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The initial construction on the massive airplane Paul Allen has been quietly building in the California desert is complete, and the vehicle, which would be the world’s largest airplane with a wingspan wider than Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose, was wheeled out of its hangar for the first time Wednesday.
Called Stratolaunch, the plane has some impressive stats: a wingspan of 385 feet, or longer than a football field, a height of 50 feet. Unfueled, it weighs 500,000 pounds. But it can carry 250,000 pounds of fuel, and its total weight can reach as high as 1.3 million pounds.
But, really …. How big is it? It’s so big that it has 28 wheels and six 747 jet engines. It’s so big that it has 60 miles of wire coursing through it. It’s so big that the county had to issue special construction permits just for the construction scaffolding.
It’s so big that to truly get a sense of it, you have to see it from a distance — like a mountain.
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 1,000 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.
For Allen, it’s all about LEO, or low-Earth orbit. He, and others, such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit, are betting that they can reduce the cost of launching small satellites to space. And that, in turn, will lead to new ways to beam the internet all across the globe, provide better Earth sensing capabilities, better communication, and open up all sorts of avenues.
“When such access to space is routine, innovation will accelerate in ways beyond what we can currently imagine,” Allen said a year ago. “That’s the thing about new platforms: when they become easily available, convenient and affordable, they attract and enable other visionaries and entrepreneurs to realize more new concepts.”
More than a decade ago, Allen had hoped to spark a revolution in space travel when he funded SpaceShipOne, which became the first commercial vehicle to cross the threshold of space. The project ultimately won the Ansari X Prize, and a $10 million award. He then licensed the technology to Branson and moved on to other pursuits. But with Stratolaunch, he is back in the space business.
“Thirty years ago, the PC revolution put computing power into the hands of millions and unlocked incalculable human potential,” he wrote. “Twenty years ago, the advent of the Web and the subsequent proliferation of smartphones combined to enable billions of people to surmount the traditional limitations of geography and commerce. Today, expanding access to LEO holds similar revolutionary potential.”
On Wednesday, Jean Floyd, Stratolauch’s chief executive, said the company would be “actively exploring a broad spectrum of launch vehicles that will enable us to provide more flexibility to customers.”
He added: “Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be actively conducting ground and flightline testing at the Mojave Air and Space Port. This is a first-of-its-kind aircraft, so we’re going to be diligent throughout testing and continue to prioritize the safety of our pilots, crew and staff. Stratolaunch is on track to perform its first launch demonstration as early as 2019.”
Here are things to know about the program that has been under way since 2011:
GIGANTIC
The Stratolaunch aircraft is enormous, with a wingspan totaling 385 feet (117 meters), longer than the wingspan of any other aircraft and greater than the length of an American football field. Its twin fuselages stretch 238 feet.
By comparison, the H-4 flying boat — nicknamed Spruce Goose and built by Howard Hughes in the 1940s — has a 320-foot (97.5-meter) wingspan and is just under 219 feet (67 meters) long.
Among commonly seen aircraft, the double-decker Airbus A380’s wings span 262 feet (nearly 80 meters).
WEIGHT AND POWER
The Stratolaunch aircraft weighs 500,000 pounds (226,799 kilograms) empty, can carry 250,000 pounds (113,399 kilograms) of fuel, and with payload can take off at a maximum weight of 1.3 million pounds (589,676 kilograms).
It is powered by six engines of the same type used by Boeing 747s.
AIR LAUNCH
On launch missions, Stratolaunch will carry as many as three rockets attached to the center of the wing between the two fuselages. The rockets will be released, ignite their engines and carry small satellites weighing up to 1,000 pounds (453.6 kilograms) to low Earth orbit.
Under a deal announced last year, Stratolaunch will use Pegasus XL winged rockets provided by Orbital ATK of Dulles, Virginia.
According to Stratolaunch, the advantages of its system include being able to use numerous airports and avoid the limitations of fixed launch sites which can be impacted by weather, air traffic and ship traffic on ocean ranges.
HISTORY
Airborne launches date back decades, most famously to the X-15 program of the 1950s and ’60s, when manned rocket planes were carried aloft under the wing of a B-52 bomber and released on hypersonic research flights.
In the 1990s, Orbital Sciences Corp. (now Orbital ATK) began releasing rockets from the belly of a converted L-1011 airliner to put small satellites into low Earth orbit.
More recently, Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, funded development of the Burt Rutan-designed SpaceShipOne, the first privately developed manned spacecraft.
Suspended between the twin-fuselages of a special jet, SpaceShipOne was carried to high altitude and released. It reached space on three suborbital flights in 2004.
The same launch concept is being used for SpaceShipTwo, the passenger-carrying craft being developed for Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism enterprise. A spinoff, Virgin Orbit, is also developing an air launcher for putting small satellites into space.
WHAT’S NEXT
The rollout Wednesday at Mojave Air & Space Port in the desert northeast of Los Angeles followed removal of scaffolding used during construction and placement of the aircraft on its 28 wheels for the first time.
Initial testing will focus on filling the six fuel tanks to ensure they are properly sealed and that related mechanisms are operating properly.
The aircraft will then be taken back inside the hangar for weight and balance testing. Ground testing will lead to flight operations and the first launch demonstration, which is expected in 2019.
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