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Stratolaunch plane cockpit1/17/2024 ![]() ![]() The photographs Dylan has sent us show the current status of the aircraft. Another shot of the world’s largest aircraft that made its first and only flight on Apr. 24, 2020, Boneyard Safari‘s Dylan Phelps was out for a photoshoot of the final landing of a Qantas 747 being retired, when he spotted that the Stratolaunch Carrier Aircraft had been rolled out into the California. While it waits to resume flight testing, the massive aircraft was photographed from the air at its base in Mojave. Initial designs optimized for cargo launch, with a follow-on variant capable of transporting crew.” Both vehicles will be air-launched by the Stratolaunch Carrier that, according to the datasheet, should be able to support operational aicraft services by 2022. The company also said it would develop a larger hypersonic vehicle once known as Hyper-Z, and now called Talon-Z, plus a space plane nicknamed Black Ice, “a fully reusable space plane that enables advanced on-orbit capabilities and cargo return. ![]() The vehicle will also be capable of autonomous take-off, under its own power, via a conventional runway. The Talon-A will conduct over 1-minute of hypersonic flight testing, and glide back for an autonomous, horizontal landing on a conventional runway. According to Stratolaunch, Talon-A is a fully reusable, autonomous, liquid rocket-powered Mach 6-class hypersonic vehicle with a length of 28 feet (8.5 m), wingspan of 11.3 feet (3.4 m), and a launch weight of approximately 6,000 pounds (2,722 Kg). In 2020, the company under new management unveiled the Talon-A (a rebranded version of the previous hypersonic vehicle dubbed Hyper-A). Cerberus Capital Management acquired Stratolaunch Systems including the aircraft in October 2019 and, in December the same year, Stratolaunch announced that it would focus on offering high-speed flight test services. The company ceased operations in May 2019 and placed all company assets, including the Stratolaunch Carrier aircraft, for sale for US$400 million by June 2019. Both Paul Allen and CEO Jean Floyd ran the company until Allen’s death in October, 2018. Stratolaunch was founded in 2011 under parent corporation Vulcan, Inc. ![]() While the approach to commercial space flight was novel, competition by other commercial, reusable spacecraft launch operations like Elon Musk’s SpaceX offered more conventional and likely more practical solutions to boost payloads into orbit. The Stratolaunch Carrier at the Mojave Air & Space Port in California (All images: Dylan Phelps/ Boneyard Safari). The Stratolaunch is powered by six enormous Pratt & Whitney PW4000 jet engines formerly used on the Boeing 747 that only used four engines. The gigantic Stratolaunch has the largest wingspan in the world at 117.3 meters (384.8 feet), significantly larger than the previous record holder, the Antonov An-225 “Mriya” heavy lift cargo aircraft. The Stratolaunch can carry a payload of up to 500,000 pounds or 250 tons according to Stratolaunch Launch Systems. The Stratolaunch aircraft was intended to carry spacecraft to altitude where they would be dropped and then fly into orbit under their own power. Reports that Stratolaunch was closing started surfacing online on Friday, May, 31, 2019, few weeks after the historic first flight. ![]()
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