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Old 07-11-2018, 12:09 PM
Diderick A. den Bakker's Avatar
Diderick A. den Bakker Diderick A. den Bakker is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Zeist (near Utrecht), Holland
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Risking more of Airdave's comments:
The Delta7Studios model (pictures below) is obviously based on the drawings in the Spaceship Handbook (which I was lucky to buy several years ago for a very reasonable price, when it was still in print - the second hand prices on the internet are really way over the top). The rocket driven sled on the ramp shows there was room enough for the horizontal 'wing'. One can only guess at the way of thinking of the movie designers... Perhaps they thought such a wing was necessary to provide stability while still in the earth atmosphere? The sled and the ramp are obviously inspired by the method of launching the German flying bomb, the V1. At max 400 MPH it really needed wings! It was literally an 'unmanned' plane, not a rocket. Just for comparison: the V2 reached well over 3,500 MPH. But that was the first ballistic missile - no wings needed.
At escape velocity (25,000 mph) such a 'stabiliser' would have been totally superfluous. Perhaps movie props designers (in those days) did not have the knowledge needed for such details...
Attached Thumbnails
Space Ark from When Worlds Collide-spaceark3.jpg   Space Ark from When Worlds Collide-spacearklaunchramp1.jpg  

Last edited by Diderick A. den Bakker; 07-11-2018 at 12:25 PM.
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