Posted on 04/13/2019 8:58:19 AM PDT by BenLurkin
[I]n the desert north of Los Angeles, a gigantic, six-engined megajet with the wingspan of an American football field flew Saturday morning for the first time.
Stratolaunch Systems, the company founded in 2011 ... conducted the first test flight of the world's largest plane.
Stratolaunch aircraft is a giant flying launch pad, designed to hurtle satellites into low Earth orbit. It aims to offer the military, private companies and even NASA itself a more economical way to get into space.
The aircraft's wingspan measures 385 feet -- wider than any airplane on the planet. From tip to tail, it's 238 feet long....
The jet, carrying a rocket loaded with a satellite, will take off from Mojave and climb to an altitude of 35,000 feet. There, pilots will launch the rocket from the plane on a trajectory toward space. The plane then will land safety back at Mojave, while the rocket carries the satellite into an orbit ranging from about 300 miles to 1,200 miles above Earth. The rocket deploys the satellite before eventually falling back to Earth, burning up in the sky like a meteor.
Putting small satellites into space via airplanes...eliminates the need for launch pads and all the pricey equipment and infrastructure surrounding a traditional rocket launch... the plane burns less fuel than a traditional rocket when it blasts off from Earth.
Bad weather won't be as much of a problem. Storms can delay a traditional rocket launch, but a jet could simply take off and fly over bad weather -- or around it -- and then launch the satellite.
Launches could take place more frequently and within a faster time frame. No more waiting in line for a slot to open up on a spacecraft blasting off from a traditional terrestrial launch pad.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Designed with the Orbital Science / Northrop Grumman ‘Pegasus’ air-launched rocket system as a reference design. Richard Branson might be able to make use as a ferry vehicle for his sub-orbital joy-ride service.
(They didn't show it in the movie, but in the book 2001: a Space Odyssey, this is the design of the Pan Am shuttle to the rotating space station. )
You DO have to read the articles now and then...
Satellites in low Earth orbit can provide communications and broadband internet connectivity to remote areas on the ground. They can conduct valuable Earth observation and surveillance. The market for commercial satellite launch services is growing rapidly and is expected to reach $7 billion by 2024.That sounds like a lot of great benefits to me.Putting small satellites into space via airplanes also promises to be cheaper than traditional rocket launches because it eliminates the need for launch pads and all the pricey equipment and infrastructure surrounding a traditional rocket launch. It also can save on fuel costs, because the plane burns less fuel than a traditional rocket when it blasts off from Earth. Bad weather won't be as much of a problem. Storms can delay a traditional rocket launch, but a jet could simply take off and fly over bad weather -- or around it -- and then launch the satellite.
Launches could take place more frequently and within a faster time frame. No more waiting in line for a slot to open up on a spacecraft blasting off from a traditional terrestrial launch pad.
You see that as benefits, I see that as threats.
I value individual rights and freedoms the way God made us over any conviences.
“designed to hurtle satellites”
How about ‘hurl’. :)
Then you have an understanding of how important it is to control the high ground. If we don't control space we should all learn Chinese. OK? "Take your protein pills and put your helmet on."
Thanks. We have only watched 1.5 episodes, and we had the feeling that was coming.
Any mention of Robert Goddard, the actual inventor of most of the rocket technology we have today?
Not that I know of.
A great question.
Nice try, Mr. Blue Screen, LOL!
The jet, carrying a rocket loaded with a satellite, will take off from Mojave and climb to an altitude of 35,000 feet... The rocket deploys the satellite before eventually falling back to Earth, burning up in the sky like a meteor.
IOW, not worth the wait to discover that the math was right in the first place. Rutan built a small winged drone that did the same job for (I think it was) DARPA a few decades back. Thanks BenLurkin.
Of course I understand that. The Chinese are a threat, so is the Islamic invasion, and so are the global socialists. They will all use these against us. It would be better if a platform like this could be a missile ship to go up and knock lots of stuff down.
Threats? I don’t follow? Launching more satellites more reliably and at lower cost is a threat? How does an aerospace company creating a novel aircraft design to launch rockets imperil individual rights and freedoms.
I don’t follow. Please explain.
No other plane can carry that much weight and release it for orbital launch at that altitude.
35,000 feet is “max Q” for a rocket launch. Takes tremendous force to get to that point, and rocket must be built to withstand maximum pressures there. Being able to _launch_ at that point saves a LOT of fuel & structural costs.
I admit to having an impulse to think the same - but in reality, Musk’s landing rocket is the first stage of the rocket - and the intent of this aircraft is to replace the first stage booster rocket.Musk relands the first stage rocket, Scaled Composites recovers the first stage which isn’t a rocket but a turbojet aircraft.
If you think about it, relanding the second stage would pretty much require putting in orbit enough rocket to have launched the payload from the ground to orbit. Utterly impractical. Unless you use the Shuttle approach, and use aerodynamic friction rather than rocket propulsion to accomplish the deceleration.
What could be considered (but, I doubt not, rejected) would be a second stage powered by ramjet engines, possibly winged and relandable - and a third stage rocket to outer space. Were such a second stage practical, it would presumably accelerate the payload from high subsonic to, say, Mach 2.5. Higher if you want to spring for titanium.
But ramjets would be pretty worthless for landing approach, so recovery would be similar to landing a Shuttle.
like i said, the super-plane’s payload capacity must be what makes it super because commercial passenger flights routinely fly between 31,000 and 38,000 feet ...
They left that out so Tom Cruise could do a movie about going across on a rope at 9,000 feet high.
I just happened to be at that airfield by accident over a year ago at the time of first roll-out. I had not seen any pictures of this plane prior to the event and was really taken aback. As a kid whose dad and his friends were in WWII, the P-38 Lightning filled our comic books and thoughts growing up and to see such a giant double fuselage plane was breathtaking.
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