Posted on 12/19/2017 2:30:14 PM PST by BenLurkin
The double-bodied jet —which has the largest wingspan of any aircraft in the world —has been undergoing tests at Stratolaunch's facility at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The latest phase in this process was testing the aircraft's steering and stopping capabilities.
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The monster jet was only rolled out from its scaffolding in May. This weekend's latest milestone comes three months after the company successfully tested the six engines on the colossal airplane for the first time. Stratolaunch officials have said they hope to have the aircraft in flight by the end of the decade, and the Mojave Air and Space Port will eventually be the company's center of operations.
The aircraft weighs 500,000 lbs. (227,000 kilograms), and it can carry another 550,000 lbs. (almost 250,000 kg) with up to three rockets under the conjoined wing at the center of the vehicle. Its wingspan is longer than a football field, measuring 386 feet (118 meters) across.
The aircraft was built by Scaled Composites, the Mojave-based aerospace company founded by spaceship builder Burt Rutan. Scaled Composites is also behind the design for White Knight Two, the mothership built to launch Virgin Galactic’s tourist-carrying space plane.
2 cockpit crews, perfect idea unless they both eat the fish.
They can’t hire Chuck Yeager to put it through it’s paces tomorrow?
It’s hard to imagine the forces on that main spar...
What will be it’s purpose?...............
Always have the lasagna.
One of the cockpits is a dummy.
I happened to be there in early June when they wheeled it out of the hanger for the first time. It is huge. The picture is good but the scale still is not obvious until you are there.
Paul Allen (Gates partner in MS and owner of the Sea Hawks) is the main money behind it. The amount of weight they can suspend from the middle is more than one would imagine — a whole rocket.
Carries smaller rockets to high altitudes and they launch into orbit.
"...what will be its purpose..."
Unless someone plans on hanging something between, it seems hard to imagine the value.
What could possibly go wrong...
Like they did with the X-planes and the B-52’s BACK IN THE 50’S..................
From the article:
...The private spaceflight company Stratolaunch is the brainchild of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The carrier plane is designed to make a runway-style takeoff and then, at cruising altitude, deploy rockets that can launch small satellites into low-Earth orbit...
Old ideas are new again..................
Imagine what happens when the one side of the aircraft hits a warm air pocket and the other doesn’t.
Beat me to it!.....................
Silliest looking thing I’ve seen in a while. I looks like some perverted mashup. It needs more engines, maybe 4 in the middle and one more on each side.
I think that’s what the middle section is for. Something bulky.
Had to work fast, was sure dfwgator would get there!
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