Tsien Spaceplane - A Chinese Dyna-Soar

[McGreig]

The impending release of the Anigrand kit reminded me that I've had a 1/72 Japanese resin kit of the Dyna-Soar for years. I think that it was originally acquired at the Nationals but I can't remember when and I've no idea who produced it. The instructions are in Japanese and the box tells you what it is and that it's kit number 72-2 in the X-series but not who the kit maker was.

Unlike the Anigrand kit, the cockpit is solid and no landing skids are supplied but it's otherwise a neat and well produced model.

The kit has been languishing in the remote corner of the stash reserved for non-Soviet types - think Siberian Gulag, but for models - but I recently came across details of the Chinese 1978  Tsien Spaceplane on Astronautix.com.

This was a Chinese project for a small, re-usable spacecraft. It was almost identical to the cancelled US Dyna-Soar project and was thought to have been developed using declassified Dyna-Soar data. There are some further details on Astronautix.com, which is the source of the drawing below.

This seems an ideal opportunity to ignore its capitalist roots and finish the Dyna-Soar in red stars, albeit slightly odd ones with bars and yellow borders, so I've retrieved it from internal exile and returned it to the work bench. The theory is that, since it just needs some light PSR, scratch built skids and a simple paint job, I can fit it in as light relief around more complicated projects (and the current January work nightmare) but I don't suppose that it'll turn out to be that simple - - - -

[cthulhu77]

Should be neat. Some of those resin kits (despite the cost) can really be knockouts.