Forget Kennedy Space Center. How about launching massive rockets from the underbelly of the largest plane ever built? On Tuesday, Burt Rutan, of aerospace company Scaled Composites, and billionaire Paul Allen, a former Microsoft executive, announced Stratolaunch Systems — a company that aims to put cargo and human payloads in orbit. The founders say the air-launch-to-orbit system will not only cost less, but also will be more flexible and responsive than the traditional launch pad approach, which is often logjammed because of weather and other logistical concerns. “With government funded spaceflight diminishing, there’s a much expanded opportunity for private efforts,” says Allen.
Rutan and Allen last teamed up on SpaceShipOne, which took home the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004 after it reached suborbital flight twice within two weeks. This time, however, the rocket-plane is decidedly larger. Rutan envisions a plane powered by six 747 engines, with a wingspan of almost two of the jumbo jets. In the middle of the carrier plane would be a multi-stage rocket, built by SpaceX. The Stratolaunch approach is like a souped-up version of Orbital’s Pegasus, which pioneered using a carrier plane as what it calls a “air-breathing, reusable first stage”.
The company claims it can get 13,500 pounds to low Earth orbit — more than 10 times the capability of Pegasus, but about 10 times less than what’s planned with the pad-launched Falcon Heavy of SpaceX. Flight tests could come as early as 2016. NASA scientists should cheer — as Stratolaunch plans to undercut the increasingly expensive launch services that NASA has to buy to put science payloads in orbit — though the system that puts 13,500 pounds in low-Earth orbit is probably not going to be sufficient for deep planetary trajectories.
The board of the company, which will be headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, includes former NASA administrator Michael Griffin. While administrator, Griffin walked the tightrope between state-owned and commercial rockets, calling for a NASA-developed shuttle replacement even as he oversaw the contracts that now have SpaceX on the cusp of taking cargo to the space station.
But Griffin says that it will be a while before Stratolaunch is open for business. In a 60 year history of rockets, Griffin says that 3 out of the 10 first test flights never make it to orbit. “It doesn’t matter who is building the rocket,” he says. “It’s a chancy business and it’s hard to get it right.”
Image credit: Stratolaunch