Stratolaunch

Paul Allen's mammoth Stratolaunch aircraft nearly half completed

Stratolaunch 02 Paul Allen 

Paul Allen is getting attention for his collection of World War II aircraft, but he's also enamored with space exploration. He's shown here with a model of his Stratolaunch aircraft, which is to fly in 2016.

Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen's dream to build the world's largest airplane based on the remains of two used Boeing 747s is 40 percent complete.

Scaled Composites President Kevin Mickey confirmed the progress in an email Tuesday from that company's headquarters in Mojave, Calif., where the aircraft is being built.
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.

Scaled Composites is building the Stratolaunch for Allen by harnessing six former 747 engines for power, and matching them to a twin-hull composite aircraft, with a wingspan of 380 feet.
By comparison, the wingspan of Boeing's largest aircraft, the 747-8, is 225 feet.
The wings and fuselage of the 1.3 million-pound Stratolaunch will be new, and about 80 percent of the assemblies are complete, Mickey said.

While Allen himself lives several homes in the Puget Sound area, or on his super yacht "Octopus," Stratolaunch is headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama.

Progress on the aircraft seems so far to be steady. The first flight is still scheduled for 2016, the same date the company earlier indicated.

If that remains the case, the aircraft is supposed to finish certification flights and launch its first space craft by 2018.

Spokespeople for Allen's enterprises, including Vulcan, declined to comment on the timing of the aircraft.
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.

Allen's interest in space flight led him to pour $28 million into SpaceShipOne, built by iconoclastic Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan, which won the $10 million Ansari X prize in 2004. While that might not seem a great investment, travel impresario Richard Branson is licensing the technology for his own company, Virgin Galactic, to bring tourists to space.

Allen now is focusing on Stratolaunch. But some observers question the limits of what Stratolaunch will be able to do.

Its Orbital Sciences-supplied solid-fuel rocket will be able to carry 15,000 pounds to low Earth orbit. But this is about half the lift of the competing SpaceX Falcon 9 and just 30 percent that of a Boeing-built Delta IV. Stratolaunch will be able to orbit only smaller satellites.
"I think the idea of Stratolaunch is they're kind of looking for a low-cost way to launch satellites into low Earth orbit," said Warren Ferster, editor of Space News, published in Washington, D.C. "With Stratolaunch, I'll believe it when I see it."

Meanwhile Orbital Sciences competitor SpaceX is opening a facility in Washington state, while CEO Elon Musk pursues his own vision for low-cost lift to orbit.

A key to that will be whether or not SpaceX can land a first-stage booster on an offshore platform and re-use it, a technology that it has not yet perfected.