It’s been something of a mixed week for space news. The first commercial launch of the Falcon Heavy went off with such jaw-dropping precision that the whole flight seemed more like a simulation than something that was happening with roaring, cloud-ripping reality. Meanwhile, the attempted landing of the privately-created Beresheet lunar lander ended in the destruction of the craft after a serious of failures in the final minutes left it plunging toward the Moon at over 500 kph. So it seems appropriate that Saturday morning should include an event that is at once a soaring triumph … and something of a bittersweet disappointment.
Founded by tech billionaire Paul Allen, Stratolaunch was intended to be another competitor in the race to develop a new generation of space launch systems and to provide a new means of getting humans back into space. But rather than build the kind of reusable booster that SpaceX and Blue Origin have selected as their means for cutting the cost of space travel, Stratolaunch took a different tack. They created a giant aircraft, one whose 385 foot wingspan eclipses even that of the legendary “Spruce Goose”. Powered by six of the large jet engines that usually appear on 747s, the plane weighs in at 500,000 lbs. Empty.
Allen had planned for this gigantic aircraft to act as a carrier to give a speed and altitude boost to orbital laucnhers. Originally, they worked with SpaceX and even looked at air-dropping a version of the Falcon 9, but SpaceX seemed to outgrow those plans. Then in 2018, Stratolaunch announced an entire family of launchers that ranged from those capable of carrying only small payloads up to “medium heavy” launchers and a reusable space plane.
But only weeks after this announcement, company founder Paul Allen died. Shortly after his death Stratolaunch announced that it was pulling back from those plans for an elaborate family of launchers. Instead, it would use the massive aircraft only to launch the small Pegasus XL rockets made by Northrop Grumman. That small booster can already be launched by more conventional craft, and its limitations are such that there has been very little demand.
So, when the world’s largest plane finally took to the air on Saturday morning, it was both a cause to cheer … and a moment to think of what might have been.
Following a series of high speed taxi tests, Stratolaunch rolled out just after 10AM ET on Saturday morning and took to the skies, soaring above the Mojave. Even being a thousand feet up could not diminish the obvious size of the largest plane ever to take to the air, and it looked genuinely glorious up there against the blue.
But without Allen’s determination to make the Stratolaunch more than just another platform for the Pegasus, it’s not clear the aircraft has any real purpose. It’s big … and it’s also quite large. Without the development of other vehicles that need the aircraft’s size any power, there’s not a lot of reason for it to fly again.
That’s not to say a second act for Stratolaunch still isn’t possible. Perhaps some of the companies out there scrambling to get into commercial space might turn away from developing a ground-based booster and instead look at this already built, already tested platform as an opportunity to leapfrog their competition.
Even without the family of launchers, getting the Stratolaunch into the air at all represents an enormous technical achievement—and another triumph for the design and build team at Scaled Composites, a company that has racked up an astounding record of achievement.
For the moment, Stratolaunch is more of a curiosity than a system. But it is a glorious curiosity.