On April 13, the sky over the Mojave Space Port and the surrounding desert felt very crowded as one strange machine took to the air for the first time. It was the Stratolaunch, the world’s “largest all-composite aircraft.”
Since the demise of Stratolaunch's founder Paul Allen in October 2018, the company has been quietly preparing for the maiden flight of the airborne platform, which is now the largest airplane by wingspan ever two fly.
With a wing tip to wing tip length of 385 feet (117 meters), the dual fuselage Stratolaunch is about as wide as a football field is long. It is powered by six Boeing 747 engines that give it a payload capacity of over half a million lbs (227,000 tons).
The impressive machine spent two and a half hours in the air during the test flight, reaching speeds of 189 mph (304 km/h), not nearly as much as the world’s fastest supercars.
The pilots of the aircraft wanted to see how the aircraft behaves during roll doublets, yawing maneuvers, pushovers, pull-ups, and side slips. They also simulated landing approach ay 15,000 meters (49,000 feet) before safely landing at the Space Port where it departed from.
“We all know Paul would have been proud to witness today’s historic achievement,” said Jody Allen, Paul’s sister and chairwoman of Vulcan Inc., one of Paul Allen’s companies.
“The aircraft is a remarkable engineering achievement, and we congratulate everyone involved.”
For now, Stratolaunch did not say when it plans to launch a payload to orbit using this delivery system. The company did however detail last year some of the vehicles it will attach to the underbelly of the Stratolaunch.
The first is the Pegasus, supposed to be ready in 2020, the second a yet unnamed medium-class air-launch vehicle optimized for short satellite integration and the third a three-core variant of the said medium-class air-launch vehicle.
A fully reusable space plane capable of carrying humans is also in the works.
Until then, you can have a look at Stratolaunch’s maiden flight in the video attached below.
Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies. Full profile
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