18g of PLA later, had a 1st attempt at something that could hang from chopsticks.

This one had caulking to bond the heat break to the PLA.  44mm seemed to be less than ideal.  A thermometer showed it hitting 70C on the bottom.  The rocket looks proportional enough to go at least 10mm shorter, but the mane limitation on the rocket height is the heat break height.  Mounting the heat break lower requires splitting the rear fins.

The clamshell mechanism wasn't very satisfying.  Tried coming up with a window arrangement which would make it smoke from the heat shield side, as if it just landed & was still smoking.  2 big holes are where the chopsticks are supposed to clamp on.  The landing pins are  decorative.

 Helas, it just looked like the windows were on the wrong side.  At least it looked like convincing landing smoke from the front.  A better idea might be a larger number of smaller windows, so they don't look like windows.  The last resort is to completely open the heat shield side.  The open heat shield honestly didn't look any worse than the window shaped holes.

50mm PLA still melted, so it's going back to PETG for at least the area above the gas seal.  The perforated side fared better than the solid side.

The engine section stayed cold.  Surprising PETG held up at only 40mm.