What comes to mind when you hear the words “rocket plane?” A rocket-powered airplane, maybe? An aircraft built for space? An interceptor-type plane for the military? You’re not wrong, but Paul Allen wants to All Postsput another kind of rocket plane into people’s minds.
Microsoft’s co-founder has just announced that he’s starting another company, called Stratolaunch Systems. He’s joined by two others for this private venture, Burt Rutan of the commercial spacecraft SpaceShipOne, and Elon Musk of SpaceX. Their plan? To create a hybrid plane that launches rockets into the sky and all the way into space without needing to spend more money on launchpads and extra rocket fuel.
It may seem crazy, but Allen has the right idea. After all, SpaceShipOne was launched from the back of a plane called the White Knight, and SpaceX developed the Falcon rocket family, a series of rockets that have been proven successful for space travel. Allen’s plan: put a Falcon on a White Knight and launch it. Sure, the names and designs may be changed for Stratolaunch Systems’ use, but the idea remains the same- these people are creating a plane with a wingspan of 385 feet and a weight of 1.2M pounds just to carry rockets out of the planet’s gravitational pull and send them into space.
Is it safe? Yes, if Virgin Galactic’s own venture is anything to go by. Sir Richard Branson and his company are planning to send humans into space on SpaceShipTwo this same way in 2013, and Branson wouldn’t be doing it if he wasn’t absolutely sure people would be able to survive the trip. Meanwhile, Stratolaunch is planning on unmanned test launches for 2016. If Allen and his team manage to pull this off, we could be looking at commercial space travel being real in a matter of a few years. Watch the video below to know more details.
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Tags: paul allen, SpaceShipOne, stratolaunch hybrid rocket plane, stratolaunch project, stratolaunch systems, stratolaunch video
