For the first time, the largest aircraft ever built made its official first flight last Saturday, April 13, in the form of the Stratolaunch, the result of the vision of Paul Allen, creator and co-founder of Microsoft. Following the completion of its ROC ground testing, the aircraft, designed by Scaled Composites for Stratolaunch, completed its maiden flight on April 13, 2019. It spent 149 minutes in the air, reaching a top speed of 304 kilometers per hour and an altitude of 5,181 meters. During the flight, the crew evaluated its performance and response to the controls. This colossus features a double fuselage, 28 wheels, six 747 jet engines, and a footprint larger than a football field. ROC is designed to launch rockets from the air . To do so, it will carry them suspended from the center segment of its wing. Initially, it was going to launch the Falcon 5, a rocket that SpaceX was going to develop for the company, although in the end the rocket was canceled when SpaceX realized it would be more work than expected. Stratolaunch then considered developing its own rocket. But right now, it's working on the idea of ROC carrying up to three Pegasus XLs on each launch. The Pegasus XL is a rocket measuring 17.6 metres in length, 1.27 metres in diameter, with a wingspan of 6.7 metres and weighing 23,130 kg, capable of placing payloads of up to 443 kg into low Earth orbit . It was developed by Orbital ATK , although the company is now owned by Northrop Grumman. The idea of launching a rocket from the air is that it avoids having to travel through the densest part of the atmosphere, which makes the launch cheaper because less rocket fuel is needed. It also avoids one of the main causes of launch delays : adverse weather. ROC is capable of taking off in conditions that would otherwise prevent a launch and of carrying the rocket above those clouds, winds, or storms. ROC has a payload capacity of just over 249,000 kilos, so it could be used with other launchers in the future; it is not designed solely for the Pegasus XL. Perhaps we could even dream that ROC could be used to transport our ALTAIR rocket as an alternative to the initially planned aircraft/drone. The question is whether there's a market for ROC and its launches. The Pegasus XL, in all its variants, has only 43 launches between 1990 and 2016, the year in which its last launch took place. And so far, it only has one more pending, the Ionospheric Connection Explorer , which has been delayed since December 2017 due to various problems with the rocket. Although it's also true that with the falling manufacturing costs of artificial satellites, more and more companies and organizations of all kinds are looking for affordable launches, it remains to be seen how demand evolves. In any case, the fact that ROC is continuing with its testing program is a sign that the death of Paul Allen , the main driving force behind Stratolaunch, has not meant – at least not in the short term – the end of the company. Via: Microsiervos
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