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Sturgeon's House

Aerospace Pictures and Art Thread


LostCosmonaut

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Having the inlet in the crusader-esque forward position made the inlet slightly more efficient, and obviated the draggy diverter.  On the other hand, it adds lateral surface area in front of the CG, which is destabilizing in the yaw axis.  Also, it slightly screwed up the area ruling and added a bit of weight.

 

In the end, GD determined that with the belly intake they could make the vertical stab slightly smaller and the area ruling slightly better, and that this would outweigh the loss of efficiency and add 40 km to the mission radius.

 

Eighty freaking kilometers.  Or just under five minutes at high subsonic.  That's how obsessively and carefully GD refined the design of the viper.  They explored thousands of configurations and thought very, very hard about very small advantages and disadvantages between them.

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