by Riphaeus

The Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar ("Dynamic Soarer") was a United States Air Force (USAF) program to develop a spaceplane that could be used for a variety of military missions, including aerial reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite maintenance, and as a space interceptor to sabotage enemy satellites. The program ran from October, 1957 to December 1963, and was cancelled just after spacecraft construction had begun.

This Dyna-soar 3D model is of the final 844-2050-E version and is based on late 1962 blueprints, and is 1/96 scale and so the glider alone is ~115mm long when assembled.

The model is in two halves (front and back halves) that will need gluing together. The parts are orientated such that no support material is necessary when printing them on FDM 3D printers. There are two back ends for the model:-

The first back end includes the fairings that would cover the join to the 'trans' stage on a Titan IIIc launch rocket (this, final, version of the Dyan Soar had been finalised for launching atop a standard Titan IIIc) and is the launch configuration. Orbital Operation would have retained the Titan's 'trans' stage for orbital manoeuvring  and de-orbiting.

The second back end is the re-entry configuration, having dropped the Titan's 'trans' stage, and so just represents the Dyan-Soar glider. This back-end needs an additional part to blank off the opening in its back end, which is provided as X-20_Model_BackPlate_rcs_96.stl.

I printed this at the lowest layer height that my printer can manage (0.08mm) and sanded the surface smooth prior to painting.