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 ...
Doesn’t seem practical for much. Bragging rights?
American greatness.
Read the article, still not great.
I think it wouldn’t be bad to go back to nothing in space.
Ah Scaled Composites now owned by Northrup Grumman, and I wonder if “the wizard of weird” aka Burt Rutan penned the concept or even more before he retired....
Hard to imagine the strength of the main spar between the two fuselages.
Is it made out of spruce?
It’s designed to launch a spacecraft-carrying rocket from high altitude, thereby saving considerable rocket fuel and money on each launch.
Siamese airplane.
Geez I hope that works. It seems like a design nightmare.
Cheaper launches.
If the design works as intended (and the concept appeared often enough in late nineteen fifties science fiction) it will make money.
I try to avoid reading CNN - Counterfeit News Network. They are patently anti-American.
Those of us who read the article know that it's for launching rockets.
Two separate cockpits? Two sets of flight controls? Look at the landing-gear trucks! Can you imagine taxiing that beast?
Only one cockpit has controls, or even (IIRC) seats.
Guess they didn’t get the memo that airplanes were to be eliminated in 12 years because, cow farts.
Meh.
Still waiting (since the 60’s!) for my Flying Car that Popular Mechanics said I would have by now! ;)
It’s essentially a reusable first stage for an orbital launch system, using air-breathing engines that are much cheaper to operate than a pure-rocket first stage.
The two cockpits is puzzling to me. What happens if one pilot goes left and the other goes right? Maybe somebody well-versed in aeronautics can explain the concept of dual-cockpits.
Are the noses really that blunt? Otherwise, the front ends remind me of B1s.
The central wing must be tremendously strong. I would have expected the twin tails to be joined. But if it’s launching rockets, I suppose there’s always the chance of the payload passing between them.
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