Posted on 06/17/2022 8:47:00 AM PDT by Red Badger
The Stratolaunch Roc plane in action during testing - Stratolaunch
The world's largest flying aircraft has reached new heights, with Stratolaunch today completing the seventh test flight of its gigantic Roc carrier plane and logging a record altitude for the huge aircraft in the process. The exercise was also used to test the in-flight performance of recently installed pylon hardware, which will launch smaller hypersonic aircraft from altitude and send them across the skies at speeds of over Mach 5.
California's Stratolaunch originally designed Roc to carry rockets and satellites into the stratosphere from where they would then be fired into low-Earth orbit. A recent shift in strategy has seen the massive plane, which features six Boeing 747 engines, two side-by-side fuselages and a wingspan of 385 ft (117 m), repurposed as a carrier for hypersonic research vehicles.
In 2020, the company offered a first look at what these vehicles will look like, revealing a concept called the Talon-A. It is designed for swift and repeatable hypersonic flights with an ability to take off and land itself on a runway, in addition to being launched from the Roc carrier aircraft. The company unveiled a test version of this hypersonic vehicle last moth, called the TA-O.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
Look at the separation of the landing gear. What kind of runway does this land on?
A wide one. Those are secondhand 747-400 landing gear.
Twenty five feet more than the length of a football field, including the end zones.
Cool design! The in-laws cockpit has same controls but does nothing.
Hey, that’s exactly what.... never mind.
Welcome to my world.
I’m thinking you are just pulling our legs?
Good one....because a few have taken the bait.
rgds,
Bat
Wing span of 385 feet? Dang, I flew a B-52 to the Boeing Plant in Wichita, Kansas. The runway was 200 feet wide and our wing span was 185 feet. Landing on the centerline was important.
I can’t imagine the width required for this Stratolaunch bird!
I live just a couple of miles from this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Armament_Museum
I'm going all in with a Rock
One that is YUGE.
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