Space Ship Two - General Thread

[gladiator1332]

The original carrier aircraft always reminded me a bit of my team's design from our senior design project at Virginia Tech.  It evolved from the original concept of our team's fearless leader, who said he was inspired by the P-38 Lightning!  I wonder where he is these days...

Kinda reminds me of a passenger-amphibious version of the Adam A500...really sweet looking!

[Herb Schaltegger]

That being said though, you have a multitude of torques acting on the aircraft's spar. *** [Snipped excellent summary]   

Now where were you when I needed a study partner for my undergrad aircraft structural engineering classes about 20 years ago?

[clongton]

Are there any other aircraft where the pilot sits SO far to stbd from the aircraft centerline? It just looks to me like it will be awkward, especially to land. Any pilots in the group?

[Herb Schaltegger]

The original carrier aircraft always reminded me a bit of my team's design from our senior design project at Virginia Tech.  It evolved from the original concept of our team's fearless leader, who said he was inspired by the P-38 Lightning!  I wonder where he is these days...

Nifty design.  Our senior project was a VTOL aeromedical rescue aircraft but we didn't have access to cool CAD tools to design it with.  It was pretty much strictly pencil-and-vellum. 

[Herb Schaltegger]

Are there any other aircraft where the pilot sits SO far to stbd from the aircraft centerline? It just looks to me like it will be awkward, especially to land. Any pilots in the group?

I wondered about that too.  Of course, Rutan is so unconventional, they might have designed the avionics architecture an augmented vision system with a centerline camera in the middle of the center span looking forward and/or downward.

[Big Al]

Interesting tow bar on the airplane, you won't find on on Spacex.
Also, the nose art. At first I thought it might be a painting of Antonioe!

[Big Al]

Apology to Antonioe. The nose art is the Virgin virgin..much better looking!

[CJM]

Re: Synthetic Vision - rutan's style is much more to just require the pilot to figure it out. I think that's what makes his aircraft so popular with pilots, he lets them remain pilots, even if that means requiring a certain amount of skill to fly them.

[astrobrian]

[Jose]

Nah, the engines are facing the wrong way.

[Big Al]

Are there any other aircraft where the pilot sits SO far to stbd from the aircraft centerline? It just looks to me like it will be awkward, especially to land. Any pilots in the group?

The pilot will have to learn where the centerline of the runway is in relation to his view, this will be critical on takeoff and landing, but for an experienced pilot it should be no big deal. Pilot transitioning to a 747 will remark that sitting up and ahead of the nose wheel takes getting used to.

Another question is wilth the twin tailbooms like that, how will the plane feel in turbulent air. My guess is that it will be a sort of flexible flyer

[Ronsmytheiii]

Are there any other aircraft where the pilot sits SO far to stbd from the aircraft centerline? It just looks to me like it will be awkward, especially to land.

Shouldnt be too bad, it has been done before with the F-82 Twin Mustang:

[imcub]

Are there any other aircraft where the pilot sits SO far to stbd from the aircraft centerline? It just looks to me like it will be awkward, especially to land.

Shouldnt be too bad, it has been done before with the F-82 Twin Mustang:

OK, don't disappoint me ... someone show us what at F-82 Twin Mustang would have looked like if Burt built it.  thanks.

[Swatch]

just thinking about that is a mindf***

[cb6785]

Are there any other aircraft where the pilot sits SO far to stbd from the aircraft centerline? It just looks to me like it will be awkward, especially to land. Any pilots in the group?

No problem in flight...with landing under more complicated conditions (windshear, etc.) one will have to get used to it... It's more easy when you sit center und you have a more "obvious feeling" where your wingtips, your tail, etc. are relativ to you...but with some time to develop some feeling for it.....why not.

Maybe a camera located at the roll axis would be nice...

[imcub]

Are there any other aircraft where the pilot sits SO far to stbd from the aircraft centerline? It just looks to me like it will be awkward, especially to land. Any pilots in the group?

No problem in flight...with landing under more complicated conditions (windshear, etc.) one will have to get used to it... It's more easy when you sit center und you have a more "obvious feeling" where your wingtips, your tail, etc. are relativ to you...but with some time to develop some feeling for it.....why not.

Maybe a camera located at the roll axis would be nice...

Or a Rutanish solution ... paint a stripe under where the pilot should be during the landing ...

[iamlucky13]

SS1 reached about 2200 mph. Orbital velocity is about 17,500 mph.

So it reached about 13% of orbital velocity, but only about 1.5% of orbital kinetic energy.

May I also point out at its miserable failure to reach astronomical costs associated with our current orbital vehicles.

I'm not quite sure what your comment was meant to imply, but I will note that if you scale the $20 million invested in SS1 up according to energy needed to get to orbit, it works out to $1.3 billion.

Anyway, I've been out in the mountains away from electronics and such for a few days, so I missed the latest news. The pictures look great. I'm impressed to see the WK2 painted and engines hanging so soon after pictures of completely empty carbon fiber sections being joined were released.

After the debacle of the 7/8/07 roll-out of Boeing's 787 that turned out to be an empty shell, I'm naturally a little curious how complete WK2 actually is, but I look forward to first flight of another unique aircraft from Scaled Composites.

[Jorge]

Are there any other aircraft where the pilot sits SO far to stbd from the aircraft centerline? It just looks to me like it will be awkward, especially to land. Any pilots in the group?

No problem in flight...with landing under more complicated conditions (windshear, etc.) one will have to get used to it... It's more easy when you sit center und you have a more "obvious feeling" where your wingtips, your tail, etc. are relativ to you...but with some time to develop some feeling for it.....why not.

Maybe a camera located at the roll axis would be nice...

Or a Rutanish solution ... paint a stripe under where the pilot should be during the landing ...

That will help with landing on the centerline, but some of the less obvious physiological cues (such as roll control coupling into vertical motion at the cockpit) will require a bit more getting used to.

[William Barton]

Are there any other aircraft where the pilot sits SO far to stbd from the aircraft centerline? It just looks to me like it will be awkward, especially to land. Any pilots in the group?

No problem in flight...with landing under more complicated conditions (windshear, etc.) one will have to get used to it... It's more easy when you sit center und you have a more "obvious feeling" where your wingtips, your tail, etc. are relativ to you...but with some time to develop some feeling for it.....why not.

Maybe a camera located at the roll axis would be nice...

Or a Rutanish solution ... paint a stripe under where the pilot should be during the landing ...

Reminds me of waiting in the JFK terminal for my first 747 ride, way back in the Paleozoic: the pilot positioned his monster at the jetway by driving his windshield up to a red ball on a stick.

[iamlucky13]

I think it's done just for the sake of symmetry. They obviously need only one pilot in the carrier plane, so the second hull has no cockpit. But "blind" hull with no windows would look less pretty, so they painted windows on

It's ideal canvas for more nose art, in my opinion.

There's a picture on thepress site that shows more conclusively the lack of windows in the port fuselage. I thought I read somewhere that it would still be capable of carrying pressurized cargo should there be an interest in in, but I don't remember where that might have been.

Also, there's definitely been talk of selling lifting services commercially, which is a good way to reduce some of the financial risk of the program. Scaled already had a contract with NASA to do drop tests of the X-37, and with AFRL to carry aerodynamic test specimens.

Someone already noted above that it has a similar capacity to the L1011, but I'd wager it has more clearance, and being purpose-built, it may be able to operate more economically.

Another interesting thing I just noticed on wikipedia, is that The Spaceship Company article says Virgin has a 1-1/2 exclusivity contract for SS2/WK2, suggesting that they might sell either craft to interested parties after that.

I wonder if we might at some point see Orbital Sciences or NASA purchase or lease a White Knight 2.