er, did you try to maneuver your model? for going straight and fast it’s a fine shape (the X-47 had a similar one), but once you start trying to turn sharply you’ll have problems. Besides, the wingload we talk about is nowhere near a paper model.

Finally, you talk about a zoom climb on rocket power… pretty much anything flying on the next decades will have an IRST of some sort (and pretty advanced as well), which will allow for an early detection of your rocket engines climbing, even far away… and your overheated fuselage (for those modern IRST, your supersonic flight in cold air will stand out like a lighthouse in the middle of the night) will be a nice target which will rapidly see a few missiles coming its way… missiles it won’t be able to outturn while coming their way during its “supersonic glide” (necessary if you want to be able to do anything other than falling @ FL980 with so little wingspan)

last, but not least, you need to add into equation the drag it will generate at supersonic speeds… with such a small mass, it will need a high thrust to keep going, and your turbofan may experience some problems in generating it in thin air that one encounters at such altitudes.

So, in order to recapitulate: you want to make a highly visible target for the Mig31, target which won’t be able to maneuver and avoid even the crudest IR missile sent its way…

Ok now you do have a tighter grip on this.

The plane will shut down the inlet for turbofan at 10-15 000 meters ( or at mach 1.1 )..it has 40% frontal area of Bell X-1E and less span…which did go 27 km at mach 2.25…with only 27 kN ( 75% of the VR ).

The VR scrambles when Mig-31 is 300-400 KM away..IRST does not see it..at any stage.

Earth will cause the plane same “thrust” as the rockets on the way up..up to 10-15 KM where the turbofan is ignited again..or not..could be ignited when the pilot overshoots the runway.

Due to the engine installation and subsonic speed at lower the IR missiles are no good on this ( and radar cannot detect it ).

Besides the climb takes 2 minutes..it still has so called GETAWAY power for the rockets if an AAM is fired upon it. Even AIM-120 can’t touch this ( due to the speed )..if the pilots uses the assets and some “pilot ****”.

…no shots on goal !

some of the problems with your fighter would be:

– high approach speed due to the wing planform
– lateral stability issues due to the same reason
– low fuel capacity due to midget size (basically, you’ll be bingo fuel when reaching about 2-3rds of your take off runway, or almost…)
– rocket engines will be dead weight once used
– little space left for electronics onboard (and you’ll need lots of these in the future)
– etc…

I agree it has speedy planform…but it is overwinged…it has only 170 kg/m2 wingloading with still punch capability.

The model seemed to be very stable.

Small size does not mean bingo on the runway..since the cruise engine burns only 380 liters / hour ! Compare to 50 000 liters / hr for JSF F-35 on AB.

I agree rockets engines are dead after the plane has reached 98 000 ft altitude ( in 2 minutes )..from where it can glide 600 km !

Buzz and Neil needed a computer size of a modern Ti-35 pocket calculator to go to moon.

So it was a good try..but no hits this time.

You might like to contact QinetiQ at Farnborough who with their Zephyr UAV hold the world record for endurance using solar/battery power with 14 days airborne.
Zephyr may look like an overlarge model but it pushed many technical boundaries.

Sounds as if they are busy with something else..this idea of 400-500 km/h flying solar/muscle powered high flyer did dot interest them at all.

I bet trying to promote this will be like Jules Verne making books about flying some century and half ago…there were only balloons back then.

1600-1700 watts !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance

That is 2.15 – 2.3 hp !