I don't have time to do a complete work over but here is your answer:

On the other hand

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

The span between the fuselages is no issue. Its a simple airplane wing cantilever calculation. Just eyeballing it, I see no issue. The span looks large enough that the aerofoil will generate significant lift. As such the stress points where the wings connect to the fuselage should be no different than on a normal 'heavy' airliner.

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

BTW - Twin fuselage planes are nothing new. The challenges are no so much structural as they are around controls. Modern fly-by-wire computerized controls will easily take care of that issue.

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

I;m surprised that the 2 tail sections aren't tied together. But I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn last night.

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I miss YaHey

Gotta save a little weight

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Thats what i meant. Plus what if the bloke on the right wants to go right and the one on the left left..................joke people

They flip a coin

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I count six engines and I think at least 8 control surfaces (from what it looks like visually).

I wouldn't call that exactly an "easy" optimization problem. Probably helps if the airframe itself is inherently stable, which it looks like it might be. (vs. say the VTOL mode of the Osprey which is inherently very unstable).

pursuant to the stratolaunch, jordan rapp spoke to a group of engineers at scaled composites yesterday, and as scaled is only about an hour from the compound i drove up there.

we got a tour of the hangars afterward, with all the historic legendary planes that are uniquely, unambiguously, scaled planes. i had to leave right before a look at the BIGGEST plane, because of a prior engagement.

but we did have lunch in a vintage diner right on the runway of the mojave airport, as there are a lot of vintage diners attached to a lot of vintage airports. it was jordan, his son quentin, and 2 engineers from scaled. there was a map next to the booth we were in showing the route of the voyager, the plane used in the first unrefueled circumnavigation. i started waxing about the history of scaled and its pilots and how it made an impression on modern culture, even for the uninitiated like me, and how the rutan brothers were national treasures in my mind.

one of the engineers said, in a low voice, "see that guy over there sitting by himself, two booths over? that's dick rutan."



banner day.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Possibly a worthwhile tradeoff, but Dan spent so much time talking to Lt Col Rutan that he missed getting to see the actual Stratolaunch. Though, I will say, you can see "it" much better on the web. It's so massive, then when you are standing right next to it, you can't really take the whole thing in.

Unfortunately, the whole Scaled facility is a "no pictures" allowed (inside or out). But pick with Lt Col Rutan was pretty dang cool. And from what I was told, Scaled doesn't even offer complete tours very often, so I have no idea how much of what we were shown and told we're even allowed to talk about.

However, one great anecdote. Dan and I asked about their wind-tunnel use as we were walking down the main runway at the Mojave Spaceport with the wind howling all around us (it is always windy in Mojave). They said, "we're walking in it..." They then added, "Although sometimes we strap parts of a plane to the roof a car and go driving with it down the road."

So, bike companies invest in wind tunnel time. Scaled straps plane parts to cars and drives down the road. Let that sink in for a moment...

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Thats awesome. I know Jordan is an engineer but was he speaking in an engineering capacity or as an engineer / triathlete

I appreciate that the dreamliner is very different to what scaled do, but having been on a composite aircraft, the travellers experience is very different. Its really clever stuff

he spoke in the context of an athlete who can appeal to the thinking of an engineer. so, for example, the concept of let's bring it to market and we'll patch it later is how a software engineer may approach a product, but when you're an engineer working on aircraft patching it later isn't a wise approach. the typical athlete couldn't speak about his approach to training using the engineer's approach product development unless the athlete is an engineer.

also, jordan's paradigm for training and racing is not so unlike scaled, in that you take months to build up for one big race (if you're an ultra athlete) and then the race can go down in flames through either a flaw in preparation or through a fairly random piece of bad luck. scaled, likewise, makes a lot of its living in proof-of-concept projects, let's build a plane that can launch a rocket, let's build a plane that can fly at 60,000' going 100 knots. the denouement of a scaled project is either a high high or a low low.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Scaled has a program they call "Lunch & Learn," where they bring folks in to speak who may be able to speak in a way that's of interest to folks at the company and who are interested in speaking to the kind of audience they'd get at Scaled. Attendance is voluntary, and I was not compensated. And you're basically given carte blanche in terms of what you talk about.

I had an hour and the suggestion was to use 45-50min to speak and then leave about 10-15min for questions. I think I spoke for just over 50min and then we had some interesting discussions afterwards - such as reference to the "launch it and then patch it" approach of CS engineers vs the "you better get this right the first time" approach of mechanical/aeronautical/civil engineers. I think we probably could have talked for another hour easily...

After the talk, I had lunch with two of the senior engineers (at the Cafe where Dan and I met Lt Col Rutan) and then Dan and I were given a tour of the Scaled facilities.

The president of Scaled is a fellow named Ben Diachun - http://www.scaled.com/...t/benjamin_l_diachun - who I know through a mutual friend. Ben is a triathlete, which is is really what got the ball rolling in terms of me going up. And there are quite a few avid runners and cyclists among the engineering staff as well.

The intersection between engineering interest and endurance sports seems to run deep. You don't need to look much further than this board to find a lot of serious engineering nerds that are avid athletes.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

May I ask why you refer to him at Lt. Col. Rutan? I thought he was civilian all his life.

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War is god

Nope; retired USAF. Flew 352 missions in Vietnam, including some of the most dangerous missions of all...the "Misty" FACs.

The guy is a legend.

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___________________________________________________
Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I'm chagrined to admit that I was thinking of Burt, Dick's brother.

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War is god

Another legend. Looking at a Burt rutan plane is like looking at a building by gaudi or a painting by Dali. You don't need anybody to tell you who designed it.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

A couple of Scaled/Rut an stories

1) Grandfather was an aerospace engineering professor, plane designer, builder, and pilot. His designs were always aluminum and he often would be in competition with the Rutans in terms of performance records. He had several aviation world records in his day, so e of which the Rutans beat, some of which they couldn't. Not bad for a metallic design. Of course, back in the 70s composite aircraft design was pretty basic. Today's materials are so much better.

2) I was part of a major flight development project in the late 90s, and Scaled was responsible for building one of our drop test vehicles. We gave them the shape and constraints, they did the rest. Engineering drawings? Despite CAD being in full use in industry, we got a binder of hand sketches, not even hand engineering drawings! Analysis was pretty basic as well. The real joy came in one of the captive carry tests. I had to support in the control room at Dryden and make the call to continue flying under the B.52 after one of the rudders blew apart. Scaled built the rudder as a sealed box structure, and at altitude the pressure differential was such that POOF there goes the rudder. We were quite surprised that the rudder wasn't vented. Fun times, but man did going to the Mojave suck.

http://www.airspacemag.com/...ty-mystique-3494168/

I did not know what Misty or FAC was

It really amazes me what some of these guys go on to do