Stratolaunch, the giant aircraft designed to lift rockets into the stratosphere for drop-and-launch has been rolled out for the first time.
The initial construction on the massive plane Paul Allen has been quietly building in the California desert is complete, and the vehicle, which would be the world's largest plane with a wingspan wider than Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose, was wheeled out of its hangar for the first time on Wednesday.
[...] But why is Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks, building such a massive plane? It's not to carry passengers, but rather rockets. The bigger the plane, the larger the rockets, or the greater the number.
Allen's Stratolaunch company has partnered with Orbital ATK to "air launch" the company's Pegasus XL, a rocket capable of delivering small satellites, weighing as much as 1000 pounds, to orbit. The rockets would be tethered to the belly of the giant plane, which would fly them aloft, and once at an altitude of 35,000 feet or so, the rockets would drop and "air launch" to space.
"With airport-style operations and quick turn-around capabilities," the company said it believes "air launch" is a cheaper and more efficient way to get satellites into space than rockets that launch vertically and can be extraordinarily expensive.
See also:
The Register
Ars Technica (pictures)
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday June 02 2017, @12:25AM
Cost
"The CF6 engine has a list price of about $11 million (from an A330 order in 2009, higher thrust version; $12.2 million in 2015 USD1)" https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/16007/what-is-the-cost-of-the-engine-boeing-747-model-400?rq=1 [stackexchange.com]
GE9X: US$ 41.4M list price (2016) http://www.gereports.com/the-art-of-engineering-the-worlds-largest-jet-engine-shows-off-composite-curves/ [gereports.com]
Even the base model GE9 is over $20 million USD
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex