The giant Stratolaunch aircraft successfully carried out its sixth test flight this Monday across the sky of California for more than five hours, this time carrying a hypersonic vehicle prototype attached to its fuselage.
It is the largest aircraft in the world thanks to its wingspan of 116 meters from tip to tip of the wings. Stratolaunch has taken off Mojave Air and Space Port in California and was observed by hundreds of people amazed by the enormous size of the plane.
At speeds up to 850 km per hour, remained in the air for a total of five hours and six minutes, reaching a maximum altitude of 7,000 meters. The plane weighs 227 tons.
It was firmly attached to a pylon in the center of its wings Talon-A (TA-0)an 8.5-meter reusable test aircraft capable of carrying payloads at hypersonic speeds, more than five times the speed of sound.
Thus, the aircraft proved to be capable of lifting the Talon-A, which was designed to be launched from the air. It was there first flight with attached payload between its two fuselages.
“We conducted a series of ground tests prior to this first captive transport flight and, with each successful milestone, we built the confidence that the hardware will work exactly how it was designed, “he said Zaccaria Krevor, president of Stratolaunch. “It is exciting to see the team’s hard work come to life and the vehicles fly as an integrated system,” she added.
The Stratolaunch’s 116-meter-wide wingspan is larger than the size of a football field, but arch to arch. It was developed by a company of the same name founded in 2011 by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. They aim for full operational capability between mid to late 2023.
Once operational, the idea is to use it to launch hypersonic flight search vehicles reusable for paying customers.
Allen passed away at the age of 65 in October 2018, less than a year before Stratolaunch flew for the first time. When the Stratolaunch company was founded in 2011, the cost of the project was initially estimated to be around $ 300 million, but before the pandemic those costs had already increased to US $ 400,000,000 according to CNBC.
“The success of today’s flight demonstrates and validates improvements in transport aircraft systems and overall flight performance,” he said. Zaccaria KrevorStratolaunch president and chief operating officer.
Stratolaunch has twin fuselages very similar to a catamaran, a multihull equipped with two parallel hulls of equal size. It is manned by three people (pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer) who sit in the right fuselage and guide the aircraft a considerable distance to the right of the center line..
Until its appearance, the previous largest aircraft in the world was the eight-engined H-4 Hercules from the WWII era, nicknamed the ‘Goose Fir’, developed by the eccentric American tycoon Howard Hughes.
Source: Clarin
