It’s not that much faster than a King Air but it’s much slower than a Lear 35.
Let’s not pretend like we need any other reason to love it: that it looks SO COOL.
It LOOKS 2x faster than a King Air, that’s what matters.
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Oh I’m all with you and can’t wait for this to come out. Unfortunately on the spec sheet it’s only like 20 knots.
But like ‘because it’s cool’ does work as a selling point for GA and LSAs that are partially for the former and primarily for the latter being sold to enthusiasts but past that level unfortunately it’s all about the numbers as far as actually selling aircraft
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Even better than the article about the Starship is the discussion below the article 
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Day zero buy
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Ultimately, the Starship was meant to be a replacement for the King Air, same price or cheaper, better performance, and quieter.
Sadly, Beech underestimated what designing in composites entailed, and paid the price. Not to mention the '80’s was a pretty sad period for USA manufacturing companies, and it looks like it shows here in quality of production stated by several, just like in the auto industry.
Like I said, I hope the author does a version of the plane as originally designed before the FAA asked them to strengthen the airframe. The kind of “what-if” scenarios you can do with a simulator.
Even better than the article about the Starship is the discussion below the article
Wow you’re not kidding. I hope someone saved this for the history books.
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Eh, hard to do a “what if”, at least unless you have an exact number on how much the extra bracing weighed and if there’s any real differences.
Rutan just gave a talk about what went wrong with the Starship program at AirVenture. I wish the audio were better, but he prefaced his talks this year that he’s basically at IDGAF age (“doesn’t have GAS” as he puts it), so he’s holding back even less than he usually does:
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At the end he’s literally reading some comments from the flame war at the bottom of that Air Facts Journal article 
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I have always loved him! 
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I’m sure the info is out there…
From what I’ve read, I’d maintain the CG location, remove 3000 lbs evenly from the structure, swap out the avionics with G1000 or G3000 (and remove that weight as well, and assume we could find the same amount of weight to remove from the rear of the CG area, though, maybe not) which I imagine would probably save another 250 lbs or more (the avionics cooling improvement advantage that would be created is lost in the simulator).
That’s probably good enough. Extremely likely it’s more complicated than that, but, heck, it’s a simulator.
Dear god why would you do that. 70% of the fun of the plane is that Collins Pro Line 4 system.
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70% ? I would say 100% of the fun of the plane are the very special avionics it has with all those CRTs providing redundancy and the very primitive FMS, even the weird navigation systems. They will be a lot of fun!
The other 100% of the fun will come from the flight model, this will certainly feel unique as there is nothing similar I’m sure Nick had a lot of fun rendering this plane it is an absolute gem.
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Point taken.
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I said I’d like a version like that, on top of the accurate version. Kind of like having both wheeled and amphibious planes.
For reference, I don’t fly any Garmin glass planes, so it would be a newish experience for me.
Why replace the Collins? For the weight loss.
It would be totally fictional as there is no STC for it. How do you come up with tailoring it for the aircraft?
sigh
Yes, you’re right, it would be fictional… just like everything else in the simulator…
I’m interested in what the plane might have been, too…
In my opinion that isn’t a good reason to throw resources at it. Black Square don’t seem to be in the business of developing aircraft with a fictional to the aircraft avionics suite that would involve guesswork.
It wouldn’t take that much guesswork, but, you’re right about switching out the avionics like that, I get your point on that. Switching out the avionics would be a lot of work for them.
The flight dynamics on the lower weight of the airframe would pretty much come out in the calcs, though… Given I wouldn’t be buying it from the Marketplace, I or somebody can do the updated flight dynamics with or without Black Square.
It’s such an iconic / controversial plane, it’d be worth it. Just look at all that’s been written about the plane.
Just like Jorg said, that’s what the simulator is all about, giving people the chance to fly planes they never or could, or can’t.
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If a developer doesn’t want to put resources into multiple avionics setups, they don’t have to.
But options are good, and it doesn’t hurt anyone to make choices available.
And let’s be honest, in an alternate timeline where the Starship became a runaway success, there’d be plenty that have those heavy panels swapped out for other things.
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