On 2005-11-11 19:18:51 -0500, Jim Carriere said:

I was at the Smithsonian Museum (the Air and Space one in Washingtion
D.C.) last weekend, where Spaceship One hangs in the lobby. Does
anybody know why there is a dent in the bottom of the fuselage, very
close to the back? I wonder if I missed something in the press
releases or other coverage. There are bits of online literature that
acknowledge but don't explain the dent.

Here's the deal, Jim.

As the ship came down from space on the initial (June 04) space flight,
piloted by Mike Melvill, it was joined by mid-chase plane, Bob
Scherer's Starship.

If you look at the photos taken then you can see the dent. The pool
photog on the chase plane, Jim Campbell, was actually the first one to
call out the dent. Melvill correlated it with a sound he'd heard, but
that may or may not have been related.

That tailcone material is a non-structural aerodynamic fairing. This
was the first flight it was on -- the Dec. 17th first powered flight,
flown by Brian Binnie, for instance, had a bare rocket nozzle back
there. Anyway, during the flight, the high temps while under power had
weakened the tailcone fairing, and then the aerodynamic forces in the
shuttlecock (or "carefree recovery") mode had caused it to kind of dish
in.

The techs were able to heat it and pop it back out. For the X-1 and X-2
flights they had made a stronger one (I think by strengthening the
original with more material, but I'm not sure).

When the NASM asked for the plane, they wanted it "exactly as on the
first space flight," and that's what Rutan and Allen promised. There
were a few things that had changed on the spacecraft and they were
changed back. What they didn't expect was for the techs to take the
fairing, get out the whole set of pictures, and heat it up to put that
dent back in it. This supposedly completely surprised Rutan and also
the Smithsonian team that was to accept the spacecraft.

Great museum, by the way, both of them in fact (the other one is close
to Dulles airport). I'm preaching to the choir here

Yeah. The original plan for the Udvar-Hazy annex at Dulles had tiedowns
for fly-in customers. Washington paranoia & insecurity put paid to that
before it got started.

The staff and volunteers at the Museum (U-H and on the Mall) are
wonderful folks.

cheers

-=K=-

Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.