Home Technology World’s largest plane makes its first successful test flight

World’s largest plane makes its first successful test flight

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In the quest for mobility, most pieces of tech are pushing to get smaller and smaller. Even many manufacturers are moving away from big vehicles to cars which are a lot more space efficient in general. However, when it comes to planes, it appears the industry is moving in the opposite direction as they are not only trying to fit more passengers into planes for long-distance flights but now also creating massive planes in which to launch rockets from.

Yes, rocket. Stratolaunch has just built a plane that is capable of launching rockets into the stratosphere (seriously, it says so in their name). The massive dual-fuselage plane has a combined wingspan of 385 feet (117 metres), which may not allow it to travel very fast (max speed of 280km/h) but does enable it to reach the remarkable peak altitude of 35 000 feet (10600m). High enough to make it a lot easier and cheaper for companies to launch rockets from.

It’s a novel idea which has already seen the company sign up its first customer in Northrop Grumman, which plans to use Stratolaunch to send its Pegasus XL rocket into space. Importantly for Stratolaunch though the company was able to conduct a first test flight (as reported in The Verge) which saw their massive new plane successfully fly the plane for a total journey of 150 minutes – and importantly, safely land the plane.

The test took place at Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California and was a sigh of relief for the company which recently laid off more 50 employees due to financial challenges in the company. With this successful first test flight though, it proves that their plane concept does work and could see an increasing amount of interest from other aerospace companies looking to release rockets into space. Provided they don’t let Boeing design their software for them, anyway.

Last Updated: April 15, 2019

14 Comments

  1. Original Heretic

    April 15, 2019 at 15:55

    2 cockpits?

    Reply

    • Admiral Chief Hype Train

      April 15, 2019 at 16:07

      Stop being sexist dammit

      Reply

    • G8crasha

      April 15, 2019 at 16:30

      I was also wondering how this plane was flown. I mean it must be somewhat disconcerting for the pilot as he/she isn’t exactly in the middle of the plane.

      Reply

    • HvR

      April 15, 2019 at 16:41

      Crew is in the right one, left fuselage is unpressurized and contains electronic equipment for flight launching.

      Reply

      • Original Heretic

        April 15, 2019 at 18:30

        Damn, here I was having dreams of it splitting into two, then recombining into robot form.

        Reply

  2. HvR

    April 15, 2019 at 16:41

    Only biggest by wingspan previously record by the wooden Spruce Goose, Antonov 225 still bigger in regards to max takeoff weight and overall length.

    Think it might go the way of the Spruce Goose as per launch cost they are only slightly cheaper than SpaceX with way smaller payload size and 8 times more expensive than Rocket Lab who can put a 200kg payload in LEO for ridiculously cheap $5million. Only thing that it has going for it is that it can launch payloads into almost any orbit inclination and isn’t heavily affected by strong winds. At this stage they have no customers, Northrop Grumman is a partner as they provide the launch vehicle and they have lost all their customer to SpaceX and have only launched 4 Pegasus XL’s in the last 10 years.

    Reply

    • Guz

      April 15, 2019 at 16:52

      My man knows his rockets I see. Spacex landed 3 rockets at the same time on Saturday was epic

      Reply

      • HvR

        April 15, 2019 at 17:28

        Proud space nerd 🙂

        That synchronized booster landing never gets old, stayed up for to watch the live stream on Friday just after midnight. Shame we will not see it too often as they are moving a lot of the Falcon Heavy payloads to the new Falcon 9 Block 5 and BFR will replace both Falcon 9 and Heavy in 2-3 years time.

        Reply

        • Original Heretic

          April 15, 2019 at 18:30

          I gotta ask, how much do you know about the Em Drive?

          Reply

          • HvR

            April 16, 2019 at 09:04

            I do not really keep track of the experimental stuff, just too much going on.

            After googling it actually tripped a memory of university class where the prof talked about theoretical RF engines and how the math and science behind it doesn’t make sense. See that NASA and a German lab did some tests and after a false positive by NASA, which they did expect to be a read error,

          • Original Heretic

            April 16, 2019 at 09:20

            It’s bloody weird, is what it is.
            Everything I read on it, at some point they say “it works, but we’re not entirely sure how”.
            And didn’t they run tests on it again recently only to find that it’s still giving similar results as in the 90’s?

          • HvR

            April 16, 2019 at 09:42

            NASA had a positive thrust test measuring in the micro-newtons last year but they out a disclaimer on it that it possibly earth’s electromagnetic field messing with the measurements. Few months later a German lab repeated the tests with a better shielded setup and came to conclusion that produced zero thrust. Then there is Brit that got a milinewtons thrust but his test setup was criticized that the measurement equipment was running hotter than specified to take accurate readings.

            Basically they need get a test model in space in a very high orbit on its own away from things like ISS to have accurate measurements and even if you conclusively proof that you get positive thrust somebody needs to figure out why. So that means some quantum mechanics theory (since we know it doesn’t work with Newtonian physics) needs to be matched to it and explain it and then that needs to be proven. And then maybe very clever people will understand how it works and will be able to upscale.

          • Original Heretic

            April 16, 2019 at 09:50

            I really hope they can figure it out. And yeah, there’s some weird science involved.
            It one of things that shows me that no matter we think we know, there’s so much more that we don’t.
            How much of what we believe right now is incorrect?

      • Original Heretic

        April 15, 2019 at 18:30

        Bloody love watching those landings.
        Every single time I think, “The calculations behind this are mind boggling.”

        Reply

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