Now Thats a BIG Airplane!

[tris]

https://www.geekwire.com/2017/paul-allens-stratolaunch-space-venture-brings-monster-airplane-hangar-first-time/



 

Is this thing real or a photochop??

In one of the pics on the web site it shows 2 tugs pulling it.

How do you sync that up - not least as come a turn the outer one would have to go faster than the inner one

[Two Checks]

Even a brick will fly given enough power.

[Rick in WNY]

Let's look at this thing from a viewpoint of status...

It is: large, complicated, built from recycled pieces that are being forced to do jobs they were not designed to do, and they hung extra engines on it because they need the thrust to make up for the lack of wing area.

It will probably fly, but I wouldn't want to be under the flight path. It looks like a crash waiting to happen.

JMHO, YMMV.

[Pop]

Maybe I'm a bit politically incorrect, when I opened the site and saw the plane, I said to myself. "Ahhh a Siamese plane."



"If you can't impress them with your knowledge, dazzle them with some B. S."

[n3303j]

From Avweb:

Stratolaunch Leaves Hangar
By Geoff Rapoport

Paul Allen's ambitious, fixed-wing satellite launch platform, the Stratolaunch, rolled out of its hangar Wednesday to begin ground and taxi testing. The colossal twin-fuselage aircraft, built by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, is projected to be, by wingspan, the largest aircraft to have ever taken flight, at 385 feet wide. The prototype has a 500,000-pound empty weight, a target maximum takeoff weight of 1.3 million pounds and is powered by six turbofans scavenged from Boeing 747-400s.

Today, we're moving the Stratolaunch aircraft out of the hangar, for the first time ever, to conduct aircraft fueling tests. This marks the completion of the initial aircraft construction phase and the beginning of the aircraft ground and flight testing phase, says Stratolaunch CEO, Jean Floyd. Stratolaunch hopes to reduce the size of rockets and therefore the cost of putting small satellites in space by launching from the stratosphere. The Stratolaunch is designed to carry three Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rockets, each of which will drive a satellite up to 1,000 pounds into low earth orbit.

[cruzziguzzi]

Dynamic computer control not withstanding, I find the concept of flex mind-bogglingly frightening. I'm quite surprised at the lack of a continuous tail boom but then to, I can't seem to make a penny in the field of aeronautical design.


Todd.

[fossil]

The idea is not new. In WWII there was the Heinkel He 111 Zwilling (= twin), a cumbersome affair. They at first let it fly in the same configuration as the (much bigger) plane in question, later they added a strut between the fuselages just before the elevators.