Proteus

Geico266

Geico266

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Jun 15, 2008
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19,136
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Husker Nation, NE
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Geico
Saw this bad boy sitting on the ramp today. Pretty amazing Rutan design bought by NASA to conduct high altitude research.

Proteous_Right_Front.jpg
 
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I'm friends with the flight engineer. I took him on a sight seeing flight in the 172 around town and introduced him to some of the guys at Crete today. I crawled inside when we got back. Nothing fancy as far as avionics. They're here for more high altitude testing. Mainly what they do is gather data to help companies develope their products. It's been flight tested to 63,000 ft (as you can see). He says it stalls very nicely because of that huge canard. Very cool airplane but nothing really secret
 
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Lol we asked that and he said it depends on each product and even the customer won't always say what exactly they're looking for. I know they do different runs at 10,000, 30,000 and 50,000 taking pictures, temps, and probably other things like wind readings. Other than that, it seemed like a hard thing to describe.
 
I saw it once during primary training. It was parked in a hanger near my flight school. It was only in passing while driving by and I had convinced myself that my brain had misinterpreted what it had seen. Years later I saw a picture and realized what it was I had seen. Years later still I was back at that airport and saw a display with some pictures and a lthsnk you letter from Scaled for the hospitality. It was dated for the time I would have been around. It finally confirmed things for me.
 
They've used it for thunderstorm research in the past as well.
 
Originally it was slated to act as a poor-man's satellite to orbit/stay on station for long periods of time at high altitude and provide communication/data links. A newish startup in ABQ is trying to do something similar now too.
 
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