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Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Unveils World's Biggest Plane (seattletimes.com)
Frosty Piss quotes a report from The Seattle Times: The huge Stratolaunch finally rolled out of its hangar in Mojave, Calif., Wednesday for the first time. Built by Paul Allen's Scaled Composites, the twin hulled monster will go through months of ground tests before a first flight. Jean Floyd, chief executive at Stratolaunch Systems, said in a statement that the empty airplane, powered by six used 747 engines, weighs approximately 500,000 pounds. The jet will have a three-person crew: pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer in the flight deck of the starboard fuselage, while the port fuselage cockpit is empty and unpressurized. Stratolaunch is intended to carry a rocket slung beneath the central part of the wing, between the two fuselages, and release it at 35,000 feet. The concept is that the rocket will then launch into space and deliver satellites into orbit.
TFA doesn't load at all if you don't permit Javascript, because it is not a web page. Wired is offering an actual web page on the same subject, which is more suitable for linking to a site for nerds like Slashdot, where noscript is common.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
must be nice to be able to afford to play 'space launch simulator 2'
us normal folks will have to wait for the pirated version.
Is it made of spruce?
The tradition has always been using wood to make large planes for billionaires in california.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's it just me, or does it look like it'll snap in two in the middle-wing section between the 2 fuselages.
Strange design. It'll be interesting to see it fly...
It's the world's largest garage queen and not a plane...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Sounds ominous to me.
We all know what happened to the airplane carrying a space shuttle in the movie Moonraker.
I thought we were all going to Mars. It turns out the rich just want to deliver more satellites. What a waste of time. Use a regular rocket, Paul.
This approach is very limited in the end. It does not scale.
Almost all the energy needed to get mass into orbit is spent accelerating it horizontally to orbital velocity, and only a little energy comparatively is spent raising it to orbital altitude. Slinging a rocket under a plane greatly limits the size of the rocket, and requires building and designing a complex plane in addition to the rocket, so it will only ever be able to handle small payloads.
They are talking about 500 kg to LEO, where for comparison a Falcon 9 can loft 22800 kg to LEO. The plane approach is complex for what it does and it cannot be scaled up to handle larger payloads as pure rockets can. It's a dead end, which is why most traditional space companies like ULA, SpaceX, Ariane, etc have skipped it in favor of pure vertical lift.
Microsoft blah blah crash... - please put all related jokes under this comment to prevent cluttering up the rest of the comments... not that they're all gems. Anyway, I'll start- hope there's no blue screens in the cockpit! Hur Hur moving on...
This is what happens when your money piles up on you. I won't predict it will never fly, but I'll bet it never does anything useful.
The International Space Station is at about 1,320,000 feet. Knocking the first 35,000 feet off is the first 2.5% of the way.
Seems like a lot of complexity where a lot can go wrong to launch a rocket (mind you, pointed in the wrong direction, space is up, not sideways. My guess is that that huge plane can't safely do a loop. ) to knock off the first 2.5% of the journey.
I'm not a rocket scientist. What am I missing here?
I have high hopes for the 'Deuce Goose' launching spacecraft from mid-air. The B52 launched the X15 from under its wing, and that panned out. This has the potential of drastically reducing the price of getting off the planet and thus re-starting the space race.
Another billionaire's toy. It must be hard not knowing how to get rid of that money. Why didn't Brewster think of this idea? At least there is none of my money in it - I've never bought any Microsoft stuff.
But perhaps he got the money from sueing the World plus Dog http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
You fly up with a rocket tied to you. Rocket basically = HUGE bomb. For whatever reason, you can't launch. How do you land safely with something so heavy and explosive still tied to the plan?
dementia suits him well
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The plane that airplane is standing on alone is bigger.
The biggest plane would probably be some salt flats somewhere.
This dual hull design is proven and it works. It'll fly-no question. Space tourism may not be the huge profit machine that Branson was hoping for, but Space Ship One definitely works.
It's a bad bet to bet against Burt Rutan. He's an aerospace and composites manufacturing master. I bet that fuselage is way stronger than you think.
As for whether this model of lift is economically feasible-I bet it is with LEO satellites. Plus the short turn around and reusability of the lift vehicle make rapid deployment possible. I bet this thing can launch twice a day. That makes for fast constellations.
I'm going to wait for the first proof of concept flights before I dismiss this thing. Scaled doesn't build pipe dreams. If they took this on, they think they can build it to work.
You like Huey Lewis and the News?
Will the world's biggest douche, Donald Trump, fly in the plane?
I am confused why this launch vehicle needs to exist (and this is the first I'd heard of it so maybe I'm uninformed).
It’s supposed to air-launch multiple Pegasus rockets at once (Pegasus = small 1000lb payload).But those rockets already are reliably launched by an old L-1011 by Orbital Sciences. see wiki page
The cost of that plane is not huge, and I wonder why launching 3 at once would be so useful that they'd design and fly satellites with a totally unproven aircraft?
I am not an aerospace engineer, but shouldn't they put two turbines in the middle to give it more stability. as in 2-2-2 instead of 3---3 ?
Paul Allen's Scaled Composites - that hurts, right in the shear center of the fuselage.
I think you mean hanger Queen.
sub: Space Drive platform
Electromagnetic Drives -and more new concepts on space propulsion need a platform
Vidyardhi Nanduri [Space Cosmology vedas]
I'm puzzled as to why they would use six USED 747 engines. Newer turbine engines are more efficient, why wouldn't you use six (or four) new 747 or A380 engines? It's not like he doesn't have the money...
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
What is it about extremely rich people and extremely large airplanes made of organic material?