SpaceShipTwo Mothership Makes Maiden Flight 110
RobGoldsmith writes "Earlier this week images were appearing on the Net showing the WhiteKnightTwo craft doing some tests in Mojave. The earliest tests showed perhaps two of the engines being used, while a later test showed all the engines working and some further testing. Today the four Pratt & Whitney Canada PW308A engines finally carried the craft into the air. The maiden flight of the WhiteKnightTwo lasted just shy of one hour and happened today at around 08:15 local time, at Mojave air and spaceport. Rumors suggest that a Beechcraft King Air was used for a chase plane. The craft will be used to position Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo craft to fly into space; this is estimated to happen around 2010."
Beauty of Capitalism (Score:2)
I do not eat babies (Score:2, Funny)
I am a socialist and I approve of this message
Re:Beauty of Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
The field of personal space travel is opening up!
This is the beauty of capitalism.
And it's only just getting there over 50 years after socialism did it.
Both socialism and capitalism have their places. Capitalism wouldn't have gotten us to the Moon in the 60s. Socialism won't get the masses into space in the 10s. A healthy society has a balance of both.
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If I had mod points... *shakes fist*
You pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Re:Beauty of Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Beauty of Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
You're talking about motive. I'm talking about economics.
The economic system that took us to the Moon was socialism. The economic system that is launching Virgin Galactic is capitalism.
Apollo was very much about nationalism and militarism, as you stated. It was also about exploration, science and futurism (although those alone, I suspect, would not have sufficed to draw the needed budget). But regardless the motive, it was *only* possible, during the 60s (and even to this very day) as a socialist endeavor.
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Quite well said. The proof is in the pudding... the initial space pursuit was between a capitalist country and a communist country.
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To me it is plainly ludicrous to think that free market capitalism will contribute toward space exploration in any meaningful way - unless you seriously think that pleasure trips into low earth orbit for rich individuals are what its all about that is.
The only way that capitalism can really help out here is by continuing to wreck the planet to such an extent that people need to buy themselves an escape. Even here there is the problem that the inability of capitalism to see or plan ahead is what makes them s
Re:Beauty of Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
so true. the private sector won't invest in fundamental research or new and yet unproven technology. that's why you need public research to do these things that push society forward.
nothing has prevented private companies from investing in space research/travel in the past 4-5 decades. they just chose not to because it wasn't seen as "financially viable." and if we'd simply waited for the private sector to develop space technology then we would never have gotten GPS, communications satellites, interplanetary probes, the Hubble Space Telescope, etc.
but now that public research has paved the way for commercial space travel, companies like Virgin Galactic can use public research and the technology developed through public funding in order to commercialize space.
Re:Beauty of Capitalism (Score:5, Informative)
the Toyota Prius is hardly fundamental research or cutting-edge technology. however, the Japanese government did invest in Toyota's hybrid gas-electric technology, purportedly subsidizing 100% of its development cost [autospies.com].
so while there's no Toyota Government Agency, Japan does however have:
and their government actively funds science and public research through these organizations. the Japanese government also owns a large (1/3rd) share of their national ISP/telecom, NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone). and this kind of active support and funding of technology is why Japan has become a global technology leader. it's also why Japan is leading the world in FttH deployment and its citizens have access to 1 Gbps symmetric broadband connections for $0.057 per Mbps, whereas Comcast is charging $3.00 per Mbps for asymmetric "wideband" connections.
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Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out.
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nothing has prevented private companies from investing in space research/travel in the past 4-5 decades.
Actually, there are documented cases of government obstructionism throughout the past decades. NASA used to launch commercial satellites on Shuttle. How can you field a commercial space launch company in an environment where you have to compete with government for scarce payloads available ?
Beal Aerospace [bealaerospace.com] was basically forced out of the market, read their parting statement on the very webpage.
AAS program
Re:Beauty of Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
if you want to call the existence of NASA "government obstructionism" then, sure. but that hasn't stopped companies like Sea Launch [wikipedia.org] or FedEx from competing with government services.
that same argument has pretty much been used to lobby for the privatization of all kinds of public infrastructure, which is generally at a detriment to society. you want NASA to stop launching satellites just so an uncompetitive commercial company can have a chance to profit unobstructed, or do you want the government to push technological progress (including commercial technology as well as vital public infrastructure) forward?
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that same argument has pretty much been used to lobby for the privatization of all kinds of public infrastructure, which is generally at a detriment to society.
Cite please so I can pick it apart for you.
NASA has a long history of interference. In addition, to trying to grab commercial payloads in the early 80's to fill out the Shuttle manifest, they helped create an oligopoly of commercial launch providers from the 80's through to mid 90's. There was for a time single launchers in significant launch categories. I don't remember the breakdown any more, but there were single rockets in virtually all of the US's launch market niches from the Pegasus up to Space Shutt
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while i've never heard of E'Prime Aerospace, but if you want to look at an example of privatization hurting society, then look up info on water privatization in El Salvador [projectcensored.org]. i first read about this issue about 5-6 years ago (when the water supply was first privatized), but the problem doesn't seem to have gotten any better over the years.
other examples of this include India, where the World Bank is also pushing the government to privatize Delhi's water supply [zmag.org], as well as Pakistan, where the WTO and other IF
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It's not privatization hurting a society, it's corrupt politicians corrupting the privatization process that is hurting those societies.
Government agencies are like slave labor because the rest of the society is forced (at the point of a gun) to pay for the labor. You can't compete with slave labor.
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Sure these systems were privatized in a terrible way. But what does that say about the public system that was already in place? My take is that a lot of the privatization efforts, even though allocated in an unfair or incompent way to crooks and cronies will still be better than the public system that was in place before. The profit motive does provide more incentive than a bunch of voters.
For example, the Russian giveaway of oil infrastructure to the "Oligarchs" is an example of a positive outcome from bad
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i don't think the profit motive guarantees good/efficient management. and even if it does, what good is it if the profits all go to foreign investors or a handful of rich billionaires?
at least with something like NTT [wikipedia.org], where the government owns a large share of the company and has a hand in its management, you can ensure that public interest is being protected. after all, what maximizes profit doesn't always coincide with what serves public good. and i think most would agree that the Japanese telecommunicati
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i don't think the profit motive guarantees good/efficient management. and even if it does, what good is it if the profits all go to foreign investors or a handful of rich billionaires?
Foreign investors and rich billionares need goods and services too. They pay taxes too. And they have incentive to make this infrastructure productive and provide a valuable service in order to make more money.
at least with something like NTT, where the government owns a large share of the company and has a hand in its management, you can ensure that public interest is being protected. after all, what maximizes profit doesn't always coincide with what serves public good. and i think most would agree that the Japanese telecommunication/internet infrastructure is managed slightly better than its entirely privatized and minimally regulated U.S. counterpart.
What guarantee? Under a genuine "guarantee", there's a consequence if the good or service doesn't meet some level of quality. For most phone companies, private or public, the guarantee as such is simply that you don't pay, if the phone isn't working. Further, what evidence do you have that NTT is bett
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the guarantee i'm speaking of is democracy. in a democracy, the people have a say in public policy, which means they have a say in how public utilities are run. so if you don't like how the national telecom is managed, you can change it. under a privatized system the public has no voice in how a commercial utility is run.
i'd also point out that generally, public utilities are nationalized precisely because they're natural monopolies in addition to having inelastic demand. so consumers can't just go with a d
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Providing more services doesn't mean the company is better managed. NTT is more heavily subsidized. One would expect it to provide better service under the circumstances.
i'd also point out that generally, public utilities are nationalized precisely because they're natural monopolies in addition to having inelastic demand. so consumers can't just go with a different company. and they also don't have the option of not drinking water.
Reasonable argument. But not one that applies to space launch which at least in the US is competitive. And there's still incentive for a private monopoly to run more efficiently in order to maximize profit.
This is the distinction between public and private laid bare. Private utilities would be more efficient while public services would have
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Didn't you see The Astronaut Farmer [imdb.com]? The government won't just let you build your own rocket...
Seriously though, NASA has placed restrictions in the past and it just recently became more open.
Look at the human genome project, private sector is doing better.
Plus the private sector will always invest if there is potential profit, THAT is the beauty of capitalism. :-)
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I totally agree, but I think that the best way to do this is build the balance into the economic system by making a time based community credit system.
I made video about it to googles 10^100 project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ_jyLEvCds [youtube.com]
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Any money system is inherently a time based community credit system. Everyone already buys and sells their time. The two new features of your system would be that wealth was a public record. This might be interesting, but a lot of cultures simply do not work well knowing that someone has a lot more wealth than another. Kidnapping, theft, etc are as I see it common crimes when wealth is known. I think the criminal element will find some way to launder the profits from crime.
Second, the idea that people can c
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Well, you shouldn't analyze the two features in isolation.
That the is no credit limit means that crimes dosn't pay. It better to use the credit than risk beening cut in a crime.
The time, public record and peer presure will help limit the inflation.
With abstract value measure like $ the value can fluctuate. When you use a concrete standard like time, there is no room for fluctuation. 1 minute is 1 minute for everyone.
Also that there is a public record means
that there is a peer presure, so you might hear for
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That the is no credit limit means that crimes dosn't pay.
For example, you steal stuff not time. Then you sell the stuff for time, if that is your inclination. Fraud still works as well. Especially, identity theft.
When you use a concrete standard like time, there is no room for fluctuation. 1 minute is 1 minute for everyone.
As I see it, I can sell off billions of years of my time. That's what causes inflation. Peer pressure? It works in an economic system about the size of a small tribe. Peer pressure doesn't work when the group is a country and the vast majority of people don't care about each other.
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Yes, you can still commit crimes and fraud, but you don't have to, in the present money system
some people is forced to commit crimes and fraud to eat and have a place to sleep.
We are all part of a local tribe we call friends and family and local peer pressure is all that is needed.
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some people is forced to commit crimes and fraud to eat and have a place to sleep.
That's not the cause of most crime in the developed world. For example, I imagine the illegality and expense of most recreational drugs is the instigator of more crime than hunger or homelessness.
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peer pressure? You need to graduate from fifth grade there junior. Peer pressure doesn't work on adults in the way you think it works on adults.
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How does I think it works ?
And how do you thinks it works ??
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Stop me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the capitalists who reached the Moon? The Socialists were the first in orbit, but could never get the N1 rocket working right so they never sent cosmonauts beyond LEO.
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Stop me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the capitalists who reached the Moon?
"Ceci n'est pas une pipe"
In other words, a label doesn't make a thing so.
Apollo wasn't a capitalist endeavor. It was a public project, not private. Or, to turn it around, if Apollo (and NASA in general) *are* capitalism, then why are people making such a big deal about the various private space initiatives as being examples of how capitalism will revolutionize space?
BTW, capitalism will revolutionize space. The first space revolution, however, was socialist. It couldn't have happened any other way, except t
Re:Beauty of Capitalism (Score:5, Interesting)
Capitalism is hardly responsible for it. No private company did this, until the Ansari X Prize subsidized them. That prize money was donated, making SS1 of charitable origins. Capitalism is anything but charitable. In fact, between the charity money and the academic foundation that dreamed up the whole thing, it's closer to a centralised, socialist model.
"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all." -- John Maynard Keynes
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That's more or less a happy coincidence. Rutan didn't set out to create spacecraft for the sake of winning the X Prize, nor could it, since it didn't exist when he started. Not to mention that the 1 Million price wouldn't be very much motivation... It was only shortly before Rutan's team was practically ready to launch that Ansari stepped in a ballooned the cash prize into something respectable. At most, the X Prize nominally sped-up
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Everything since then has been purely, undeniably, capitalistic. Richard Branson isn't paying to develop a fleet for the sake of some subsidy, somewhere.
Probably not, no. What Branson may be doing is underwriting a future where commercial carriers can make the hop from New York to Sydney in an hour or two, and he isn't waiting for Boeing to come up with the answer. He does run an airline, remember, and is known for being a bit of a visionary. It's an investment in an SST that doesn't go boom.
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We didn't have D. D. Harriman in this timeline. :(
Capitalism doesn't mean that (Score:2, Informative)
No private company did this, until the Ansari X Prize subsidized them. That prize money was donated, making SS1 of charitable origins. Capitalism is anything but charitable.
Oh, please -- if you knew anything about capitalism you wouldn't be quoting Keynes as an authority on it.
Simply put, there's nothing whatsoever that's anti-capitalist about private charity, in fact quite the opposite. It's the coerced "charity" of the welfare state with which capitalists disagree. But if something's voluntary, capitali
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The rebuttal to that would be that without capitalism, no one would be wealthy enough to afford to donate a $10M prize.
- RG>
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The rebuttal to that would be that without capitalism, no one would be wealthy enough to afford to donate a $10M prize.
We shouldn't proclaim that if no individual ("a capitalist") is rich enough to donate $10M then nobody is rich enough to do that. The government is usually the richest of them all, and it plays an active role in socialism. During the space race in 1960's money was flowing freely in both countries, and it wasn't VC money - it was a blank check from the government.
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Capitalism is hardly responsible for it. No private company did this, until the Ansari X Prize subsidized them. That prize money was donated, making SS1 of charitable origins. Capitalism is anything but charitable. In fact, between the charity money and the academic foundation that dreamed up the whole thing, it's closer to a centralised, socialist model.
I agree with the majority of repliers. This is bunk. The prize money was donated by private entities and run by private entities. That's capitalism, private ownership of capital. "Academic" doesn't mean "socialist". "Socialism" doesn't mean "charity".
Let me reword the Keynes quote. Socialism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, using public resources, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.
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Oddly enough, I don't find the prospect of space tourism .. inspirational.
I'm happy for Scaled, and I admire their use of engineering to bring the cost of manned suborbital down, but I can't say the idea of people going into space so they can gawk and brag to their friends is all that appealing. I'm fine with it, but I'm not going to put them in the same ranks of explorers as Alan Shepard.
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Mojave? (Score:2, Funny)
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Since I work in Mojave, I must say I was befuddled with the codename Microsoft chose for their image rehabilitation. Mojave sucks, outside of the cool things going on at the Spaceport.
I can assure you that neither Vista nor "Mojave" had anything to do with this first flight.
-- Len
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Universe? (Score:5, Funny)
That's a little presumptuous, don't you think? In the multi-billion year history of the Universe, and all the innumerable planets that have ever existed in it, you're really SURE that there hasn't ever been any affordable space tourism?
No technologically inclined species on a small planet with rather low gravity? No planets with super-volcanic mountains that peak just slightly shy of orbit? No species of living beings robust enough that they can handle the massive G-forces of being fired out of a cannon on the ground? etc.
Boy is your face going to be red when the Quixblarxians land their space ship in the parking lot of the nearest courthouse just to sue you for defamation of their space tourism industry...
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That's a little presumptuous, don't you think? In the multi-billion year history of the Universe, and all the innumerable planets that have ever existed in it, you're really SURE that there hasn't ever been any affordable space tourism?
No technologically inclined species on a small planet with rather low gravity? No planets with super-volcanic mountains that peak just slightly shy of orbit? No species of living beings robust enough that they can handle the massive G-forces of being fired out of a cannon on the ground? etc.
Boy is your face going to be red when the Quixblarxians land their space ship in the parking lot of the nearest courthouse just to sue you for defamation of their space tourism industry...
Okay, its the first in the history of the observable universe.
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Re:Universe? (Score:4, Funny)
And the cat would always observe whether the cat was dead or alive.
hah (Score:1)
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Thank you, Yoda.
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I for one welcome our new masters of intergalactic litigation. That is assuming (and hoping) they practice law in a courtroom and not with a death-ray.
Hmmm, who knows what the RIAA have up their sleeves?
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No planets with super-volcanic mountains that peak just slightly shy of orbit?
Just one nitpick (and I stand to be corrected): orbit is based on trajectory/velocity, not altitude.
- RG>
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Besides, I don't think it's ugly at all.
Re:Man those Burt Rutan planes sure are ugly (Score:5, Funny)
Besides, I don't think it's ugly at all.
Neither do I, but on to your main point...
Would you prefer it work well, or look good?
Both are generally possible.
Unless, of course, it's designed to reach (sub)orbit by being repulsed by the Earth.
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Generally, in aviation, if it looks good it flies good, and if it looks bad it also flies bad. There are some exceptions to this, for example the Fairey Gannet, the ugliest aircraft ever built, actually flies quite nicely, and most helicopters which are so ugly the earth repels them.
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Someone get them an award winning industrial designer please.
Well I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Personally I think they are very elegant vehicles.
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Maybe this guy [sae.org]?
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ALERT! ALERT!
Female detected on slashdot
I just love this... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know why space flight is so fascinating, but this is just incredible. I'm really sad that I was born too late to experience the moon landings, so attempts like this to pick up the slack of the once dominant leader in space exploration are just exciting.
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I don't know why space flight is so fascinating, but this is just incredible. I'm really sad that I was born too late to experience the moon landings, so attempts like this to pick up the slack of the once dominant leader in space exploration are just exciting.
Isn't it funny... I'm sad I was born too early to experience a (manned) Mars landing.
ob Canuck joke (Score:5, Funny)
For readers in the USA, the equivalent model is the PW308.
Re:ob Canuck joke (Score:4, Funny)
Yay! Go Virgin! Woooh! (Score:2)
I am completely stoked by this demonstration of Virgin's commitment to a better, more technological future. Who knows, by 2010 they may also increase Virgin Media's crappy 30 megabyte mailbox.
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I know you're not being serious, but Virgin don't own Virgin Media anyway, NTL just license the brand name.
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What, me, Rick, a virgin? Try telling that to some of the foxy chicks who owe me favours!
Odd to use a King Air (Score:1)
Slightly odd to hear that they used a King Air as the chase ship as Scaled previously used a Rutan-designed Beechcraft Starship which always looked the part with it's futuristic/unusual canard pusher configuration.
I suppose with so few Starships remaining and the maintenance issues that implies; it may now be easier for Scaled to just borrow or lease King Airs for the job.
Still, it would be a shame to hear there are no Starships left flying.
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Re:Odd to use a King Air (Score:4, Informative)
Raytheon (Beech's parent) scrapped most of the Starships. I believe one or two are still airworthy, despite Raytheon's aggressive attempts to get them all out of the sky. The last owners have amassed a large stockpile of spares.
It's a shame. The Starship was truly the Way of Things To Come in aviation. It never performed quite as well as hoped, but it paved the way for large composite structures in commercial aviation.
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I know of two that are still airworthy, and I had the luck to actually get within 50 feet of one taxiing in Salina, Kansas. Raytheon did everything in its power to kill anything creative while they owned Hawker Beechcraft. To my knowledge, all the tooling was destroyed, and none of the aircraft data is being shared with anyone, so nobody else can copy it. There's one Starship sitting outside on the tarmac of an aircraft museum just on the outskirts of McConell AFB next door to Boeing IDS and across the s
I don't know about the actual tooling... (Score:1)
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Per Wiki:
As of autumn 2008 only six Starships continue to hold airworthiness registration with the FAA. Three Starships are based in Oklahoma, one in Washington, one in California, and one is still registered to Raytheon Aircraft Credit Corporation in Wichita, Kansas.
I too was surprised that the Rutan Starship may not still be flying. I guess we still have the P180 [youtube.com] though.
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Slightly off-topic, but the Piaggio Avanti is not really a canard design, and it is definately not a Rutan design. Scaled did a plane in the late-80's to early 90's called the Triumph, which was basically a three-surface design like the Avanti, but with familial resemblance to the Beech Starship. It never went into production, because of Beechcraft/Raytheon selling off Scaled Composites in the middle of the design phase.
The fact that a Starship was used on the SS1 flights has more to do with the generosit
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The canard on the P180 isn't there simply for looks; its the key to a three-surface design. You're absolutely correct that it is not a Rutan design. The P180 had significant testing and analysis performed on it, something Rutan doesn't do much of. It was designed mostly by Dr. Jan Roskam. Where the Starship was made primarily as a technology demonstrator (composites) and to look cool, the P180 was built for performance. To date, I believe it is still the fastest turboprop aircraft in the world.
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The canard on the P180 isn't there simply for looks; its the key to a three-surface design.
Agreed. I'm only correcting a common misconception that the P180 is a canard design like the Starship. They are totally different. The P180 does not have elevators on the canard, as would be required for a canard type aircraft. The Starship, on the other hand, has elevators on the canard.
The P180 had significant testing and analysis performed on it, something Rutan doesn't do much of.
Here, you are quite wrong. Burt, and by extension Scaled, does not do production aircraft, but we do plenty of testing.
Where the Starship was made primarily as a technology demonstrator (composites) and to look cool, the P180 was built for performance. To date, I believe it is still the fastest turboprop aircraft in the world.
You believe incorrectly. The fastest turboprop in the world is the Tupelov Tu-95 bear bomber. The
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"Here, you are quite wrong. Burt, and by extension Scaled, does not do production aircraft, but we do plenty of testing."
I clicked submit too quickly. I meant conventional testing. Don't get me wrong, I love CFD and structural FEA, but sometimes you can't beat a wind tunnel. Call me old fashioned. :p
"You believe incorrectly. The fastest turboprop in the world is the Tupelov Tu-95 bear bomber. The original Starship prototype (Rutan/Scaled model 115), the 85% scale technology demonstrator matched the top s
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I know, getting new aircraft to production can be a nightmare. :) I feel your pain though. I worked on a recent Scaled VLJ that unfortunately didn't go into production actually (name omitted, but I'm sure you can guess what it was). That was where I got my first exposure to how annoying bringing a great idea to production in the aerospace world can be. You know, I always wondered where the prototype of that jet ended up. If that aircraft had gone into production, Eclipse probably wouldn't exist, Cessna would have scrambled to get the Mustang out, and Piper would have built something even stupider than the PiperJet.
Oh boy. I can think of two Scaled VVLJ's concepts that happened around the same time. The first is on display in Oshkosh Wisconsin, and the second one (that I think you were probably involved with), I have no clue as to its whereabouts. I saw the spirit of the first fly this summer at Airventure with a spiffy orange and white paint scheme. I think it was a last ditch effort to save the company that is aspiring to produce it. The second, well, that is history now.
-- Len
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and of course wiki : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_Starship/ [wikipedia.org]
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No. They sit side by side. The pilots really need to communicate so they are about a foot apart.
White Knight 2 is not the first twin-fuselage plane to have been built. For example, North American built a twin P-51 at the end of World War II. You couldn't put the co-pilots of a twin P-51 in the same fuselage, as there simply was no room. That is not the case with this plane.
-- Len
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I totally forgot about the twin F82 what a totally amazing plane and a wild concept. too bad more weren't built I could use one of the models with 14 .50 cal machine guns ;-)
Disco Stu (Score:3, Informative)
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British English... (Score:1, Offtopic)
How does this qualify as a complete sentence?
Mojave (Score:2)