The way Stratolaunch will work when fully serviced is, the jet will carry a rocket loaded with a satellite, will take off from Mojave and climb to an altitude of 35,000 feet.
Introduce
After years of development in the desert north of Los Angeles, a gigantic, six-engined mega jet with the wingspan of an American football field flew on a Saturday morning in April 2019 for the first time. Stratolaunch, the company founded in 2011 by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, conducted the first test flight of the world’s largest plane.
The aircraft is designed to haul a launch vehicle between the two fuselages. It can take-off from a runway and fly to the cruising altitude to place a satellite-bearing launch vehicle. The aircraft can then be landed on a runway for reloading, refuelling, and reuse.
In simple terms, the Stratolaunch aircraft is a giant flying launch pad, designed to hurtle satellites into low Earth orbit. It aims to offer the military, private companies and even NASA itself a more economical way to get into space.
Stratolaunch unveiled its aircraft in 2017, preliminary construction has begun on the assembly facility in Mojave, California, where the aircraft will be built and tested.
Design
To make it both strong and lightweight, Stratolaunch is made largely of carbon fiber material instead of aluminum. To save money on designing new engines and landing gear, the company has selected two ex-United Airlines Boeing 747-400s, from which the company will take the Pratt & Whitney 4056 engines, hydraulic system, electrical systems, landing gear and windshields, among other major components.
The Stratolaunch aircraft features a dual fuselage design, which can accommodate flight crew in the right fuselage, and flight data systems in the left fuselage. It will incorporate modular avionics control hardware supplied by Orbital ATK.
With a 117m wingspan, this would make Stratolaunch the largest airplane, by wingspan, ever to fly. It will include three seats for crew members and two jump seats, in standard seating layout. The jet is powered by six Pratt & Whitney PW4056 turbofan engines, which develop a thrust of 56,750lb each at sea level.
It will weigh in at over 540,000 kg including the fully fueled launch vehicle and will require a runway at least 3,700m long. Its landing gear, which includes a mind-boggling 28 wheels. It can carry over 230,000 kg of payload. The range of this gigantic aircraft will be approximately 2,000 Nautical miles and can deploy payloads to multiple orbits and inclinations in a single mission.
Testing
On January 9, 2019, the Stratolaunch carrier aircraft completed a 219 km/h taxi test, and the first successful flight test was performed on Saturday, April 13, 2019 as we known. The aircraft flew for 2.5 hours, achieving a speed of 304 km/h and altitudes up to 5,181m.
The way Stratolaunch will work when fully serviced is, the jet will carry a rocket loaded with a satellite, will take off from Mojave and climb to an altitude of 35,000 feet. There, pilots will launch the rocket from the plane on a trajectory toward space. The plane then will land safety back at Mojave, while the rocket carries the satellite into an orbit ranging from about 300 miles to 1,200 miles above Earth.
What future for Stratolaunch?
According to Global Market Insights, the market for commercial satellite launch services is growing rapidly and is expected to reach $7 billion by 2024. Putting small satellites into space via airplanes also promises to be cheaper than traditional rocket launches because it eliminates the need for launch pads and all the pricey equipment and infrastructure surrounding a traditional rocket launch. It also can save on fuel costs, because the plane burns less fuel than a traditional rocket when it blasts off from Earth.
It looks like this will be a potential project and that plane was clearly the first step in an ambitious roadmap for the company. However, Stratolaunch Systems stopped developing the project and is reported to be laying off more than 50 people following Allen’s death.
In June 2019 the Stratolaunch was put up for sale, holding company Vulcan is seeking to sell Stratolaunch for $400 million, according to CNBC news.
It’s a pity that the world’s largest plane can only get a single flight. The company’s efforts are to honor Paul Allen’s wishes and also to prove the vehicle and concept worked. But we probably won’t have to wait long to see it fly again, there are number of possible suitors for Stratolaunch, especially the most active space industry trio of billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson.
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