REVELL AEROBEE-HI - A CLASSIC KIT FROM SPACEFLIGHT’S EARLY YEARS
Mat Irvine reports Rocketry is about more than space launchers or missiles - there's also an important branch that has played an important, though mostly unsung role - sounding rockets. Named because they ‘sound out’ what’s going on ‘up there’, sounding rockets have launched small payloads to the edge of space, carried instruments to great heights, and been important in rocket motor development. The two most important such rockets have been the British Skylark series (last flight 2005) and the American Aerobee. From first flights way back in 1947, the Aerobee was developed into the Aerobee-Hi (first flight 1955), the X-8 ‘X-Plane’, and the 150, 170, 300 and 350 series. They varied in performance, including altitude, from 130-450 km (81-280 miles) but all were suborbital. 1037 Aerobees flew in total, the final one being a 150-series launched by NASA on January 17, 1985, making today the 25th anniversary of that last flight. Scale models of sounding rockets have been few and far betw...