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Stratolaunch Systems: Paul Allen launches commercial space project
- tectonic 15y ago"Allen's rocket will be launched from a massive carrier aircraft powered by six jumbo jet engines, to be constructed by Scaled Composites, a unit of defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. The rocket itself will be made by private space company SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal."
- cal5k 15y agoThe key distinction between this and Virgin Galactic: orbital spaceflight!
- cwe 15y agoThat's definitely the most interesting part. A clone of SpaceShipOne, with a rocket done by SpaceX? Is there anything special about this company?
- ryanwhitney 15y agoMojave Aerospace Ventures developed SpaceShipOne. It was co-founded by Paul Allen. Seems odd this wasn't mentioned in the article.
- maaku 15y agoVery odd, as this is effectively SpaceShipThree.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoNot a clone of SpaceShipOne, a new carrier aircraft that is a derivative of White Knight / White Knight 2 and a new rocket that is a close relative of the Falcon 9. The "special" part is that nobody has done that before, and it may prove to be a worthwhile endeavor.
- zandorg 15y agoJust pointing out that Musk is not necessarily a 'billionaire' in actual net worth.
- VladRussian 15y agoyet his [successful] endeavours look like of a billionaire
- shingen 15y agoHe is a billionaire these days. He owns 1/3 of Tesla, which has a market cap of $3 billion. His ownership stake in SpaceX is also without a doubt worth a nice chunk of change.
- johngalt 15y agoDo you really gain much from a carrier plane if you want to reach orbital velocity? LEO velocity being ~18,000mph, and any realistic carrier plane going much slower than that.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoI'll just link this instead of duplicating a response here: http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/nbb6u/combine_all_the_things_paul_allen_announced/c37r1yy http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/nbb6u/combine_all_the... There are some pretty big advantages, but speed isn't a big part of it.
- randallsquared 15y agoOne thing you gain is less friction. Fifty percent of the atmosphere by mass is below 18,000 feet, per wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Pressure_and_thickness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Pressure_an...
- StuffMaster 15y agoYou can use a much smaller rocket due to the launch altitude. Notice how ground-launched rockets go straight up for quite a ways.
- bazookaBen 15y agoi did a thesis on air-launched systems. Can't save that much on the orbital velocities. The main takeaway is the capability to launch on-demand, from different locations. In which case it suddenly becomes a logistical challenge : i.e how do i prep the system to launch X rockets with short turnaround. Bear in mind that the payload is limited by what the carrier aircraft can hold. Either use an existing plane and retrofit like what Orbital does , or build an entirely new plane. There's a bunch of heavily funded startups trying to launch small payloads into orbit, which is always interesting to watch.