What do you do after building a spaceship? Design a flying car, of course.
That's how legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan ended his days at Scaled Composites, the Mojave, Calif., company he founded that built the prize-winning SpaceShipOne, the first private vehicle to travel beyond Earth's atmosphere.
The spaceship, which made three jaunts into space in 2004, became the prototype for a fleet of commercial suborbital vehicles Scaled is building in partnership with Virgin Galactic, a space travel offshoot of Richard Branson's Virgin Group.
NEWS: Flying Car Goes to Market
The "roadable plane," as the company prefers its newest creation be called, has not had much flight time yet. The two-seater, electric-hybrid made several short hops over the Mojave Airport runway, but it was using battery-powered wheels, not the four electric propellers it was designed to fly with.
"It wasn't completed when it was flown," Rutan told the Experimental Aircraft Association.
Before his retirement in April, Rutan spent more than a decade toying with the idea of a personal electric aircraft, including planes that could be driven, notes Scaled in a press release about Rutan's final design, the Model 367 BiPod.
The vehicle sports twin-fuselages made of fiberglass and carbon fiber which are connected by a canard in the front, an airfoil in the middle and a horizontal stabilizer. "The aircraft is flown from the right cockpit, where flight controls are located, and driven from the left cockpit, which houses a steering wheel. So after you drive to the airport, you'll have to get out and switch seats before takeoff," the EAA said.
The cockpits use the same throttle.
NEWS: SpaceShipOne Designer Burt Rutan Retiring
The BiPod's 31-foot, 10-inch long wings are removable and can be stowed between the pods. It is designed to get 820 miles on a tank of gas and 35 miles on just batteries, and can reach highway speeds, says Scaled.
As an aircraft, the BiPod cruises at 200 mph with a range of 530 miles or up to 760 miles at a lower-power mode of 100 mph.
Scaled unveiled the BiPod this week as a way to gauge outside interest in further development.
"We're open as to what the options might be," Scaled president Doug Shane told Aviation Week, an industry trade publication.
The company developed the BiPod as part of an internal research and development project to strengthen its electric propulsion capabilities, Scaled said. The plane flew four months after its initial design.
Tags: Cars, Electric Vehicles, Hybrid Cars
comments ( )