John Slade Posted December 18, 2003 Share Posted December 18, 2003 While our fellow EAA Wright Flyer reenactors were waiting for better wind, pioneer extraordinaire, Burt Rutan, was sending SpaceshipOne vertical to 68,000 feet at Mach 1.2 after a 15 second rocket burn. Nice going, Burt! SpaceShipOne Breaks the Sound Barrier Today, a significant milestone was achieved by Scaled Composites: The first manned supersonic flight by an aircraft developed by a small company's private, non-government effort. In 1947, fifty-six years ago, history's first supersonic flight was flown by Chuck Yeager in the Bell X-1 rocket under a U.S. Government research program. Since then, many supersonic aircraft have been developed for research, military and, in the case of the recently retired Concorde, commercial applications. All these efforts were developed by large aerospace prime companies, using extensive government resources. Our flight this morning by SpaceShipOne demonstrated that supersonic flight is now the domain of a small company doing privately-funded research, without government help. The flight also represents an important milestone in our efforts to demonstrate that truly low-cost space access is feasible. Our White Knight turbojet launch aircraft, flown by Test Pilot Peter Siebold, carried research rocket plane SpaceShipOne to 48,000 feet altitude, near the desert town of California City. At 8:15 a.m. PDT, Cory Bird, the White Knight Flight Engineer, pulled a handle to release SpaceShipOne. SpaceShipOne Test Pilot, Brian Binnie then flew the ship to a stable, 0.55 mach gliding flight condition, started a pull-up, and fired its hybrid rocket motor. Nine seconds later, SpaceShipOne broke the sound barrier and continued its steep powered ascent. The climb was very aggressive, accelerating forward at more than 3-g while pulling upward at more than 2.5-g. At motor shutdown, 15 seconds after ignition, SpaceShipOne was climbing at a 60-degree angle and flying near 1.2 Mach (930 mph). Brian then continued the maneuver to a vertical climb, achieving zero speed at an altitude of 68,000 feet. He then configured the ship in its high-drag "feathered" shape to simulate the condition it will experience when it enters the atmosphere after a space flight. At apogee, SpaceShipOne was in near- weightless conditions, emulating the characteristics it will later encounter during the planned space flights in which it will be at zero-g for more than three minutes. After descending in feathered flight for about a minute, Brian reconfigured the ship to its conventional glider shape and flew a 12-minute glide to landing at Scaled's home airport of Mojave. The landing was not without incident as the left landing gear retracted at touchdown causing the ship to veer to the left and leave the runway with its left wing down. Damage from the landing incident was minor and will easily be repaired. There were no injuries. The milestone of private supersonic flight was not an easy task. It involved the development of a new propulsion system, the first rocket motor developed for manned space flights in several decades. The new hybrid motor was developed in-house at Scaled with first firings in November 2002. The motor uses an ablative nozzle supplied by AAE and operating components supplied by SpaceDev. FunTech teamed with Scaled to develop a new Inertial Navigation flight director. The first flight of the White Knight launch aircraft was in August 2002 and SpaceShipOne began its glide tests in August 2003. Scaled does not pre-announce the specific flight test plans for its manned space program, however completed accomplishments are updated as they happen at our website: http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/index.htm. The website also provides downloadable photos and technical descriptions of the rocket motor system and motor test hardware. Scaled Composites, LLC, is an aerospace research company located on the Mojave Airport: 1624 Flight Line, Mojave California 93501 Voice (661) 824-4541 Fax (661) 824-4174 Email: info@scaled.com Quote I can be reached on the "other" forum http://canardaviationforum.dmt.net Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dust Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 Why i don't want main retracts on my cozy, seems to me the boomerang had a similar problem enjoy the build Mike Quote maker wood dust and shavings - foam and fiberglass dust and one day a cozy will pop out, enjoying the build i can be reached at http://www.canardcommunity.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Sower Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 But consider all the folks who ditched Cozys / EZs and got all banged up because the main mounts pitch the plane down, the nose submarines and the whole thing stops in about 18 feet. Similar problems crashing - if the nose gear doesn't hold up long enough (and it's pretty much designed not to) you end up on your back very abruptly. Ditching / crashing gear up alleviates most of that - you skip and slide along and stop much more gradually. And of course there's the extra 15 kts and increased range .... Jim S. Quote ...Destiny's Plaything... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Clifford Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 And of course there's the extra 15 kts and increased range .... Jim S. [/b] Is there a Cozy MKIV out there flying with the retracts that has documented an increase of 15 kts as compared to the fixed gear?? Quote Dave Clifford "The Metal Man" Musketeer Vise grip hands and Micrometer eyes!! Cozy MKIV Plans #656 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Zeitlin Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 Originally posted by clifford Is there a Cozy MKIV out there flying with the retracts that has documented an increase of 15 kts as compared to the fixed gear?? Probably the only canard aircraft that I've heard of that originally flew with standard gear and then installed the Infinity Retract system is Bill Theeringer's L.E. (it's the yellow one). JD at Infinity claims that Bill picked up about 19 mph (17 Kts). There are at least three COZY/Aerocanards that have flown with Infinity gear (one was totalled in a ground accident) but I've never seen performance figures on them, and they were installed from the beginning, so there's no comparison to make. Quote Marc J. ZeitlinBurnside Aerospacemarc_zeitlin@alum.mit.eduwww.cozybuilders.org copyright © 2023 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Sower Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 <... never seen performance figures on them, and they were installed from the beginning, so there's no comparison to make ...> So let's all just stick with "the gospel according to Nat" and stipulate that it's five kts max with a terrible weight penalty .... Quote ...Destiny's Plaything... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dust Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 jim, what is the profile of the LE fixed gear, is it a sleek airfoil like the cozy or is it rather tubular?? What speed improvement do people get on a LE with Klaus's farings?? enjoy the experimenting Mike Quote maker wood dust and shavings - foam and fiberglass dust and one day a cozy will pop out, enjoying the build i can be reached at http://www.canardcommunity.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dust Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 If i were to go retracts, which i am too far along to consider and am using other methods to achieve speed, I would see if jack could wire it into my nose gear system. I bought his extra black box that extends the nose gear at 90 kts, I like black boxes. enjoy the build Mike Quote maker wood dust and shavings - foam and fiberglass dust and one day a cozy will pop out, enjoying the build i can be reached at http://www.canardcommunity.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Sower Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 Mike, <... bought his extra black box that extends the nose gear at 90 kts ...> So, you're trying to stay VFR on top, and the clouds are getting higher, and you're trying to sneak up over this one last little build up, and bleed off a little airspeed to avoid going through it, and drop down to 90 kts, and THE &^)&&^#$ NOSE GEAR COMES DOWN?? The LE gear is just like the Cozy (they're the same part). It comes at you with an elliptical cross section, the major axis being about three times the minor axis. The speed merchants fair this to a symmetrical airfoil with a thickness ratio of 4 or 5. They are careful to have it at 0 deg AoA at cruise. All of Klaus' stuff works pretty good - wheel pants, kiss spinner, boat tail lower cowl, etc. EZ firewall profile makes for LARGE cowl cheeks so guys are making money down drafting the engine from inlets forward of the cowl cheeks (somewhat more drag, but now it's cooling drag instead of parasite drag, and what used to be the cooling drag is gone - sort of). There's lots and lots of tricks. Root through the last five years of CSA newsletter and read all the go-fast articles. There's LEs making 200 kts with O-320 at RACE events. Too bad about the retracts. There's a body of thought that you end up with MORE fuel on board if you put a sump where the gear bow used to be, and put fuel in the outboard strakes, and with 15 kts better top end, well ..... All it would involve is new lower strakes and bulkheads and ..... Have fun ... Jim S. Quote ...Destiny's Plaything... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Zeitlin Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 Originally posted by Jim Sower So let's all just stick with "the gospel according to Nat" and stipulate that it's five kts max with a terrible weight penalty .... I was too subtle, apparently. My point was that the ONE datapoint we have seems to bear out the 15 Kt. improvement in speed, and that COZY's should have approximately the same improvement that L.E.'s seem to have. On the other hand, as you point out in a subsequent post, having faired landing gear legs and optimal wheelpants may get you a substantial portion of that 15 Kt. maybe 7-10 Kt. I don't know what Bill had on his L.E. before he switched. You know me well enough to know that I have NEVER thought that we should always 'stick with "the gospel according to Nat" ' on ANY subject. Quote Marc J. ZeitlinBurnside Aerospacemarc_zeitlin@alum.mit.eduwww.cozybuilders.org copyright © 2023 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Sower Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 Originally posted by Marc Zeitlin You know me well enough to know that I have NEVER thought that we should always 'stick with "the gospel according to Nat" ' on ANY subject. I was too subtle, apparently. My point was that you sounded like you were trivializing or dismissing the ONE datapoint we DO have. Rather than saying "... our single datapoint seems to indicate ..." I was trying to spin it to "... all of the credible data indicates that ...":) You know me well enough to know why I was so confident that the crack about "gospel" would get your attention:p Anyway, I'm given to believe that completely closing wheel wells (Velocity and Infinity both leave at least half the wheel uncovered in the well) will buy several knots (I've heard estimates as high as 5 or 6). As much trouble as it takes to install retracts, it seems foolish not to "finish" the job. The improved safety and range issues are not widely discussed. I think that when a few SQ2000s and Cozy retracts get flying that we'll start seeing a retract mods getting a lot more popular. We'll see .... Jim S. Quote ...Destiny's Plaything... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marbleturtle Posted December 24, 2003 Share Posted December 24, 2003 I started looking at retractable gear options simply because most 200+ MPH planes have them. The best discussion I've seen about retracts is here... http://www.geocities.com/plmjohnson/retractable_gear.htm My only issue now is that the retracts at infinity seem a little pricey. I will probably use them anyway. I like the idea of one fuel source (the sump fed by the two tanks), a little higher speed, no-flip emergency landings, etc. Quote This ain't rocket surgery! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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