Lockheed CL-400 Suntan

[The Big Gimper]

Suntan was the code-name of a prototype reconnaissance aircraft program, with the goal of creating a much faster and higher-altitude successor to the U-2, enabled by the use of liquid hydrogen (LH2) as aircraft fuel. The program was cancelled in 1958.

Found this over at Secret Projects while looking for other stuff.



Note: not sure if the above image is available without you being logged in to SP.

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More CL-400 information here and here and here. There is an image from our own CiTrus90 on the last link.

Source: SP, Josef Gatial and others

[elmayerle]

Suntan lead to the formation of P&W's Florida R&D Center and while the engine for this aircraft never flew, the expertise developed with LH2 lead to the development of the RL10 engine that's been a workhorse in the space program.  The A-12 program evolved out of this, too.

[Kelmola]

That thing is... massive. And massively insane. And I love it.

To put it in perspective, if one started whiffing this, you could start with a 1/48 Starfighter and put the cockpit from 1/144 one on that (since she's almost exactly three times as long) then take the engines from a 1/32 Blackbird (engines roughly 30 scale feet long and Blackbird's engines are about 20 feet). Of course nobody is going to chop up a 1/32 Blackbird even if one existed, so perhaps those are better scratchbuilt