RC White Knight and SpaceShipOne with Rocket

This is a project my dad and I started about a year ago. It is based on the real aircraft designed by Burt Rutan and built by Scaled Composites as an entry to the Ansari X Prize competition. My dad designed the plans on CAD and cut out all of the pieces. The project slowed down when he accidently cut off a piece of his finger while cutting parts for it. The models are made of Dollar Tree foam covered in White colored packaging tape. Below are a few pictures taken during assembly. 

The White Knight is designed to break down for easy transportation in our minivan. The outer and inner wings slide onto a wood peice in the side pods. The inner wings are permenantly attached to the fuselage. This makes it much easier to transport this giant plane.

Over the past few months, when I would get home from school I would work on putting electronics into the planes and we finished it about two months ago. Below is a video of the first test flight/maiden flight of the White Knight mothership.

Before this flight we had also tested SpaceShipOne by tossing it down a steep hill. We then went to fly the two attached together. On our first attempt we encountered a problem. When SpaceShipOne was released, it slid backwards and up into the prop of the White Knight and the prop exploded and shredded the top of SpaceShipOne's wing. You can see the damage in the following picture.

I was able to quickly glide down SpaceShipOne, then take the remote for the White Knight from my dad and glide it in for a safe landing. We didn't let this discourage us, we replaced the prop and set the ESC to have a brake and created a mix to make the motor brake when the release switch was flipped. During this time we also painted the planes.

We were soon back at the field for another test flight. Below is a video of this flight.

As you can tell, at the end we encountered yet another problem. With the motor on the White Knight at the time to carry SpaceShipOne you had to fly at 100% throttle. The motor overheated and burned up the coils. It got so hot that it even melted the glue that held the firewall in place. We ordered a new, more powerful motor and added a cooling air scoop for the motor. It worked much better. It can carry SpaceShipOne using only about 70% throttle. The video at the top of the article was of a demo at the RCCD (the club we are members of/ RCCD.ORG) Scale and Warbirds event. It was the first time we had fired a rocket. To do so, we use a switch attached to a servo that runs on a seperate battery and wires that run to the back of the aircraft. Those wires are attached to LEDs and the male side of a JST connector. The LED's are there so that we can tell if there is power running through the system. The ESTES rocket igniters are put into the JST connector and bent to go into the rocket.

Last weekend we also flew a demo at the RCCD Large Scale event. It always seems to draw lots of attention around the club.

We will be bringing it to FliteFest and hope you come by and give it a look. We also hope to be able to perform a demo flight.

If you have any questions post them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.

Below is the information that we carry with us in a binder with pictures of the real thing when we go to events for people to see. 

Background on the real plane and space ship:

The WhiteKnight and SpaceShipOne were created as an entry to the Ansari X Prize.

Funded by the Ansari family, the Ansari XPRIZE challenged teams from around the world to build a reliable, reusable, privately financed, manned spaceship capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the Earth's surface twice within two weeks.

The WhiteKnight and SpaceShipOne were built by famed aerospace designer Burt Rutan of Mojave-based Scaled Composites with financial backing from Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen.

WHITE KNIGHT:

The White Knight is a manned, twin-turbojet research aircraft intended for high-altitude missions. It  provides a high-altitude airborne launch of SpaceShipOne, a manned sub-orbital spacecraft. The White Knight is equipped to flight-qualify all the spacecraft systems, except rocket propulsion. The White Knight’s cockpit, avionics, ECS, pneumatics, trim servos, data system, and electrical system components are identical to those installed on SpaceShipOne. The White Knight’s high thrust-to-weight ratio and enormous speed brakes allow the astronauts in training to practice space flight maneuvers such as boost, approach, and landing with a very realistic environment. Thus, the aircraft serves as a high-fidelity moving-base simulator for SpaceShipOne pilot training.

SPACESHIPONE:

SpaceShipOne is a three-seat, high-altitude research rocket, designed for sub-orbital flights to 100 km altitude. The unique configuration allows aircraft-like qualities for boost, glide, and landing. The ship converts to a stable, high-drag shape for atmospheric entry. This “care-free” configuration allows a “hands-off” re-entry and greatly reduces aero/thermal loads. SpaceShipOne’s hybrid rocket motor is a non-toxic, liquid nitrous-oxide/rubber-fuel hybrid propulsion system. The avionics onboard provide the pilot with the precise guidance information needed to manually fly SpaceShipOne for boost and re-entry. It also provides guidance for approach and landing and vehicle health monitoring. The unit stores and telemeters flight test data to Mission Control.

Typical flight

Initially attached to the WhiteKnight  while climbing for an hour to 50,000 feet, above 85% of the atmosphere. SpaceShipOne then drops into gliding flight and fires its rocket motor while climbing steeply for more than a minute, reaching a speed of 2,500 mph. The ship coasts up to 100 km (62 miles) altitude, then falls back into the atmosphere. The coast and fall are under weightless conditions for more than three minutes. During weightless flight, the spaceship converts to a high-drag configuration to allow a safe, stable atmospheric entry. After the entry deceleration which takes more than a minute, the ship converts back to a conventional glider, allowing a leisurely 17 minute glide from 80,000 feet altitude down to a runway where a landing is made at lightplane speeds.

The WhiteKnight and SpaceShipOne won the Ansari XPrize in October 2004 and launched the era of space tourism in the form of Virgin Galactic with Funding from British entrepreneur Richard Branson.

Below is a documentary on the real aircraft and its achievements.

Background on the RC models:

Origin: We started this project about 1 year ago and designed plans on CAD when we saw RutanRC’s take on a RC version of these planes. They had SpaceShipOne as a EDF powered model and the WhiteKnight as a uncontrolled glider. We decided to make a more true to life model. Both models are built from inexpensive foam core board and methods learned through Flite Test.

Approx 1/12 scale.

WhiteKnight:

Weight: - 1500g - 3.31 lbs - without battery     

 - 1850g- 4.08 lbs - with battery

Power:     -    NTM Propdrive 35-36 1400Kv

• 4S 3000 MaH battery

• 8x4 prop

• Over 2000g of thrust

Dimensions:

Total Length - 46”             Pods - 44”

Fuselage - 30”                 Wingspan - 81”

Wing Area - 560in2

Controls: Throttle, aileron, flaps, and elevator

Special features: Dropping mechanism for SS1 and breaks down into 5 pieces

SpaceShipOne:

Weight: - 420g - 0.93 lbs

Power: ESTES Rocket Motors with remote ignition

- B6 - peak 1224g thrust and stable of 460g of thrust - total burn of 0.8 seconds

- C6 - peak 1542g thrust and stable of 460g of thrust - total burn of 1.6 seconds

Dimensions:

Length - 29”                   Wingspan - 16”

Controls: Rocket igniter, elevons(aileron elevator mix)

Plans: We plan to make the wing fold like the real plane does for decent through the atmosphere