Stratolaunch Systems Corporation

Stratolaunch Systems Corporation

Stratolaunch Systems Corporation

Stratolaunch Systems Corporation

Stratolaunch Systems Corporation

Stratolaunch Systems Corporation

Stratolaunch Systems Corporation

Stratolaunch Systems Corporation

Stratolaunch Systems Corporation

Paul Allen's intriguing launch company, Vulcan Aerospace, has gone relatively quiet in recent years, and questions about the venture's viability have been increasing. But on Wednesday, the cofounder of Microsoft shared a new photo of the company's Stratolaunch airplane—the largest in the world—and it seems the company is moving forward.

The new plane is, in a word, bigly. The aircraft has 385-foot wingspan and, powered by six Pratt & Whitney engines used on Boeing 747 aircraft, has a maximum takeoff weight of 1.3 million pounds. The Stratolaunch's wingspan is the largest in history, blowing away the previous record-holder (Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose) by 65 feet. Vulcan Aerospace says its Stratolaunch airplane will have an operational range of 2,000 nautical miles. Serving as a reusable first stage for rocket launches, the Stratolaunch system will be capable of delivering payloads to multiple orbits and inclinations in a single mission.

Recently—perhaps on Wednesday, but the date was not made clear—the company moved the Stratolaunch aircraft out of its hangar at the Mojave Air & Space Port in the California desert of the same name. This was first time it had been moved outdoors, and Allen said the purpose was to conduct a "fueling test." This event marked the completion of the construction phase, the company later said, and the beginning of ground and eventually flight tests.

The Stratolaunch system is part of Allen's plan to lower the cost of access to space through reusability. Vulcan has released few details about the launcher's capacity, but in October it did announce a partnership with Orbital ATK by which the Dulles, Virginia-based company would provide "multiple" Pegasus XL air-launch vehicles for use with the Stratolaunch aircraft. These rockets can launch small satellites weighing up to 1,000 pounds into low Earth orbit. With this concept and capacity, Stratolaunch is competing with companies such as Virgin Orbit, which plans to launch rockets from a modified Boeing 747-400.

In his memoir Idea Man, Allen wrote about being obsessed with rocketry ever since he was a kid. He read Robert Heinlein and was entranced by Apollo, and he knew the names of the Mercury 7 astronauts by heart. As a child, Allen made elaborate drawings of rockets and spacemen and dreamed of building rockets to explore Mars.

“Other enthusiasms came and went, but my obsession with rocketry endured,” he wrote. “After Apollo, NASA shifted to unmanned probes. Space lost its cachet, but it never lost my interest." This week, the cachet is back.

Listing image by Stratolaunch Systems Corporation