This story won second place at the 2019 Colorado Press Association Awards Dinner for best multimedia feature in its class.
The Beechcraft Starship parked at the Aspen Airport is unique, being only one of three Starships still flying in the United States. Robert Scherer, of Aspen, owns the airplane and is probably its biggest fan.Craig Turpin/Aspen Daily News
There is an unusual looking airplane sitting at the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport.
It almost looks like an IKEA set in which someone held the instructions upside down and put it together backward. Two rear-facing, large propeller engines sit on a large wing that is located where one might expect the tail to be. Instead, the plane has two horizontal stabilizers on the nose, without a vertical tail fin in sight.
To the average person, it might almost look as if it belongs in space, which helps explain the name of this eye-catching plane: The Beechcraft Starship.