Unbuilt Rutan/Scaled Composites designs

flateric

flateric

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Mothballed at Mojave Airport is unsuccesfull Burt Rutan's Global Hawk contender. (c) Andy Martin, Airliners.Net
 

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Interesting. You don't often see too much from Scaled that's not a full-fledged aircraft. Aviation Week ran some Rutan drawings of a VTOL fighter (tailsitter) a decade or so ago, and I stumbled across some propritary drawings of the "Maliboo" carrier aircraft, basically a big-ass Proteus-style airplane for carryign spaceplanes, dating from the early '90's.

But generally Scaled Composites keeps their designs to themselves.
 
Orionblamblam said:
[...]Aviation Week ran some Rutan drawings of a VTOL fighter (tailsitter) a decade or so ago [...]
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For those who didn't see that stuff Scott talking about
AW&ST August 3, 1998 Rutan's scetches
 

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There must be hundreds of these, so open the floodgates, who has sketches and pics of unbuilt designs by Burt Rutan, whether back in his Rutan Aircraft Factory days or at Scaled Composites?
 
you must know that SC keeps it secrets tight than your NSA (tiny staff -> easy to trace a leak source)
we had Rutan's Tier III competitor somewhere at the forum...and I don't know much more besides that
 
All I think of offer is a high-altitude UAV research airplane built in collaboration with NASA. It would have featured a short central boom with a tractor prop engine featuring triple(?) turbocharging, a medium aspect ratio untapered wing, and outboard short booms carrying outboard horizontal stabilizers. A friend has a framed picture in his office.
Does anyone know what i am talking about?
Other than that, as Flateric said, Scaled is very secretive about its projects. The only reason i know about this high altitude UAV was that it was a collaboration.
 
AeroFranz said:
featuring triple(?) turbocharging
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Three-stage turbocharging, or I guess even simpler terms, it has three turbochargers (so the air gets compressed three times)
 
IMHO, that MUVR design shown by Northrop at the Paris Airshow presentation looks like a Scaled Composites design to me; remember, Northrop purchased them. You can see a pic of it at the Ares blog.
 
Mole said:
There must be hundreds of these, so open the floodgates, who has sketches and pics of unbuilt designs by Burt Rutan, whether back in his Rutan Aircraft Factory days or at Scaled Composites?
Click to expand...

Ones I can think of off the top of my head, though not all unbuilt:
- Toyota monoplane (built, a few photos exist)
- Tier II+ competitor (unbuilt)
- MIPCC Powered Vehicle (unbuilt?) for RASCAL program
- Another high-mach concept, don't know much about it.
- Several missile projects
- Unmanned Proteus for the Hunter-Killer program
- Various civil space projects, such as AirLaunch LLC's carrier aircraft, t/Space carrier aircraft, etc.
 
Floating around I have (off the top of my head):
1) A Tailsitter fighter design (though it may have been little more than a scribble on Rutans part)
2) A twin-fuselage carrier plane for a much-enlarged Pegasus launch vehicle ("Maliboo" or some such)
3) A canard airliner

I'll try to dig them up.
 
Merged existing Rutan/Scaled unbuilt projects threads
 
I seem to recall reading Scaled did a 1/2 scale pole model of the B-2 back in the day.
 
Mole said:
I think the B-2 model was for some sort of radar testing and not flyable in any way.
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"1/2 scale pole model "
 
Riding a plane like a HORSE??? That's gotta be a first.
 

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Great stuff here, thanks!
 
From "Canard, A Revolution In Flight." I've only ever seen the book once, and that was when I bought it.
 

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Hi! I'm Stephen and I'm the webmaster of the Stargazer website you mentioned above.
I am honored that you quoted my work and find it a valuable source, and happy you found interesting stuff there!
In return, I want to thank Orionblamblam for the scans of the Rutan Commuter... I'd been searching for this for ages!!!
 
Stargazer2006 said:
Hi! I'm Stephen and I'm the webmaster of the Stargazer website you mentioned above.
I am honored that you quoted my work and find it a valuable source, and happy you found interesting stuff there!
In return, I want to thank Orionblamblam for the scans of the Rutan Commuter... I'd been searching for this for ages!!!
Click to expand...

Prepare to be bombarded with requests for higher resolution versions of the Tacit Blue diagrams you posted on your site. See here:
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,278.15.html

If you've got 'em, you've found an audience that wants to see 'em.
 
Just a small word to tell you all that the STARGAZER has known its first update since 2006 !
A handful of new files have been added, mostly on the suggestion (and help on the article stubs*) by Walter van Tilborg. The main menu has also been revised and made clearer and more coherent. Lots of work remains to be done (notably the news which is no longer "new"... LOL) but this is a good start I guess...
Looking forward to your feedback in any form!

*EDIT: by stubs, I mean that Walter provided for each type a little summary in a few lines from his personal files which I then expanded by researching the aircraft types on my own.
 
Just one for now - you should lower the contrast of the background. Small blue characters in the menu are almost unreadable because of it.
 
This is strange but it might be the result of using a laptop computer as opposed to a desktop (I develop my sites from my desktop computer and always notice that laptop user get very different colors).
As for the contrast, I always make sure to choose an average and have used an online tool that is supposed to verify if contrast is correct on your computer... and it was!
This being said, if more people end up having the same problem, I'll see what I can do to improve it. But I would think that lowering the contrast will make the background more visible, which will make the reading of the text even more difficult...
 
Orionblamblam said:
the "Maliboo" carrier aircraft, basically a big-ass Proteus-style airplane for carryign spaceplanes, dating from the early '90's.
Click to expand...

Just found this, which I think sheds some big light on what the Maliboo project was:

"At that meeting, C.C., Burt and I sketched a vary large, liquid-powered air launched manned booster system (the rocket was code-named "Maliboo", the carrier aircraft "Grasshopper"; Max and C.C. designed the spacecraft, a small, two-seat winged thing). Burt wanted to put rocket engines on the carrier aircraft to increase its flight path angle and avoid a wing in the rocket. I wanted a wing on the rocket and no rocket engines on the aircraft. A substantially modified 1/4 to 1/3 scale version of Grasshopper flew many years later under the name "White Knight"."

Source : http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=606.375
 
I have the professional desktop graphic computer (for the obvious reasons) with the independent hardware calibration monitor (ICC profile), so I think it should work OK. But I think that I didn't express correctly what I thought, so instead of describing it, just take a look. Take it as you wish, this is just my personal opinion/suggestion ;)
 

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Ooooookay!!!!

Now I see the problem... There is an extra GIF file for the box's texture that doesn't appear in your capture. It is gray and allows for the text to show very clearly!

Try and do a refresh on the whole page (Ctrl + R) and see what happens. The lost file somehow evaded page loading the first time round!
 
How about the reference for ASALT(Senior Citizen) for DARPA!!
 
Stargazer2006 said:
Orionblamblam said:
the "Maliboo" carrier aircraft, basically a big-ass Proteus-style airplane for carryign spaceplanes, dating from the early '90's.
Click to expand...

Just found this, which I think sheds some big light on what the Maliboo project was:

"At that meeting, C.C., Burt and I sketched a vary large, liquid-powered air launched manned booster system (the rocket was code-named "Maliboo", the carrier aircraft "Grasshopper"; Max and C.C. designed the spacecraft, a small, two-seat winged thing). Burt wanted to put rocket engines on the carrier aircraft to increase its flight path angle and avoid a wing in the rocket. I wanted a wing on the rocket and no rocket engines on the aircraft. A substantially modified 1/4 to 1/3 scale version of Grasshopper flew many years later under the name "White Knight"."

Source : http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=606.375
Click to expand...

Sorry just picked-up on this thread - I guess 'Grasshopper' may also have evolved into the Custom Launch Aircraft referenced in http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,3413.msg88099.html#msg88099 ?

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index.php


Update: corrected link (topic merge happened since) and add second CLA picture
 
Orionblamblam said:
From "Canard, A Revolution In Flight." I've only ever seen the book once, and that was when I bought it.
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The Model 78-1;
http://books.google.com.eg/books?id=0dQDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA203&dq=rutan+78-1&hl=ar&ei=5XmXTLXzHeWhOL2d0YgJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=true
 

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A great find! I have to add this to the Commuter page of my Stargazer website some time!
 
I have created a new web page which is a thumbnail gallery (later to be clickable) of all the designs that Burt Rutan and/or Scaled Composites are known to have been associated with. There may be a couple of things missing here and there, but this is a great way to start for someone who wants to get the jist of Rutan's work and design evolution!

Please give some feedback if you can!!

http://stargazer2006.online.fr/gallery/index.htm
 
From Aviation Week:

First flown in 2010, Firebird is not the first UAV Scaled has designed for Northrop. Back in 2004, Rutan's outfit produced two concepts for the company, for the US Air Force's then-emerging Hunter-Killer requirement. The Model 395 was an unmanned derivative of Scaled's Proteus high-altitude research aircraft; the Model 396 was a scaled-down Global Hawk. In the end, Hunter-Killer become the MQ-9 Reaper and the rest is history.
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Scaled Composites Model 395

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Scaled Composites Model 396

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Source:
http://www.aviationweek.com/blogs.aspx?plckblogid=blog:a68cb417-3364-4fbf-a9dd-4feda680ec9c&plckpostid=blog%3Aa68cb417-3364-4fbf-a9dd-4feda680ec9cpost%3A9c82730d-6bca-4e1d-b970-c010accd2043
 

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AeroFranz said:
All I think of offer is a high-altitude UAV research airplane built in collaboration with NASA. It would have featured a short central boom with a tractor prop engine featuring triple(?) turbocharging, a medium aspect ratio untapered wing, and outboard short booms carrying outboard horizontal stabilizers. A friend has a framed picture in his office.
Click to expand...

Just call me Ray said:
Three-stage turbocharging, or I guess even simpler terms, it has three turbochargers (so the air gets compressed three times)
Click to expand...

(dragging up a really old post...)

Three-stage turbocharging seems kind of unlikely. Two-stage turbocharging can get you at least 10 bar of overpressure which is way more than you need. Adding another stage just complicates the plumbing for no apparent gain.
 
Would the Proteus Hunter-Killer also have hardpoints on the wings? The concept artwork only portrays 500 lb. bombs mounted underneath the fuselage.
 
Hobbes said:
Three-stage turbocharging seems kind of unlikely. Two-stage turbocharging can get you at least 10 bar of overpressure which is way more than you need. Adding another stage just complicates the plumbing for no apparent gain.
Click to expand...


I am pretty sure the Phantom Eye has three-stage compound turbocharging (albeit with H2). This issue is not boost pressure but recovering as much waste heat from the exhaust as possible.
 
While browsing through old Russian magazines, I came across this odd design which I'd never seen before.

The little Russian I understand seems to indicate it is called the "Aircraft of the 21st Century, designed under the supervision of Burt Rutan."

Does this ring a bell with anyone?
 

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