The world\u2019s largest aircraft took off over the Mojave Desert in California on Saturday, the first flight for the carbon-composite plane built by Stratolaunch Systems Corp, started by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, as the company enters the lucrative private space market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\n white airplane called Roc, which has a wingspan the length of an \nAmerican football field and is powered by six engines on a twin \nfuselage, took to the air shortly before 7 am Pacific time and stayed \naloft for more than two hours before landing safely back at the Mojave \nAir and Space Port as a crowd of hundreds of people cheered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cToday\u2019s\n flight furthers our mission to provide a flexible alternative to ground\n launched systems, Floyd said. \u201cWe are incredibly proud of the \nStratolaunch team, today\u2019s flight crew, our partners at Northrup \nGrumman\u2019s Scaled Composites and the Mojave Air and Space Port.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\n plane is designed to drop rockets and other space vehicles weighing up \nto 5,00,000 pounds at an altitude of 35,000 feet and has been billed by \nthe company as making satellite deployment as \u201ceasy as booking an \nairline flight.\u201d Saturday\u2019s flight, which saw the plane reach a maximum \nspeed of 189 miles per hour and altitudes of 17,000 feet, was meant to \ntest its performance and handling qualities, according to Stratolaunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\n company seeks to cash in on higher demand in coming years for vessels \nthat can put satellites in orbit, competing in the United States with \nother space entrepreneurs and industry stalwarts such as Elon Musk\u2019s \nSpaceX and United Launch Alliance a partnership between Boeing and \nLockheed Martin.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The world\u2019s largest aircraft took off over the Mojave Desert in California on Saturday, the first flight for the carbon-composite plane built by Stratolaunch Systems Corp, started by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, as the company enters the lucrative private space market. The white airplane called Roc, which has a wingspan the length of an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59153,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59151\/revisions\/59153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}