Stratolaunch, the world’s biggest airplane, hit a new milestone recently, taxiing down the runway at 46 mph. While that may not sound like much, it’s worth watching the video to see this 500,000-pound beast with twin fuselages and a wingspan of 385 feet lumbering down the concrete.
It’s a big improvement over a low-speed test conducted last December, in which the Stratolaunch traveled down a runway at just 28 mph. Previously, the massive aircraft successfully conducted a test of its six turbofan engines at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. All of these incremental milestones are said to be leading up to the Stratolaunch’s first test flight in 2019.
Stratolaunch is a private space company helmed by Microscoft co-founder Paul Allen. The goal is to use the airplane as a platform for lifting rockets into the stratosphere before launching them into space. Some see it as a cheaper, more reliable route to low Earth orbit — the sweet spot for many kinds of satellites. Thanks to its massive size, the plane is capable of carrying payloads up to 550,000 pounds.
Source: The Verge