I saw this in Aspen and wanted to share, because it's freakin' AWESOME!

This is a ~30-year-old Beech Starship, one of 53 made, and one of the 5 remaining privately-owned and flyable machines.  This machine can do 300 knots and climb to 41,000'.  It's made of composite materials and obviously has a very unusual design.  It has a canard, no tail, and pusher props. It also had the first all-glass cockpit of any business aircraft.

The thing is a lot bigger than I thought it would be - it's like Hawker 800 size.

Very interesting blog post on the Starship here:

 http://achtungskyhawk.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/rare-aircraft-beech-2000-starship/

Here's a shot of the cockpit instruments.  So many screens!  This was taken from  http://www.bobscherer.com/Pages/Starship.htm - the web page of the guy who owns the Starship I saw yesterday.

Here's a video I took:



More pics of this rare bird.

Also, here's Nolan on a swing :)