Talk:Beechcraft Starship

Specs
Bleah, I started formatting the specs, but I don't have enough energy to do it all. If someone is willing, please finish it, and stay consistent!--Alexandermiller 19:52, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Is there anything else at all like this plane? How efficient was it?
 * Myren 04:00, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * It is said the Starship is the only plane safe for serious heart patients, because it is carbon fibre and the engines are shock-proof mounted, so zero resonance can get into the cabin. 195.70.48.242 13:33, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

"Is there anything else at all like this plane? How efficient was it?" -- not very; sales were slow due to this relative lack of efficiency, not just the recession as the article implies. I'll see if I can find a source for this, as it would be good context for the article. The contemporary Beech King Air, which used the same engines, was more efficient in the same size category. Nothing inherently wrong with a pusher configuration -- see the similarly configured/engined Piaggio Avanti, which IS efficient and darn fast, though pricey -- but the Starship tried to shoehorn too much novelty into one airplane and ended up being a piece of interesting industrial design/art rather than a solid piece of engineering, as a result. Burt Rutan can be rightly credited with a lot of innovation, but you can't win 'em all Cstoten (talk) 17:44, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Discussion
As much as I'd like to clean this article up, it's too much of a disaster right now for me to get involved. It's on my list of things to do, but that's way down the road. ericg ✈ 07:10, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I've started adding refs and doing some initial cleanup. More to come... 98.232.5.210 (talk) 01:46, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Good work. This article has improved a lot since the first of the year.  I suggest changing the lists into paragraph form.  I added a summary to help with that in the Design section. -Fnlayson (talk) 15:26, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Lead text
In the Lead this text:
 * The design was originated by Beechcraft in January 1980 as Preliminary Design 330 (PD 330). Burt Rutan was subsequently retained to refine PD330 and one of the significant changes he instituted was the addition of variable geometry to the canard (he holds a patent for this).

should probably be moved to the first paragraph of the Development section. Then if needed cut it back to what can be covered by references. A couple sentences will need to be added to Lead summarizing the rest of the article (WP:Lead). -Fnlayson (talk) 14:41, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Stealthy?
Does anyone know what its RCS is? Mztourist (talk) 05:22, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * no reason why it would be particularly stealthy based on design, and there was never an issue with Starship's having poor visibility on traffic control radars as would be the case if it were -- simply using carbon composites for some components is not in itself enough to noticeably reduce an aircraft's RCS. To be stealthy, one would need 1) a shape optimized for stealth in a given set of radar bands (which the Starship doesn't have), and 2) radar absorbent materials (RAM) to further attenuate reflected signals and dissipate the surface currents that contribute to radar returns.  The Starship doesn't have either, it's just a futuristic looking business aircraft--Cstoten (talk) 18:19, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * the Northrop YB-35 which was all-metal and with none of the stealthy atributes you describe was apparently difficult to detect on early radar. Presumably the Starship uses a transponder so ATC detectability may not be a conclusive factor either. Without knowing its RCS anything else is just guessworkMztourist (talk) 09:16, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The answer that was provided is general common sense, at least common among those with some knowledge of aviation. Nonetheless, if one cannot agree that this is a non-issue and somehow a bee in one's particular bonnet, insisting that its RCS ought to be known, very well, one could write a polite letter to the company. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:F1C0:275:738C:7509 (talk) 07:33, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Wing Area?
I have been looking for references for the main wing area. A French publication lists this as 55.65 square meters. Most sources show 26.1 square meters. Scaling images of the Starship taken from above and knowing the span, 16.6 meters, 55.65 square meters looks more likely. Does anyone know what is going on here? Are they not counting the huge strakes? --Stodieck (talk) 03:32, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Inappropriate opinion
"The POC aircraft first flew in August 1983"

I appreciate the aircraft may be a bit divisive, but to call it a piece of crap seems to be out of place in an encyclopedia. 2A00:23C7:3119:AD01:38F1:4BF0:827D:360C (talk) 16:58, 8 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Did you read the whole article? Two sentences prior to that one, it reads, "On August 25, 1982, Beech contracted with Scaled Composites to refine the design and build an 85% scale proof-of-concept (POC) aircraft." (Emphasis mine.) BilCat (talk) 18:32, 8 March 2023 (UTC)