seemed to make sense from an aeronautical perspective. The pointy nose was later trialed by NASA as a sonic boom reduction device (the Quiet Spike), while drooping wingtips to enhance compression lift at supersonic speeds appeared on the XF-108 Rapier and XB-70 Valkyrie projects.

The Angel Interceptor would not be easily replicated as a stock craft, due to its unusual proportions. To closely mimic the shape of the original craft I used Tweakscale to resize airfoils and structural sections to obtain the required geometry. I also deleted many subsystems not necessary for flight test in KSP, and simplified the powerplant; what appears to be two turbofans feeding their exhaust into a central ramjet would be an impossible propulsion system with our construction methods.

Once the craft was carefully shaped with utmost care, using a slight bit of unconventional assembly technique to line up some odd geometry, Valentina took the prototype to the skies where she reported subsonic handling was superb and not unlike a contemporary lightweight jet fighter such as the F-5 Tiger.

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Due to some oddities with the KSP 1.02 flight model, supersonic flight cannot yet be safely attained and further flight testing up to the target top speed of Mach 3+ will continue once I setup the current version of FAR.

For some interesting reading, here is the canon specs of the Angel Interceptor from "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons".

http://www.spectrum-headquarters.com/angel_interceptor.html

Edited May 9, 2015 by pandoras kitten

[Esme]

Nice work! Any data on what the range of the KSP version is like yet?

[sbski]

Love it what visual mods are you using? just got a new desktop recently and it is KSP BEAST! And is this in 1.0? with mods?

[zekes]

wow, nice!

[Goddess Bhavani]

Love it what visual mods are you using? just got a new desktop recently and it is KSP BEAST! And is this in 1.0? with mods?

I am using the current version of EVE high res, which works like a charm in 1.02. Here is the EVE thread

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55905-0-24-7-4-Sep-9-2014-EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements

Craft update - I'm testing it in nuFAR right meow, hopefully it will go up to speed without the "become pancake at a certain exact speed" issue with stock aero.

[Goddess Bhavani]

Good news everyone!

Flight testing progressed at a rapid pace today, with the prototypes reaching Mach 3.1 @ 60k ft and proved extremely agile in the transonic range. With nuFAR 0.15 installed, it is capable of stable flight without SAS and boasts Jeremy Clarkson-approved levels of face tearing acceleration.

The Angel Interceptor craft file is available at KerbalX:

http://kerbalx.com/pandoraskitten/XF-1-NF-Angel-Interceptor

Mods required:

TweakScale

nuFAR