Category Archive: News

The flight earlier today was the first official mission of the new Civvie design and with Commander Valentina in the pilot’s seat it flew 304km and completed three contracts for crew observations plus an additional contract for more readings from the radiation instrument installed in one of the science payload bays. Overall the mission was a great success and Val is as pleased as Jeb was in the Civvie’s handling and performance. However now that it has some flight hours logged engineers want to give it a good look-over to ensure everything is holding up as it should be. While it is back in the Horizontal Assembly Building for this check over there are a few changes that will be made at the same time:

• Larger Battery Capacity – the single science transmission sent from the Civvie on this flight drained all but 7% of the battery capacity, which severely limits the aircraft’s ability to perform multiple experiments on a single flight. Now that initial performance data is in, engineers can see how much wiggle room they have for installing larger and heavier batteries without sacrificing the aircraft’s stability. While they are currently looking to increase the standard power capacity, it should be noted that dedicated science flights could carry extra batteries as cargo for additional power.
• Fuel Pumps – the biggest addition will be the installation of fuel pumps that will allow fuel to be moved between the three tanks. Currently the fuel system draws from all three tanks evenly, but it’s been demonstrated in flight so far that it would be to the pilot’s benefit to be able to adjust the aircraft’s center of mass, especially during landing. While the system itself is simple, using it should be considered an advanced technique as messing with an aircraft’s center of mass can have deadly consequences. C7 wants to test it out before deciding whether to include it on planes sold to the general public.
• Aileron Control Damping – both Jeb and Val have agreed that the roll capability of the Civvie is still a bit over-powered. Certainly the control surfaces that make up the ailerons on the wings are very large, but C7 engineers have always insisted this is necessary. Still, the pilots have argued that their control inputs don’t feel proportional to the response of the aircraft, and that they would like to actually feel like they were turning the plane rather than twitching the stick over a millimeter. The service crew will install additional dampers that will require the pilots to move the stick more for the aircraft to respond along the roll axis.

C7 is expecting all these changes to be completed within the next two weeks. In the meantime, the original prototype model is finishing up its repairs to return to flight this week and assuming all goes well will be able to pick up any slack.

The C7 crash investigation team has released its final report for the incident that occurred on Jan 31st involving the Civvie Prototype model under the command of Captain Jebediah Kerman. Here is the initial report that was released earlier this month:

The event took place around mid-day after second sunrise, during the final approach to Runway 09. The approach was too low, causing the Civvie to impact with the ground short of the runway thanks to a rise in terrain just before reaching the flat plain surrounding the KSC property. Because it was already in a landing configuration, the sudden and unexpected impact was taken up on all three wheels at a speed of around 56m/s, well within tolerances. However this speed is too fast for a landing and so the Civvie bounced back into the air. Jeb’s attempts to hold the nose up resulted in a stall, which dropped the Civvie like a rock from as high as 5m to land on just its main gear, which pitched it forward so its prop dug into the ground. The remaining momentum flipped the aircraft over onto its back, with torque from the propeller rotating it over 90 degrees to rest facing south. Investigators estimate the initial landing produced a force of 3.5Gs with the final crash producing a force upwards of 6Gs. These momentary moments of high stress had no detrimental effect on the pilot other than to whip his head forward into the dash, the second time producing a moderate wound.

View full report »

The second test flight of the new Civvie design proved to be even more successful than the first. The control cabling issue was indeed resolved without the need for an extensive redesign of the system, much to the relief of everyone involved. Once Captain Jebediah reported that the controls were responding fine when the aircraft was trimmed out in level flight, the controllers back at KSC instructed him to go ahead and continue with the flight plan, which called for flight envelope testing to ensure the Civvie could perform various maneuvers as designed, including stall recovery, steep turns and dive recovery. Once these tests were completed, Jeb returned for a safe landing back on the KSC runway.

Now that the Civvie has been certified for flight, we will begin to schedule missions starting next week that will work through our backlog of observation contracts, which have stacked up in the weeks we’ve been unable to put a plane in the air. In addition to the observation missions, an experimental mission will carry a KerBalloon low-altitude payload under its belly to be dropped over a research site and then inflated.

As these missions are carried out we will continue to monitor and review the performance of the Civvie. Assuming no major design tweaks are needed, we will order more in the near future and C7 will begin large-scale production for the fledgling civil aviation industry.

Full flight data analysis »