http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Com ... _Boomerang

Exhibit A in the trial of GA vs. FAA

Why hasn't this been snapped up and produced by a real manufacturer?

A guess...a huge dose of reality.

Keep in mind that young Morrow, a very successful snowboard manufacturer/entrepreneur, with a business degree, an aeronautical engineering degree, experience as an airplane mechanic and flight instructor, probably realized eventually the business model just didn't work.

I meant a Cessna, or Piper or Diamond for example. It's not only in aviation that a superior design can't compete, but it's very often true. If this is safer, faster, more comfortable and better, it should win. The business model doesn't work because the current certification process is beyond onerous, it's annihilating one of our finest homegrown industries.

Anyhow, I wonder if anyone here knew more about this very cool design.

A guess...a huge dose of reality.

Anyone have a picture? I can't find one

Ugly?? The Boomerang is a beautifully engineered machine. Quite stunning (in a positive way )

Here ya go.....

Pretty stunning approach really. Kinda looks like something Picasso would have designed.

Being a left brained type (I know that'll surprise some of you out there) the things I wonder about are stall recovery and spin recovery?

I've seen some but don't know where.

Anyway...picture an engine on the nose, one on the port wing, and an Aircoupe-type tail with vertical stabilizers/rudders asymmetrically aligned with the fuselage but somewhat in line with the engines. A very ugly airplane.

picked these off the internet:

MODEL "Boomerang"
CREW 1
PASSENGERS 4
ENGINE 1 x Lycoming TIO-360-A1B, 150kW
WEIGHTS
Take-off weight 1900 kg 4189 lb
Empty weight 1070 kg 2359 lb
DIMENSIONS
Wingspan 11.2 m 37 ft 9 in
Length 9.32 m 31 ft 7 in
PERFORMANCE
Max. speed 525 km/h 326 mph
Cruise speed 390-490 km/h 242 - 304 mph
Range w/max.fuel 3900 km 2423 miles

Can you put stuff in that other compartment? Looks great for golf clubs.

I like it.

Or a single bed in the pontoon.

Those speeds with those engines are pretty awesome, and single engine is reportedly a non-issue.

I like the looks, except the round pilot/co-pilot windows, I think the cabin is wider than most also.

I bet someone out there can figure out how to put it on floats.

I think I remember seeing the original prototype and it had a sort of desk up front with a laptop lashed down which was Rutan's interface with the aircraft systems.

Rutan is a aviation icon, a brilliant guy, and certainly he has pushed the limits of nearly everything in aviation....

My perception is that part of the secret to the efficiency of his designs is his ability to cut everything so incredibly closet to the edge. The Voyager had something like a 1.5 G structural failure limit. It is nearly unbelievable that they could build a machine that big that is that fragile and make it fly around the world?

When you subject structures that are built close to the edge problems arise in certification, and then the fixes add weight. My understanding is that is what happened to the Starship.

When you make it heavier, range suffers, so it needs more gas, which makes it heavier, which means it needs more strength, which makes it heavier, which means it needs more gas.......

I do not believe, that a single one of his aircraft designs has been commercially successful.

It paid about $30,000 in tuition to learn that lesson... I was an early investor in Visionaire, one of the first VLJ concepts...

To be clear, I am not blaming all of Visionaire's demise on Rutan. My understanding is that the Starship, and the Visionaire Vantage, got caught in the endless loop described above. Beech ended up with an airplane with poor numbers and Visionaire ran out of money.