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Stratolaunch focus of March Plane Crazy Saturday
by Cathy Hansen
special to Aerotech News
The March 19, 2022, Plane Crazy Saturday at the Mojave Air and Space Port featured Mason Hutchison, the Stratolaunch lead mechanical engineer.
Plane Crazy Saturday is sponsored each month by the Mojave Transporta- tion Museum.
Hutchison graduated from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Tech- nology, and has worked in the aero- space industry for 16 years.
He started his engineering career at Ball Aerospace. Working on the Air- borne Laser program, he focused on material interaction of laser engage- ment. It was a lifelong interest in ex- perimental aviation design that later drew him to Scaled Composites. It is there that he gained experience in de- sign, build, and testing of the Space- Ship2 feather deployment system. Soon after, he completed the WhiteKnight2 landing gear design and release system and saw them through flight test.
From there, Hutchison led the Flight Controls design team on the Strato- launch aircraft. Currently, Hutchison works for Stratolaunch as the lead en- gineer for the Release System for the Talon hypersonic unmanned system.
Courtesy photograph
Mason Hutchison
Hutchison said, “I came on board to design the mechanical flight con- trol system and I have been here ever since the first roll of carbon fiber fabric showed up to build the airplane, all the way through to today,”
“I had actually quit Scaled Com- posites and moved to Minden, Nev., to find another dream, but something kept drawing me back to Mojave,” said Hutchison. “There was a Plane Crazy event and my friends called and said, ‘Come down and join us for Plane Cra- zy,’ so I drove all the way down, nine hours to Mojave from Minden.” When he arrived in Mojave, he discovered the real reason his friends wanted him to come to Mojave. His friends said, “Guess what? We need help design- ing and building the mechanical flight controls for this airplane, are you inter- ested in helping?”
Hutchison replied, “I have never designed flight controls for an airplane ever. I’m in!” The room broke out into laughter.
“My interest is in landing gears,” said Hutchison. “I did the White Knight landing gear and it had four sets
Photograph by Cathy Hansen
Mason Hutchison, Stratolaunch lead mechanical engineer, speaks at the March 19 Plane Crazy Saturday at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
flown that heavy as yet.”
Mission length is two to eight hours,
but Hutchison said that the pilots are not eager to do an eight hour mission.
Hutchison pointed out that the straight flat wing is something that model airplane people are familiar with. However the last 65-feet of the Stratolaunch wing has 3-degrees of di- hedral or polyhedral. “It has the look of the model gliders back in the day,” Hutchison said.
“By wingspan, Stratolaunch or Roc, is the largest airplane in the world,” said Hutchison. “But, by max gross take-off weight, it is number two. The AN-225 can lift more.”
He was explaining other ways that Roc surpasses other aircraft. “The wing spar is the largest single piece ever constructed of carbon fiber at 260-feet long,” Hutchison shared. “Another record is it is vinyl wrapped, it’s not painted. So, maybe more square yards of vinyl used for one airplane.”
Getting back to the ‘why’ of this gi- gantic airplane, Hutchison said. “Num- ber one, we are into
hypersonics and
you’re going to see it here in Mojave. There is a race for this country to en- ter into hyperson- ics.
Hutchison showed the audience how a launch would be conducted by the Stratolaunch aircraft. “We would take off from Mojave with the Talon A attached, go way out over the Pacific Ocean and drop the Talon A. There is enough fuel to loiter about while the Talon A accomplishes its hypersonic mission with the customer’s instru- ments onboard,” Hutchison explained. “Now, here’s the cool part, Talon A will have completed its mission, re- turned to Mojave and be in the hangar, by the time Stratolaunch comes back to land at Mojave.”
During Hutchison’s presentation he reiterated how impressed he was that the donor 747 aircraft parts and systems were able to be reused in the building of Stratolaunch. Not only the landing gear and engines, but the cock- pit windows were placed into the two fuselages of Stratolaunch. Many other parts were harvested from the 747, as well, including the yokes, rudder ped- als, control seat rails, cockpit cabin floors, and instrument panels.
Hutchi- son showed a drawing that illustrated the systems complexity of Stratolaunch. “There are four hydraulic sys- tems, almost a quarter statute mile of control cable. Each engine has an
of landing gears.”
“I led a team of engineers and we de-
signed the entire cabling system from the cockpit all the way through the air- plane,” Hutchison explained. “There is almost a quarter of a mile of steel cable in this aircraft.”
As he started to show photos of the incredibly huge Stratolaunch aircraft, he said, “I have been with this aircraft through all four flights, every taxi test and every test event in the hangar. There is so much testing that happens with this aircraft, aside from the flight tests.”
Originally from New Mexico, Hutchison is a lifelong full-scale and radio control model aviation enthusi- ast. He is a founder and active member of the Tehachapi Crosswinds, a local Radio Control club. He was an active member of the team that organized the Indoor Fly-In in the Event Center here at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
He showed a picture of a model air- plane that he had built and he said, “I sent this picture to Scaled Composites as my resume. They get resumes with lots of words all the time. I wanted to show them something that they would remember,” said Hutchison. “I always wanted to move to California and work at Scaled Composites. Matt Stinemetz hired me and Burt Rutan never looked at my resume or asked about my grade point average. He wanted to know what I had built. I had taken a portfolio of everything I had made and my resume was slid to the other side of the table and my portfolio was the only thing that was ever considered in getting that job.”
He asked the question that he felt was on everyone’s mind, “What is this and why did we build this insanely large airplane in one dimension and what is it going to be used for?” He answered with, “The story has changed somewhat over time. It has been 10 years since we laid the very first part.”
“First and foremost, what is it? He gave a simple answer: “It is a big giant airplane that is meant to haul a payload. It flies far, it flies slow, it carries large stuff, it carries heavy stuff and it will drop that stuff.”
He answered the question of why
two fuselages — because the payload needs to be in the middle between the two fuselages. “There is approximate- ly 90-feet between the two fuselages, which offers a ton of utility,” said Hutchison.
First flight of Stratolaunch, Scaled Model 351, was on April 13, 2019, during Plane Crazy Saturday Mojave Experimental Fly-In. Stratolaunch is no longer part of Scaled Composites and is a stand-alone company.
Hutchison showed photos showing size comparisons with people on the wing under construction.
“We can’t talk about Stratolaunch without talking about dimensions,” said Hutchison. “It’s big! 385-foot wingspan makes it 64-feet longer than the H-4 Hercules or Spruce Goose,
“The airplane is, on paper, designed to carry 550,000 pounds of payload,” Hutchison explained. “You don’t just go out and design something to carry that kind of payload and then fly it that heavy right off the bat. We have not
“I came on board to de- sign the mechanical flight control system and I have been here ever since the first roll of carbon fiber fabric showed up to build the airplane, all the way through to today.”
“Stratolaunch’s
mission is to build
this unmanned Tal-
on A vehicle that
will be launched
out over the Pacific
Ocean,” Hutchison
said. Talon-A, it is a flexible, high- speed testbed built for hypersonic research, experiments, and enabling operational missions. The vehicle will be 8.5 meters long with a wingspan of 3.4 meters and a total mass of ap- proximately 2.7 tons at launch. It will be dropped aloft by its mothership, Stratolaunch.
Mason Hutchison
Cathy Hansen of the Mojave Transportation Museum presents a Plane Crazy Saturday hat and 35th Voyager Anniversary shirt to Mason Hutchison during the March 19 Place Crazy Saturday presentation.
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Courtesy photograph
air driven hydraulic pump, an engine driven hydraulic pump and an elec- tric hydraulic driven pump, together making more than two-hundred total horsepower of hydraulic service to the flight controls, the landing gear, and the braking systems. Each engine provides electrical power that is pumped into two massive power buss systems that meet at the center wing.
“It is not possible to access the fuse- lage or convey through the wing while in flight,” Hutchison said. “The pilots are sequestered only to the pressure vessel of the right forward cabin and are unable to actually transfer into the fuselage while in flight. But, that be- ing said, you cannot walk through the wing either.”
Hutchison also shared photoraphs of the giant aircraft just before the first flight, as it sat in the hangar that was especially built for it in 2011. The chase aircraft, a Cessna Citation is nestled under the wing of Roc.
There were many questions during the presentation that Hutchison an- swered, and people stayed to visit at the conclusion of the briefing. Some folks wanted to know why the airplane seems so quiet as it flies by and every- one wanted to know when the next test flight would be. It is always a spectacu- lar sight to see in the air.
Mojave Transportation Museum president, Cathy Hansen presented Hutchison with a Plane Crazy Saturday hat and a 35th V oyager Anniversary shirt as a thank you for his fantastic presentation.
April 1, 2022
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