Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Paul Allen’s Plan - Airplanes as Launching Pads for Rockets - NYTimes.com

The Spruce Goose comparison was probably inevitable…

The airplane that his new company, Stratolaunch Systems, plans to build will be larger and heavier than the Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes’s record-setting flying boat that flew, just once, in 1947. With wings that will stretch 385 feet — longer than a football field — it will dwarf the double-decker Airbus A380, which is the biggest commercial passenger plane flown today. It will take off from a runway, fly to a normal cruising altitude and then drop off a rocket, eliminating the need for costly launching pads.

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Paul Allen’s Plan - Airplanes as Launching Pads for Rockets - NYTimes.com

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