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Stratolaunch completes second flight of world's largest plane
Stratolaunch hascompleted the second test flight of its carrier vehicle, which is currently known for being the world's largest aircraft by wingspan.
Paul Allen's Stratolaunch is reportedly shutting down
Paul Allen's space company, Stratolaunch Systems Corporation, is reportedly closing down its operations. According to Reuters, the company is shutting up shop, but it's also exploring the possibility of selling its assets and intellectual property. A spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied the report, telling Engadget that "Stratolaunch remains operational" and that it "will provide an update when there is news to share."
Stratolaunch completes the first flight of the world's largest airplane
Stratolaunch is making some history even as it scales back its ambitions -- the company has successfully flown the world's largest aircraft, the Scaled Composites Stratolaunch, for the first time. The dual-fuselage rocket hauler took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port soon after 10AM Eastern on April 13th and completed a roughly 2.5-hour journey, reaching a maximum altitude of 17,000 feet. It wasn't carrying a payload, but its trip is still a big deal for a machine that was first announced eight years ago and boasts an unprecedented 385-foot wingspan.
Stratolaunch successfully tests a core component of its rocket engines
Stratolaunch has successfully tested a key component of its hydrogen-fuelled rocket engine. The company fired the pre-burner last Friday at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. In contrast to its long-gestating massive aircraft, which has yet to take flight, it raced through the charted development of the component in the span of a year (as promised).
Stratolaunch's new satellite carriers include a reusable space plane
Paul Allen's Stratolaunch is only just starting to make serious progress on its massive aircraft, but it's already thinking about its future beyond that enormous machine. The company has unveiled a new family of launch vehicles that can carry a wide range of payloads to orbit. Most notably, it's in the "design study" phase for a completely reusable space plane (shown at far right). Stratolaunch won't even predict when the machine would be ready, but it would initially focus on cargo launches and carry crew in later revisions.
The world's largest aircraft may finally take off this summer
Turns out there's a reason Stratolaunch has been ramping up its taxi tests: The company has revealed at the 34th Space Symposium that it's planning to conduct the massive plane's first flight this summer. With a wingspan measuring 385 feet, the 500,000-pound, twin-fuselage aircraft is the largest plane in the world. It has already gone through two taxi tests these past few months, with top speeds hitting 28MPH and 46MPH. However, it still has to go through three more taxi tests before it can finally take to the skies, two years after its original target date.
Watch the world's largest plane hit 46MPH in latest taxi tests
While Stratolaunch didn't meet its original 2016 launch goal, the company has been putting its massive plane through one test after another over the past year. During its most recent tests, the 500,000-pound aircraft with a 385-foot wingspan has successfully reached a top taxi speed of 46MPH. It still hasn't taken to skies, but that's a huge improvement over the 28MPH it hit during the first taxi tests the space transportation company conducted in December.
The world’s largest aircraft had a successful engine test
Back in May, we reported that the world's largest aircraft, the Stratolaunch, had finally left its (giant) hanger and was preparing for tests. This week, the first of those was completed. All six of the massive rocket-launching plane's turbofan engines were turned on and tested.
The world’s largest aircraft prepares for testing
We last heard about the Stratolaunch in August 2015, when Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's company Stratolaunch Systems announced plans for test flights with the massive airplane meant to help launch satellite-bearing rockets more efficiently. Those test flights apparently didn't happen, but Allen did tweet a picture of the huge aircraft coming out of its equally gigantic hangar today for "fuel testing."
Largest plane in the world to perform test flights in 2016
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen started planning to build the largest plane in the world in 2011, along with several partners -- including Elon Musk. Now, that plane (called Stratolaunch) is under construction at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, and is expected to undergo testing as soon as 2016. Allen's company, Stratolaunch Systems, isn't building an oversized aircraft just so it can get in the Guinness Book of World Records, though: its primary goal is to perform air launches of satellite-carrying rockets.
Paul Allen-backed Stratolaunch Systems promises flexible, low-cost access to space
When Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, legendary aerospace designer Burt Rutan and private spaceflight proponent Elon Musk team up on something, folks are bound to pay attention -- especially when they're promising nothing short of a "revolution in space transportation." At the center of that ambitious goal is a new company backed by Allen, Stratolaunch Systems, and a massive new aircraft to be designed and built by Rutan's Scaled Composites. If all goes as planned, it will be the size of two 747s (with a wingspan greater than the length of a football field), and it will be able to carry a 120 foot long rocket built by Musk's SpaceX to an altitude suitable for launch into orbit. Stratolaunch hopes to do that for a "fraction" of the cost of current launches, and it intends to eventually send everything from satellites to manned capsules into space. As you might expect, however, all of that is still in the early stages. According to Spaceflight Now, Stratolaunch currently employs around 100 people (it says it plans a "significant ramp-up"), and complete details on the aircraft itself remain a bit murky (intentionally so, according to Allen). Flight testing is currently slated for the "2015 timeframe," though, with the first launch expected a year later. What's more, while it's not clear how much Allen plans to invest in the project, he has managed to attract some other big names to the project; former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has joined as a board member, and Gary Wentz, a former chief engineer at NASA, will serve as President and CEO. Head on past the break for a teaser video of what they have planned.
