Paul Allen and Burt Rutan, the pioneers who brought us Scaled Composite’s SpaceShipOne, have teamed with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Dynetics to develop Stratolaunch – a super-sized carrier aircraft for airborne launch of space vehicles as large as Falcon 9. Resembling an enormous, scaled-up version of the SpaceShipTwo built for Virgin Galactic, the mothership will be powered by six Boeing 747 engines and have a wingspan of 385 ft. The vehicle’s gross weight at take-off – including the booster payload between the fuselages – will be more than 1.2 million lbs. Flight tests are targeted to start in 2016. To read more details in an upcoming report visit Aviation Week’s Intelligence Network (AWIN) site.
(Stratolaunch)
(Stratolaunch)
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Stratolaunch plan unveiled:
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