Xarconian Cruiser?

I recently got an Estes Xarconian Cruiser on EBAY.
When Estes introduced it I thought it looked familiar.

The above picture is the Estes Xarconian Cruiser.
The picture below it is my Starship entry from the 1972 Centuri Photo Contest.

I presented the model to Grant Boyd after he gave my family a tour of the Centuri facility.
Later I found out it remained on a display shelf in the Centuri store for years.



The wing and rudder shapes do follow the same lines.
On either side of the rudder are split tubes. On my design the split tubes are each capped with half a nose cone sanded to the body tube contour.
My design has toothpicks on the outside edges of the wings and rudder. Back then many Centuri kits incorporated them.

Did this old contest entry influence the Xarconian Cruiser design 40 years later? Who knows.






I rode the mini-bike a few times and fell off a few times.
It was sold to buy more rocket supplies.