New photos reveal mammoth structure of Paul Allen’s six-engine StratolaunchPuget Sound Business Journal
Steve Wilhelm Feb 24, 2015, 12:26pm PST Updated: Feb 24, 2015, 4:03pm PST
One of the Stratolaunch's twin carbon composite hulls, nearly done. KGET imagePaul Allen's giant satellite launch plane, called Stratolaunch, has been kept mostly under wraps since the project began – or at least as much under wraps as you can keep something with a 380-foot wingspan.
But now, new images from a California television station have revealed some interesting details about the aircraft.
Stratolaunch is Allen's bid to compete in launching satellites into low earth orbit.
Unlike competitor SpaceX, Allen's scheme depends on Stratolaunch to bring a rocket up high enough into the atmosphere to complete the rest of the trip efficiently. His company is teaming with Orbital Sciences, another leader in private sector launch technology.
The aircraft is the centerpiece of Allen's Stratolaunch Systems company, which is intended to reduce the cost of space launches by carrying a launch vehicle 30,000 feet in the air slung under the mammoth plane, then igniting the rocket motors.
The images of the plane in progress were released recently in a short television special by KGET in Bakersfield, Calif., about the innovative outer space industry in Mojave, California.
A artist concept of the finished aircraft, with an Orbital Sciences launch vehicle hung between the fuselages.While the February special was catalyzed by the Oct. 31 the crash of SpaceShipTwo – entrepreneur Richard Branson's bid to get people into outer space – it includes some brief but amazing images of Allen's Stratolaunch being built in a hangar by Scaled Composites.
Scaled Composites is a small and innovative aerospace design house known for creating aircraft with unusual designs capable of unique accomplishments.
Founded by aircraft designer Burt Rutan, the company designed and built Global Flyer, which in 2005 broke the speed record for circling the globe without landing. Scaled Composites also built the Allen-funded SpaceShipOne, which completed the first privately owned manned space flight in 2004.
Among the shots is one of one of Stratolaunch's twin carbon fiber fuselages, showing the sheer bulk of it. Another seems to show the relationship of the two fuselages together.
The Stratolaunch video clips, visible as part of the piece, were shot in a carefully controlled environment, with Stratolaunch dictating exactly what could be photographed, said Jesse Cash, executive producer of the station.
Scaled Composites is building the Stratolaunch by harnessing six former 747 engines for power, and matching them to the new twin-hull composite aircraft.
About 80 percent of the assemblies are complete, and the mammoth aircraft is set to first fly in 2016. The aircraft is supposed to finish certification flights and launch its first space craft by 2018.
The work is being done in a 103,257-square-foot hangar and a 88,000-square-foot wing assembly building in Mojave, both custom-built for this purpose.
http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/02/new-photos-reveal-mammoth-structure-of-paul-allen.html?ana=yahoo&page=all
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