California, US: Almost 116 years after the Wright Brothers created history at Kitty Hawk with the first heavier than air flight ever for 12 seconds, another piece of aviation history was created at Nojav in California on Saturday.
Stratolaunch, claimed as the world’s largest all-composite plane by wingspan, successfully completed its first flight on Saturday.
It flew for 150 minutes on debut outing.
Among the many exciting attributes to this flying machine, the most fascinating one is that its wingspan is bigger than an average American football field.
Built by Stratolaunch Systems Corporation, the company founded by Paul G Allen, late Microsoft co-founder, Stratolaunch has a dual fuselage design.
During the first flight that took place from Mojave Air and Space Port, Stratolaunch achieved a maximum speed of 189 miles per hour.
According to details made available by the Stratolaunch officials, the maiden flight lasted for 2.5 hours touching a maximum altitude of 17,000 feet over the Mojave Desert.
As part of the initial flight, the pilots evaluated aircraft performance and handling qualities before landing successfully back at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
Fantastic Flight
“What a fantastic first flight. Today’s flight furthers our mission to provide a flexible alternative to ground launched systems. We are incredibly proud of the Stratolaunch team, today’s flight crew and our partners,” says Jean Floyd, CEO of Stratolaunch.
Citing initial parameters, the officials said that the platform performed a variety of flight control manoeuvres to calibrate speed and test flight control systems, including roll doublets, yawing manoeuvres, pushovers and pull-ups, and steady heading side slips.
“It also conducted simulated landing approach exercises at a max altitude of 15,000 feet mean sea level,” says the official.
Space Launches
The Stratolaunch aircraft is a mobile launch platform that will enable airline-style access to space that is convenient, affordable and routine. The reinforced centre wing can support multiple launch vehicles, weighing up to a total of 500,000 pounds.
In the next three years, after completing the test phase, Stratolaunch expects to launch satellite-bearing rockets into space.
Space observes say that Stratolaunch should be able to pace satellites to a height up to 35,000 feet into the stratosphere.
“The rest of the satellites journey will be taken care of by the rocket's engines that would automatically get ignited. This is a historic development giving hopes to smooth space journey in future,” says an Indian space scientist.
Predicted Flightpath
Stratolaunch was piloted by Scaled Test Pilot Evan Thomas, a former F-16 pilot with 28 years of experience with the US Air Force. Evan specializes in experimental flight test, aviation and test safety, aircraft stability and control testing as well as operational leadership,” says an official.
Speaking to the media soon after the touchdown, Evan said, the successful flight was the result of the blood, sweat and tears of all the men and women of Stratolaunch who worked tirelessly.
“The flight itself was smooth, which is exactly what you want the first flight to be. And for the most part, the airplane flew as predicted which is again exactly what we want. We got running down the runway, did our rotation and the airplane very nicely and smoothly rotated. It really just lifted off the ground and definitely was ready to fly and wanted to fly. It climbed out quickly and that was great to see,” Evan said.
Powered by six Pratt & Whitney PW4056 turbofan engines, it's a treat to the eyes to watch Stratolaunch takes off with 28-wheel landing gear.
Stratolaunch promises to cut the time between two launches as it is capable of using traditional runways for space missions.
