First Images of the worlds biggest airplane

I am not much of a writer , a co worker of mine pointed this out to me during my night shift and i though i share it with the ladies and gentlemen of ATS

sploid.gizmodo.com...

Holy crap, it's real! Behold the first glimpse of Microsoft's co-founder Paul Allen's crazy space venture: The largest airplane in history, a 385-foot (117-meter) wingspan beast designed to carry and launch a giant rocket to space, with a combined weigh of 1,200,000 pounds (540,000 kg)! Check out the mind-blowing photos.

Please remove if this is already been discussed , thank you

If it is real how come there are no actual images?

I hope it doesn't run on Windows.

a reply to: CraftBuilder

they are constructing it , the 3rd picture on the website give away some clues about the size of the fuselage.

I hope it doesn't run on Windows.

I hope they leave out the forced updating and restart

What is the point of this plane. Is it supposed to to be more efficient than a typical launch? Unless we are talking military, I don't see the advantage. The amount of money energy needed to build and maintain this craft over its life span... it feels like it would be a greater cost than the savings in fuel.

According to Quora, a typical launch price for launching a satellite into GEO is ~ $10-12K per pound. A typical GEO satellite weighs around 4000 pounds and thus it costs ~ $40-50M to launch.

A quick search and a typical operating cost of a 747 per hour is about $21,000. This was just to get an idea of costs. Obviously the plane in the OP is much larger and has more engines to maintain. Also, not sure how much the rocket system costs per launch.

Still, the ultimate goal is usually to make money so I would think that this would be a cheaper way to go. Plus, it may have other advantages such as turn-around time or being able to avoid weather by flying above it. Would be able to have more launches per year which would also mean more money.

Id like a giant rail gun instead please.....

Is a nautical mile like a country mile? Or just a straight line mile? I never understood that.

Also how fast is a knot/not/naut when you are describing speed in water?

a reply to: sputniksteve

1 Nautical mile = 1852 meters - this distance accounts for the curvature of the earth, a land mile does not.

So, 1 nautical mile is 1.151 land miles.

So, a vessel travelling at 1 knot will travel a distance of 1 nautical mile in 1 hour.

a reply to: Sublimecraft

Awesome thank you sir. I am sure I could have googled it but I prefer not to have computers feed me information

a reply to: stirling

where's scientificrailgun when you need him lol

I think everyone wants a railgun.

This is very neat I wonder if Scaled Composites www.scaled.com... will have a hand in this.

a reply to: TheGreazel

It has the largest wingspan, but still isn't a bigger overall plane than the Antonov An-225

Wow this is definitely cool, I will be reading more about this. Thanks for the thread.

a reply to: _BoneZ_

Right, besides wingspan, this thing isn't really that big. It is outclassed on max takeoff weight by the A-380 and AN-225 and It's shorter than a good number of large aircraft.
The An-225 also was involved with an air launch to orbit program in the 80's along with Lockheed's L-1011 and the F-15 in more recent times.

I prefer the HTV-3x

a reply to: Sammamishman

MAKS and Interim HOTOL were interesting ideas, for sure, but I'm still excited as hell that stratolaunch is actually happening.

I always loved reading through Jane's all the world's aircraft as a kid, especially those crazy rocket carrier designs from molniya, myasischev, etc, and it's so cool to see something like them finally coming to fruition.

a reply to: Sammamishman

I would love to see and hear the An-225 take off and fly by at least once before the only surviving craft is retired or worse. I've watched videos and what a beast she is!

a reply to: _BoneZ_

No doubt. I didn't get to see one fly but I did get to walk through one that was on static display at an airshow at McChord AFB many years ago. It was big.

originally posted by: CraftBuilder
If it is real how come there are no actual images?

There are no actual images because you clearly didn't look at the link the OP provided to the story. There are multiple images of it.

LEE.

a reply to: _BoneZ_
Have you seen an AN-124 BoneZ?

If you have then just add 30% more engine noise.


LEE.

a reply to: penroc3

Actually, Scaled designed and is building the plane for Stratolaunch.

scaled.com...