Retractable control surface for hypersonic rocket - has L=shaped swivelling blade which form conical skirt diverging to rear of rocket

摘要

A hypersonic rocket is controlled in flight by a conical skirt which slopes outwards towards the rear end. The skirt is composed of a number of L-shaped vanes (13) which are mounted on the rocket structure on pivots (24). The pivots are equally spaced around the edges of discs (22, 23) so that the vanes can rotate about axes parallel to the flight axis. This enables the vanes to be retracted during storage but extended to form the required conical skirt for flight control when launched.