The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

[John H]

Whenever Burt accomplishes something really neat....as he has done so twice in the last year with Fosset's Global Flyer and the spacecraft...I always think..about how screwed up the Pond Racer was...designed by Burt. It's kind of spoiled anything else Rutan has done since then for me....no matter how great it is. I just can't get over it....And don't get me wrong I still like Burt....but I always have a sagging feeling about him ever since that whole debacle. I'm sure there's some people who might feel the same about Greenamyer after his B-29 fiasco.

John

[Peashooter]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

John: As a 20-year builder/flyer of a Rutan product, I feel the need to defend him here.

The precipitating incident in the crash of the Pond Racer was a power plant failure. It was not the fault of Burt's airframe design. Now, I can't tell you if the engine choice was his or someone else's, but I can tell you that he has been very strict within the homebuilt community regarding use of "experimental" engines in experimental airframes. He simply will not endorse it. (Within the mass homebuilder market -- NOT the one-off SpaceShipOne type of project.)

The parameters of the Pond Racer project called for maximum power from a small power package installed in a minimized airframe, and given that it was a purpose-built racer, there's no way to provide for a safe out of all possible failure modes. Although the planform of the airframe was selected to remove the pilot from an engine that's blown up, on fire, throwing oil, or otherwise "grenading."

The inciting incident was a failure in the engine/prop combination, which Rutan really couldn't control.

If you want to direct your ire at someone in the aviation community, try one of Burt's first employers, Jim Bede. Now he's got baggage! Peas

[speeddemon]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

I have a lot of thoughts about the Pond Racer. I applaud Bob Pond (who was a strong supporter of air racing in the late 70's and early '80's, by sponsoring Precious Metal and Sumthin' Else) for trying something 'new'. If you were going to go build an 'outside the box' homebuilt/racer, Rutan would be the guy to go to.

But the criteria for the racer was for a twin engine plane, with a pilot 'pod' isolated from the engines...well...you only can do so much. No matter how you slice it, the airframe design is going to have a ton of 'intersection' drag....the same reason you'll NEVER see a fast P-38, no matter what you do to it. All those corners are going to add up to a brick wall at some point, and horsepower just won't be able to overcome it.

Now admittedly, yes, it was engine/fuel problems that were the undoing of the Pond Racer. But you know...I just never really agreed with the design.

I think my biggest beef with the whole project was the "We're going to kick a$$ and take names" attitude that was prevelant before they even started laying the thing up. It was published in numerous flying magazines that it was going to be the savior of air racing and would overnight render all warbirds obsolete.

My preference is, keep your mouth shut, and let your performance on the racecourse speak for itself. That's what we try to do in boat racing, anyhow.

[Peashooter]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

John H, Your post has gotten under my skin. Let's examine the logic.

1) Rutan is to the Pond Racer as Nixon was to Watergate? Did Rutan set out to break the law, and then proceed to cover up the intentional misdeeds? Absolutely not. Did he casually develop the Pond Racer without regard to the pilot's safety? No, in fact he took extreme caution in the design of the airframe.

2) Greenamyer's B-29 Kee Bird project a fiasco? Websters defines fiasco as "A complete failure." Well, let's look at what happened here, too. After a two-year, massive effort to get the airplane ready to fly, the failure came about when a generator in the tail broke from its mounts while taxiing for takeoff, causing the fire that consumed the airplane. OK, so ultimately the recovery "failed", but to call it a fiasco is unfair at best. Tragic yes, but a fiasco, no. "Fiasco" implies no care or caution taken at all. This was simply not the case.

Both incidents require objective, deliberate analysis, not off-hand Monday morning quarterbacking years hence.

My .02, Peas

[First time Juke]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Maybe Rutan Bro's should get together with the infamous Dart Renaissance team and Burt would get another feather into his already highly decorated headgear !

[Leo]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Burt is going to be remembered by history as one of the most influential and inovative designers ever. Some of his ideas have been genius, some not so. But all are an attempt to push the limits and expand knowledge and I can't say anything bad about that. The sheer number of designs testing new theories means some are going to be less than sucessful. That's why they are called "proof of concept".
In my limited knowledge of the Pond, it always seemed to me that it was systems, not aerodynamics that kept it from performing to it's utmost. Untried design theories, untried engines and installations. How many years of constant testing does it take a major manufacturer to work out the bugs? The V-22 comes to mind.
Was it a gold performer, probably not. Was it hyped waaay beyond it's potential, definately. Was it the only racer this was done with, absolutely not. several are doing that as we speak...

[deepsky]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

How can you judge his work from one plane crash, Jack Northrop made planes that crashed, as did kelly johnson, But I don't see anybody looking past their great designs! I think Rutan ranks up there with Johnson in every aspect of a great designer, both had ctting edge designs and abstract ideas that made such great planes as the SR-71, U-2, P-38, F-80, and the F-104 (Johnson), and then the EZ planes, Proteus, Voyager, Pond racer, Starship, and about 7 other designs I don't remember the names of (Rutan).

He has also built his designs without unreal cost, I mean come on, the Army wanted the commanche, now we have two of them and it took 20 years and almost one billion dollars for nothing, cancelled contract! NASA made three reentry vehicles at billions of dollars and they never got past the unmaned unpowered flight tests! He got his first space craft up for twenty million and in under five years!

I think we need to look at him as we would any other designer by seeing all of his designs and not judging him from ONE crash!

I am sorry, I didn't mean for this to sound mean, I didn't realize it untill I was done and now I'm to lazy to go back and redo it.

[Leo]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

And if success were based on a crash during testing (as I assumed the Pond was still undergoing, as compared to a tried and true racer) we would be deprived of the P-51, P-38, B-17, B-26 etc. all of which had "design issues".

[Peashooter]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

I am sorry, I didn't mean for this to sound mean, I didn't realize it untill I was done and now I'm to lazy to go back and redo it.

Flames from two of us -- the fire trucks are rollin'!

[tex-fan]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

[QUOTE=speeddemon]
But the criteria for the racer was for a twin engine plane, with a pilot 'pod' isolated from the engines...well...you only can do so much. No matter how you slice it, the airframe design is going to have a ton of 'intersection' drag....the same reason you'll NEVER see a fast P-38, no matter what you do to it. All those corners are going to add up to a brick wall at some point, and horsepower just won't be able to overcome it.

hey speeddemon, I have a question. you don't think if you took a P 38 and put a couple of Dago Red type motors on it, that it might go faster than Dago with only one. Just thought I'd ask. Thanks

[speeddemon]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

hey speeddemon, I have a question. you don't think if you took a P 38 and put a couple of Dago Red type motors on it, that it might go faster than Dago with only one. Just thought I'd ask. Thanks

Well, you'd probably have a very fast P-38, but there is a point of diminishing return. Levitz put his P-38 Double Trouble on a diet in the mid-70's, gave it some SERIOUS clean-up mods, and increased the horsepower (by going with the G-6 Allison), and the increase in speed was marginal at best. In fact, Lefty was able to beat him on the race course in most cases where they went head to head...and we know how stock White Lightnin' was.

The P-38 is a big airplane, and that is a lot of frontal area to overcome...throw the intersection drag in on top of it, and I still don't think you'd come up with anything close to what the Super Mustangs are running today.

[tex-fan]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Very informative reply, I really appreciate the quick responce. That question has been on my mind for years. Thanks again.

[kenf]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

It's clear to me that Burt Rutan sold Bob Pond "a bill of goods" concerning the potential of the "racer". Just before the crash, Steve Hinton (then team manager) told me that their studies showed the plane's parasitic drag to be only very very slightly less than that of Strega. Divide the power of Strega's Mouse Motor by two and that is what they would have had to get out of each Nissan. They could barely produce half the required power and had zero reliability at that power level. They were never going to be able to get anything like the performance Rutan predicted and they knew it.

Say what you want, but the Pond Racer was a very expensive project. Beyond the enormous cost to Pond, it cost each of us a good man, a great race pilot, and the active air racing support of Bob Pond.

If Rutan has no culpability in this thing, why is the Racer so totally invisible on his web site? If the whole problem was in the power package, why haven't we seen the design reporduced with more reliable engines?

[John H]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

No I didn't really mean that Burt set out to break the law and commit fraud like Nixon....Let's rephrase it as his Heaven's Gate. Maybe it would have been less painful, and I would never think about the airplane if I didn't know Rick Brickert.

John

[Peashooter]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Kenf: Good points, but it did turn a 400 mph qualification lap on power that was not fully developed. And did Rutan go to Pond, or vice versa? (Just asking, I don't recall.)

And it hasn't been repoduced becasue of $$$$. It's cheaper to chop, channel and modify existing equipment.

Rutan has always designed to a specific mission requirement and in all but one case his ideas achieved their objectives safely in reality, as we've dramatically wittnessed twice within the last 5 months.

That one exception, BTW, was the Beech Starship, which got fat under Beech guidance.

If I had the jack, I'd ask Burt to decide between a Mouse Motor or a monster slow nose case 3350, with the rest up to his discretion. This formula is known power in a hot, current technology airframe. Jon Sharp is on this path with his NXT. Peas