Cosmic Log
Stratolaunch, the launch venture created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, took the world’s biggest airplane out of its hangar this weekend at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port and revved up its engines in preparation for the next step toward shooting rockets into space from midair.
The rocket-launching part is still a year or two away, but Stratolaunch is aiming to put the 385-foot-wide, twin-fuselage plane through its first test flight within the next couple of months.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch space company says it’s on track to conduct the first test flight of its mammoth airplane this summer, and use it to send rockets into orbit as early as 2020.
The status check came today during a background briefing here at the 34th Space Symposium, conducted under background-only conditions that precluded quoting sources by name.
Space is hard: That used to be the excuse for explaining why sending people into space would always be something only governments could do. Now it explains why even billionaires find the feat difficult.
As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told me back in 2010, even before he was officially recognized as a billionaire, rocket science is “super-frickin’ damn hard.”
To persevere, even billionaires have to have a passion for spaceflight, most likely fostered at an early age, and an iron resolve to weather adversity. That comes through loud and clear in two newly published books, plus a TV documentary that’s premiering tonight.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch space venture is returning to an idea it’s long mulled over: launching payloads, and possibly people, into orbit on a reusable space plane.
The concept, known internally as “Black Ice,” would involve the midflight launch of a space shuttle-like vehicle from what will be the world’s largest airplane. It was mentioned today in The Washington Post, in an excerpt adapted from Post reporter Christian Davenport’s forthcoming book, “The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos.”
“I would love to see us have a full reusable system and have weekly, if not more often, airport-style, repeatable operations going,” Allen told Davenport during a Seattle interview.
In a statement emailed to GeekWire, Stratolaunch confirmed its interest in the concept.
“Our vision for Stratolaunch is to offer a broad spectrum of capabilities from small, medium, to fully reusable,” the company said. “Black Ice is an aspirational concept we are exploring; however, no decisions have been made yet.”
Stratolaunch Systems, the space launch venture backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, says it put its super-duper-sized carrier plane through a fresh round of revved-up taxi tests last weekend at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port.
The six-engine, 385-foot-wide aircraft, nicknamed Roc, is the world’s largest airplane as measured by wingspan. It’s designed to carry up rockets for high-altitude launches in midflight.
Stratolaunch has said orbital launches could begin in the 2019-2020 time frame if the test program goes well.
That’s one more not-so-small step for Stratolaunch’s giant airplane: The space venture’s founder, software billionaire Paul Allen, is showing off a 34-second video of the twin-fuselage aircraft as it aced its first taxi test on the runway at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
Allen said the test was conducted Dec. 16, marking a rare outing for the plane that’s destined to serve as a flying platform for launching rockets into space. In a Dec. 17 tweet, he promised that there’d be “more to share soon.”
The world’s biggest airplane hit another milestone this week with the completion of the first phase of engine testing at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port, according to Stratolaunch, the space venture backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
Stratolaunch’s CEO, Jean Floyd, reported today that all six of the plane’s Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines were started up for the first time.
“Our aircraft is one step closer to providing convenient, reliable and routine access to low Earth orbit,” Floyd said in a news release.
Stratolaunch, the six-year-old space venture backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, says it’ll use the world’s biggest airplane to launch small satellites into orbit – but what kind of satellites?
The company’s executives have always said the Pentagon could be a payload customer, but when Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson visited Stratolaunch’s super-hangar at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California on July 17, it threw a spotlight on how important military contracts could be.
Six years after Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen started up Stratolaunch Systems, the billionaire’s air-launch venture brought its humongous twin-fuselage airplane out in the open for the first time today.
“Stratolaunch came out of the hangar for fuel testing,” Allen said in a tweet that featured an aerial photo of the plane. More pictures were posted to Stratolaunch’s website.
Stratolaunch CEO Jean Floyd said the plane’s emergence from its hangar at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port was part of a “major milestone in its journey toward providing convenient, reliable and routine access to low Earth orbit.”
The plane is designed to carry up to three Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rockets at a time into the air, and then set them loose to launch payloads into orbit.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s space venture is rebranding itself and updating its website as it prepares to begin flight tests of the world’s biggest airplane. The venture was launched in 2011 as Stratolaunch Systems, but over time it morphed into Vulcan Aerospace, with Stratolaunch Systems as a subsidiary. Now it’s officially known as Stratolaunch, period. The venture’s website has been changed to reflect the new branding.