Space Ship Two

[cessna170bdriver]

I picked up '98C from annual inspection (and $everal repair$) at Mojave today, and noticed the White Knight Two with Space Ship Two evidently ready for flight. Scuttlebut has it that tonight is to be the first "captive carry" flight. . Pardon the crappy photo, but it was the best I could get with my 1Mpixel phone camera at at the distance I was at.

[SteveF]

Thanks Miles - better than no picture at all.

Can see the mated ships. Will be watching for news. Any idea when they hope to make their first high altitude flight?

[cessna170bdriver]

Thanks Miles - better than no picture at all.

Can see the mated ships. Will be watching for news. Any idea when they hope to make their first high altitude flight?

I did a search yesterday and couldn't find anything. I'll let you know if I happen across something.

Miles

[lowNslow]

I think you need to get back out there and get us a proper photo. Maybe with your 170 in the forground for the calendar.

[jrenwick]

It's my recollection that Scaled Composites has a policy of not announcing test flights in advance. They don't talk about them until they're completed.

[cessna170bdriver]

First flight publicized:

http://www.virgingalactic.com/news/item ... st-flight/

It was last Wednesday night when I saw them prepping. Looks like first flight was Saturday night.

Miles

[W.J.Langholz]

Miles

Can't you sneak in there a little closer with your G-Man badge( ) and get some good pictures and some more scoop on the thing?

W.

[GAHorn]

I'm no arrownawticul injuneer, but.....
.... when I see some of the new "concepts" that are developed.... I wonder if these folks ever read their history...???.... or if they know something I don't.

It seems to me that any flying machine with TWO cockpits will add unnecessary drag (and this was found by the Dornier folks waay baack in WW-2.) In the case of the F-82 "Twin Mustang" ...at least the cockpits sat behind the double-engine cowings, and therefore offered very little additional frontal-area...

... but this Space Ship Two thing...not only offers TWO fuselage/cockpit's to add frontal area, .... but the FOUR engines sitting way out there on the outer wings certainly adds complexity to the empennage, which would need additional/unnecessary rudder to counter the lever-arm of assymetrical power-outages.

At first glance, it appears that the utterly-new creation of the "mother ship" is a wasteful expenditure, considering the numerous existing designs that have already proven their ability to lift and spawn offspring aircraft (the B-52, the 747 and even much smaller aircraft come to mind....any of the aircraft used in the NASA "lifting-body" research should work.) Some of the lifting bodies were even TOWED.* (here's a pic of a DC-3 pulling one of them)

I can think of a lot of airplanes that could tow that thing pretty high and pretty fast.



Perhaps some "prize" money requires all-new concept/design? Even so, why deliberately add unnecessary frontal-area which requires such outlandishly-placed outboard engines? Anyone have input on this?

*http://www.classicalpontiac.com/articles/nasa.html

[cessna170bdriver]

George,

I think you said all you needed to say in the first four words....

Miles

[W.J.Langholz]

Good one Miles!!!!!

You can of walked right into that one George


W.

[GAHorn]

I didn't walk into anything. It's my own mis-spell to ridicule my lack of insight into what seems should be intuitively obvious.

It's a serious question. Why would they deliberately set about to build a configuration with such unnecessary frontal drag area and inefficient engine-placement, especially when aeronautical history has demonstrated the penalty? .... unless they're meeting some prize (or grant) requirement.

[lowNslow]

George,

I think you said all you needed to say in the first four words....

Miles

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

George you bring up some good points. I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation which just might be the prize/grant money angle. One thing though is Burt has been pretty successful so it would seem he knows what he's doing.

Maybe he's just following the design left him by the aliens. It sure looks that way to me sometimes.

[lowNslow]

The White Knight 2 (the "mothership") is actually a very clean design. It is essentially a very large double hulled sailplane. One of the hulls actually has an exact duplicate of the SpaceShip2 cockpit that can be used for training flights.
Also keep in mind that the main purpose of this project is as a "space tourist" vehicle so it has to have some WOW! factor to attract those young internet CEOs who can afford the fare.

[rupertjl]

George,

Being an aeronautical engineer by trade, I can say with some authority that usually with all aircraft design, if it looks weird or funny, it was done for some reason. As with all designs, it usually a trade off on certain aspects (drag, endurance, payload, etc) that make the final design. The White Night II sole purpose was to carry SS2 aloft. I think Scaled has done pretty well with that mission purpose.

v/r,
Jud