A Beechcraft Starship

"Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast." (twostrokesmoke) 02/05/2015 at 15:29 • Filed to: None

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regularly approaches the runway near my work. I love that plane, and I love the unique engine note that it has. That is all.

Jcarr > Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. 02/05/2015 at 15:32

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I love looking at these things. Burt Rutan is such a genius.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. 02/05/2015 at 15:33

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I love that plane - it's one of the ones that first got me interested in aviation.

Justin Hughes > Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. 02/05/2015 at 15:36

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Speaking of Clint Eastwood movies...

ttyymmnn > Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. 02/05/2015 at 15:43

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That's a gorgeous plane. I never understood why they never caught on. I was just reading that they sold pretty well, but after production shut down, Raytheon bought up all the airframes they could and destroyed them rather than have to keep servicing them. Business is business, I suppose. Do you know who owns that plane?

Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. > ttyymmnn 02/05/2015 at 15:50

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No, but I'm certain they are local. I see it at this airport and the one near my house quite a bit. For all I know it may be a Raytheon plane, the are HQ'd here.

ttyymmnn > Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. 02/05/2015 at 15:53

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That would make sense. Maybe they bought them all up so they could use them!

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. 02/05/2015 at 16:49

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I LOVE these Burt Rutan-designed planes, and their smaller cousin, the Rutan LongEZ.

The Starship is a bit of a hipster, in that it had a composite fuselage for a business jet, before it was cool, and before FAA really knew what to do with it.

I once heard that this design was pretty much like flying backwards, I forget the details of the aeronautical reasoning, although I remember it kind of making sense at the time.

The one issue I always wondered about with the aft pusher-prop design, was landing pitch angle. I imagine it has to land pretty flat and precisely (little or no nose-up flare to reduce airspeed just before touchdown), so not to ground-strike the props. I always wondered if a small turbofan would do better, more like modern business jets use... maybe even something like the HondaJet's above-the-wing pylon-mounted engines that could be much closer to the fuselage centerline, not having to account for prop-radius, but still vibration-isolated from the fuselage.

Also, it would be interesting to see a second-generation re-designed airframe with a more blended fuselage/windshield shape, and possibly even a blended wing-root and slight chine shape to the forward fuselage, up to the canards.

It would lose the unique square-wave sound signature from the dual turboshaft-driven pusher-props trailing behind the wings and chopping through the engine exhaust. That would be gone with a thrust-oriented turbofan.

I always kind of wondered what a slightly scaled down version, would be like, too... bigger than LongEZ, but smaller than the Starship, like a 6-seat VLJ, with a single turbofan at the back of the fuselage, like a CirrusJet, but with the aft wings and wingtip rudders, and forward canard elevators.

Something slick and racy looking with lines and curves like the Eclipse 400, or the Bugatti 100P aircraft. I can only imagine a canard design with a slightly forward-swept aft-rooted wing, and maybe a small dorsal and ventral rudder arrangement, or a Y-tail at the back of the fuselage, above and below the jet exhaust. Maybe it wouldn't work, aeronautically.

NaturallyAspirated > Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. 02/05/2015 at 17:20

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I'm partial to the Piaggio P.180 Avanti, myself.

TahoeSTi > Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. 02/05/2015 at 17:22

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Looks alot like my favorite the

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f86sabre > Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. 02/05/2015 at 18:49

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I've met the guy who owns one of the private registered ones out there. They bought the airframe from Evergreen (I think) and had to recertify it in the Experimental category. They also bought a ton of spares. Tires are one of the more difficult items for them to get. I did some poking around the FAA website and found this registered example. Looks like someone had sense of humor, and was a Star Trek fan, when they applied for certification.

Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. > f86sabre 02/05/2015 at 18:54

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You mean to tell me that these aren't powered by dilythium crystal fed warp coil induction engines like the rest of the fleet? NOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Gizmo - The Only Good Gremlin, but don't feed me after Midnight > Justin Hughes 02/05/2015 at 20:57

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Its probably just me but these two go together in my head.