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Video: SpaceShipTwo First Captive Flight

Virgin Galactic has released video from yesterday’s first captive flight of SpaceShipTwo, also known as the VSS Enterprise. Yesterday’s flight lasted 2 hours and 54 minutes and flew to 45,000 feet. It was the 25th flight for WhiteKnightTwo since the aircraft first flew back in December of 2008.

The video from Virgin Galactic shows crews preparing for the early morning flight as well as take off, air-to-air shots from chase aircraft and the landing. During the landing the aircraft can be seen yawing a bit which is completely normal during most aircraft landings. But with the massive wingspan and twin fuselages far away from the center of the aircraft, the motion catches the eye more than it would on a typical aircraft. Good stick and rudder skills are always needed for a good landing!

Scaled Composites test pilot Mark Stucky flew the aircraft for the first captive carry flight.

“We were able to accomplish virtually 100 percent of the flight cards, we cleared the envelope out to the full release speed and altitude on the very first flight” he said. “Things just went really well.”

Yesterday’s flight was the second for WhiteKnightTwo this month. On March 4, Stucky was the pilot on a flight to evaluate the pylon located at the center of the wing where SpaceShipTwo is attached. In the still photos from yesterday’s flight, numerous pieces of yarn can be seen on the center pylon to help engineers evaluate the aerodynamic interaction between the pylon, SpaceShipTwo and the main wing of WhiteKnightTwo.

Video: Virgin Galactic

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Better Place Charges Ahead Down Under

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Better Place is going Down Under with a plan to roll out an EV charging network in Australia by late 2012.

The Silicon Valley company’s announcement makes Australia the third country — behind Israel and Denmark — to join entrepreneur Shai Agassi in creating the infrastructure we’ll need if electric vehicles are to catch on. Better Place Australia, which has raised $25 million so far, believes as many as 20 percent of the country’s cars will be electric by 2020.

“Battery prices are going down, petrol prices are going up — that tells you what’s going to happen,” CEO Evan Thornley told the Sydney Morning Herald.

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Lord Vader, Your Motorcycle Is Ready

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This is the Magpul Ronin, and it’s what you get when a company that makes firearms accessories decides to make a motorcycle.

The motorcycle in question is, mostly, a Buell 1125R sportbike. The guys at Magpul are riders who loved the bike but thought the aesthetics — never a strongpoint for Buell — sucked. When Harley-Davidson pulled the plug on Buell, Magpul bought a bunch of 1125Rs and set to work.

Off came the bodywork, ditched in favor of a naked streetfighter look accentuated by a new airbox and shorter tail section. The radiators that Buell bolted to the sides below the frame spars also went in the junk pile. It was replaced by a smaller unit bolted to that wild girder fork. Yes, the radiator is bolted to the fork. Can you say “unsprung weight”? That said, the girder fork offers some advantages that make up for the added unsprung weight, and Wes Siler at Hell For Leather runs ‘em down in a really detailed post that has a lot more pics of the Ronin.

Photo: Magpul

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When You Fly as a Test Pilot, You Never Fly Alone

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In commercial and military aviation, long gone are the days of a test pilot risking his life to go fly an airplane that has never flown before, with little idea of what is going to happen once the wheels leave the ground. Much of the lore surrounding test pilots still comes from an era during the years surrounding World War II when new aircraft designs were appearing monthly, if not weekly. Test pilots would sometimes be flying multiple new designs in a matter of weeks. And many flights ended in a crash.

“Let’s just say a lot of those lessons were written in blood” says Boeing test pilot Doug Benjamin of the early days of test flying. “The image of the test pilot was they go out, kick the tire and light the fire and they come back and say the airplane was great or the airplane was awful and that was the whole report.”

Benjamin has been a test pilot for more than 30 years. He’s flown some of the most advanced, even secretive aircraft in the world, and is the first to admit he never does it alone. Today’s test pilots are work with engineers every step of the process. From the years leading up to a first flight as we described with the 747-8, or throughout any specific flight as we wrote about yesterday, the test pilot in the plane and the engineer at a computer are continuously working together.

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RoboCop’s Cruiser Gets a BMW Engine

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Carbon Motors is gunning for a unique niche in the auto biz — cop cars. That kind of narrowcasting is unconventional among automakers, and in keeping with that theme Carbon Motors has selected a most unusual engine for the cruiser it says we’ll see in 2012.

A BMW. More specifically, a BMW diesel.

Carbon Motors’ cruiser, codenamed E7,  is designed specifically and exclusively for law enforcement. The company has looked at what a police car must have, from the doors and bodywork to the lights and engine — and rethought the whole deal.

And on that last point, the engine, Carbon Motors has selected BMW, which will provide more than 240,000 six-cylinder diesel engines and automatic gearboxes for the E7. Carbon Motors says it went with the Bavarian engines because they’re durable, efficient and reliable.

“The strength of BMW as a partner will allow us to provide our women and men in uniform with a diesel engine capable of the performance they desire along with the significant reduction in fuel consumption and emissions that U.S. taxpayers need,” said William Santana Li, chairman and CEO of Carbon Motors said in a statement.

If and when police departments adopt the E7, they could save some serious money. Law enforcement vehicles, by some estimates, consume 1.5 billion gallons of gasoline and emit some 14 million tons of CO2 annually. BMW says using diesel engines could cut fuel consumption by 40 percent and carbon emissions by 30 percent.

Photo: Carbon Motors

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Photos: SpaceShipTwo Completes First Captive Flight

VSS Enterprise First Flight The Triumph of Private "Enterp

Virgin Galactic has released some details about today’s first captive flight of SpaceShipTwo. The early morning flight lasted for nearly three hours and achieved an altitude of 45,000 feet. Attached to WhiteKnightTwo, the second generation spacecraft from Scaled Composites lifted off at 7:05am from the Mojave Air and Space Port.

Scaled Composites founder and legendary aerospace designer Burt Rutan said it was a momentous day for the Scaled and Virgin Galactic teams.

“The captive carry flight signifies the start of what we believe will be extremely exciting and successful spaceship flight test program.”

As we reported earlier, captive flights are expected to continue for SpaceShipTwo and will be followed by unpowered glide flights.

Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic was equally pleased with today’s flight and said it was no surprise the ground-breaking vehicle flew so well.

“The Scaled team is uniquely qualified to bring this important and incredible dream to reality. Today was another major step along that road and a testament to US engineering and innovation.”

According to a press release, Virgin Galactic says it has already taken in around $45 million in deposits for space flights from more than 330 people.

The test program for SpaceShipTwo will continue through the rest of the year and 2011. There has been no announcement of a date for the first commercial flight carrying paying customers.

More photos, including close ups of SpaceShipTwo in flight after the jump.

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Fantastico! Chrysler to Build Fiat 500 EV

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Hey! There are signs of life at Chrysler, which says an electric version of the Fiat 500 will roll silently into American showrooms in 2012.

Chrysler was long on promises and short on details today when it announced its engineers are developing an electric drivetrain for the car, which we loved as a concept (pictured) at the Detroit auto show in January. Of course, Chrysler offered no specifics, saying only that the car “is comprised of three main systems: high-power electric powertrain module, advanced lithium-ion battery and an EV control unit to manage power flows.”

Wow. Thanks for the EV Drivetrain 101 lesson, Chrysler.

Chrysler will do all the engineering for the vehicle at its HQ in Auburn, Hills, Michigan. BusinessWeek says Chrysler’s shooting for a range of 100 miles. The car will sport a Fiat nameplate, but Chrysler will build it specifically for the United States. No word on price, but Fiat and Chrysler capo Sergio Marchionne said in January the concept car would sell for $32,000 if it ever saw production, according to Automotive News Europe. He chalked up half of that to the battery.

No word on whether that price tag is before or after the $7,500 federal tax credit for EVs. Either way, 32 large is a lot to ask for a subcompact, especially since it almost certainly will be a two-seater like the Mini E (batteries eat up a lot of space. That’s the same ballpark the four-door Nissan Leaf EV is playing in. The car also will be coming to market at least a year behind the Leaf, the Chevrolet Volt and Ford’s electric Focus. On the other hand, the 500 has fantastic styling going for it.

Chrylser has teased us with electric vehicles before — anyone remember the ENVI skunkworks program and the cool Dodge Circuit EV we saw 18 months ago? But that was before Chrysler imploded and Fiat took over. Marchionne said in November that Chrysler would build 56,000 electric cars annually by 2014, and the two companies always have planned to raid Fiat’s stable to provide platforms for new Chryslers.

“The Fiat 500EV is an outstanding example of our efforts,” Scott Kunselman, senior VP of engineering, said in a statement. “The Fiat 500 is a small, lightweight platform perfect for integrating electric vehicle technology.”

The electric 500 will follow the conventional gasoline-powered model that will arrive in the United States at the end of the year.

Chrysler also said it’s killing its plan to build a hybrid Ram pickup — it couldn’t make a business case for it — but says it will develop 140 plug-in hybrid pickups for a three-year demonstration program.

Photo of the 500EV concept at the Detroit auto show: Chuck Squatriglia / Wired.com More pix here.

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SpaceShipTwo Makes First (Captive) Flight

SS2 out of the hangar for the first time

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo made its first captive carry flight early this morning at the Mojave Air and Space Port. SpaceShipTwo, which was christened the VSS Enterprise at its unveiling in December, is being carried by WhiteKnightTwo on its first test flight.

According to Aviation Week, SpaceShipTwo has been undergoing ground testing with WhiteKnightTwo recently, but this is the first time the two aircraft have left the ground. SpaceShipTwo is expected to go through a similar flight test program as its much smaller predecessor, SpaceShipOne, but with much more rigorous and wider ranging evaluations in order to certify the vehicle for public use.

During SpaceShipOne’s development, two captive carries were followed by several glide tests where the space ship is released from several different altitudes to evaluate its flight characteristics. After glide flights, the flight test team at Scaled moved on to powered flight, eventually culminating with the first flight into space on June 21, 2004.

WhiteKnightTwo made its first flight on December 21, 2008 with test pilot Peter Siebold at the controls. At Oshkosh, we caught up with Siebold and got a first hand account of what it is like to fly the 140 foot wingspan, twin fuselaged behemoth that carries SpaceShipTwo.

Virgin Galactic has not set a date for commercial space flights, but has said passenger flights would not happen before 2011 at the earliest. According to the company, once glide flights are complete, the team will progress through subsonic powered flights, supersonic powered flights, and finally suborbital space flights. It will then undergo a lengthy certification process with the Federal Aviation Administration before launching the first commercial passenger space flights.

(Update: click here for photos of SpaceShipTwo’s first flight, and here for video of the first flight)

Photo: SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo at SS2’s unveiling in December/Virgin Galactic

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A Look Inside the Brains of Boeing 787 Flight Test

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This weekend marked a major milestone for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner — the flight-test aircraft was cleared to fly throughout its performance range for the first time. It is a critical step for Boeing in the company’s effort to receive Type Inspection Authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration for the long-awaited new composite airliner.

Wired.com was in Boeing’s telemetry room on Friday during the final flutter-test flight as teams of engineers diligently worked with test pilots Mike Carriker and Regis Hancock aboard 787 ZA001. As the test pilots executed test after test after test, the engineers on the ground quietly studied computer monitors and, yes, paper strip charts to ensure oscillations introduced to the flight controls were effectively damped and the composite aircraft was ready to fly safely throughout its flight envelope.

Flutter testing is critical to any aircraft development program. The tests ensure that small oscillations that may develop at the natural frequency of the flight surfaces and flight controls do not increase to a point where they can be destructive or cause structural failure.

Engineers design an aircraft so that these oscillations are damped without external input from the pilot. There are numerous examples of flutter causing problems throughout the history of aviation, including some crashes. But with the modern, thorough flight testing implemented today, the problem is extremely rare in airliners.

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Freightliner Taps Tesla To Build an Electric Truck

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The technology underpinning the sexy Tesla Roadster is showing up in the last place you’d expect to find it — a truck.

The Silicon Valley automaker is providing the batteries Freightliner Custom Chassis is putting in the electric trucks it will have on the road next year. Freightliner has offered CNG and hybrid electric trucks for years and it’s about to start selling a hydraulic hybrid. It says electrics are the logical next step.

“We’re trying to drive some of the revolution within the commercial sector,” says Jonathan Randall, director of sales and marketing. “The is one more arrow in our quiver to make sure we’re following the technology and providing what our customers want.”

We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating — fleets are a perfect application for electric vehicles. The vehicles follow set routes, so range isn’t a problem. They’re kept at centralized depots, making recharging a breeze. Yes, EVs cost more up front, but they’re cheaper to operate — Freightliner says its electric rig will save $15,000 a year in fuel and maintenance costs. Ford recognizes this as well, which is one reason it’s rolling out the light-duty Transit Connect Electric van at the end of the year.

Freightliner already builds a lot of the delivery trucks — called walk-in vans — you see trundling around town. It essentially took the chassis from one of those trucks, the MT-45, and swapped the engine and transmission for a motor and a really big battery.

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