Space Ship Two: Eerily Familiar…
By Dave Brody
Originally published at: http://www.livescience.com/blogs/2008/01/25/space-ship-two-eerily-familiar%E2%80%A6/
Those of us who sail catamarans tend to hold a prejudicial belief that “two hulls (like two heads) are better than one”. Apparently, Burt Rutan and the Scaled Composites team think so as well.
But when Space Ship Two / White Knight Two made its debut appearance this week, there was something even more enticing about it. We began to see how the rest of us might tack our way into the black sky. And, for some of my aeronautically knowledgeable friends, it was downright ghostly.
Take a look at this design – circa 1979 – from the Russian Myasishchev Design Bureau. It’s an extreme makeover of the Russian Air Force’s 3M bomber, in service at the time.
Their plan was to drop a rocket boosted vehicle, X-15 style, to transit out of the atmosphere.
It was called the 3M-2 concept and had multiple permutations for various roles. It would have made a dandy crew delivery vehicle. Yes, also a handy satellite killer. And ambitious commanders, no doubt, dreamed of delivering squads of elite Soviet troops anywhere on Earth in a couple of hours.
Model-maker and collector Alex Pancheko’s photos are postcards from the future as well as the past: Please remember, the first word in Scaled Composites is “scaled”. The rampant speculation, of course, is that Rutan has sold Sir Richard’s team on the idea that their Level Two design will scale to an orbital Level Three configuration.
No surprise: that’s precisely the mission for which the Myasishchev group was designing the 3M-2 back in the late 1970s / early 1980’s.
Igor Stravinsky (himself stealing from Picasso) supposedly said: “the merely good composer borrows; the great composer steals!” [see this quote's storied history here] So it is with practical aerospace design notions: Space Ship Three / White Knight Three, under Virgin livery colors, may steal the orbital space tourism market while dropping the price to levels mere mortals can maybe afford.
So perhaps we’ll be sailing - sooner rather than later - into the space industrial revolution on twin keels. “Ready about!”
By Dave Brody
Originally published at: http://www.livescience.com/blogs/2008/01/25/space-ship-two-eerily-familiar%E2%80%A6/
Those of us who sail catamarans tend to hold a prejudicial belief that “two hulls (like two heads) are better than one”. Apparently, Burt Rutan and the Scaled Composites team think so as well.
But when Space Ship Two / White Knight Two made its debut appearance this week, there was something even more enticing about it. We began to see how the rest of us might tack our way into the black sky. And, for some of my aeronautically knowledgeable friends, it was downright ghostly.
Take a look at this design – circa 1979 – from the Russian Myasishchev Design Bureau. It’s an extreme makeover of the Russian Air Force’s 3M bomber, in service at the time.
Their plan was to drop a rocket boosted vehicle, X-15 style, to transit out of the atmosphere.
It was called the 3M-2 concept and had multiple permutations for various roles. It would have made a dandy crew delivery vehicle. Yes, also a handy satellite killer. And ambitious commanders, no doubt, dreamed of delivering squads of elite Soviet troops anywhere on Earth in a couple of hours.
Model-maker and collector Alex Pancheko’s photos are postcards from the future as well as the past: Please remember, the first word in Scaled Composites is “scaled”. The rampant speculation, of course, is that Rutan has sold Sir Richard’s team on the idea that their Level Two design will scale to an orbital Level Three configuration.
No surprise: that’s precisely the mission for which the Myasishchev group was designing the 3M-2 back in the late 1970s / early 1980’s.
Igor Stravinsky (himself stealing from Picasso) supposedly said: “the merely good composer borrows; the great composer steals!” [see this quote's storied history here] So it is with practical aerospace design notions: Space Ship Three / White Knight Three, under Virgin livery colors, may steal the orbital space tourism market while dropping the price to levels mere mortals can maybe afford.
So perhaps we’ll be sailing - sooner rather than later - into the space industrial revolution on twin keels. “Ready about!”
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