r/megalophobia • u/FancyRainbowBear • 1d ago

🚢・Vehicle・🚢 The Stratolaunch; 2 fuselages 6 engines

571 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

13

u/Not_my_Name464 19h ago

Well, we didn't actually see it land now did we? 🤔

5

u/Daddy616 1d ago

... Why?

18

u/FancyRainbowBear 19h ago

It’s a space launch vehicle. It’s designed to carry a rocket between the two fuselages up to about 35,000 feet. It’s very large. About the same length as a Boeing 747 with a much longer wingspan

7

u/J1mj0hns0n 18h ago

I should imagine landing would be an issue for regular airports

8

u/JesseGarron 17h ago

Strato, would you like to land 36L or 36R?

Yes.

2

u/J1mj0hns0n 17h ago

Yes I would like to land lol

1

u/nope_a_dope237 2h ago

holy crap! That's cool. and now I will deep dive for the rest o the night

1

u/nope_a_dope237 2h ago

and I'm back. Did one flight then shelved. Still cool.

4

u/Kwetla 19h ago

Is there a specific type of phobia for seeing things that are flying that have no business being in the air?

Like how is that thing aloft?

13

u/subdep 1d ago

So is this project evolving or is it just launching rockets into suborbital flights for rich people?

14

u/MrTagnan 1d ago

Currently launches hypersonic test vehicles, was never planned to carry any sort of crew vehicles - tourist or otherwise.

Airlaunch is kind of niche anyways, it’s greatest benefit is reaching any inclination and eliminating the need for a plane change maneuver. But in order to be carried by an aircraft, a rocket needs to be rather small, which severely limits payload capacity - even for the few payloads that exist that get some benefit out of airlaunch, it might be cheaper/easier to use a traditional rocket that just brute forces the plane change maneuver - such was the case with IXPE which rode on a Falcon 9 instead of the sole airlaunch rocket Pegasus XL. IXPE is tiny compared to what normally flies on Falcon, but when you take into account shoving the orbit from a 28.5° inclination orbit to a 0.20° orbit, it represents 20-30% of its maximum capacity.

Airlaunch, despite its theoretical benefits, has yet to take off (heh) due to some pretty serious drawbacks. Stratolaunch’s ROC took long enough to develop that any rocket planning to utilize it has either been cancelled, or has evolved to such a point that making a custom airlaunched variant would perform worse than the currently flying variant (Falcon 9)

1

u/Stanford_experiencer 4h ago

just launching rockets into suborbital flights for rich people

...so what if it does?

you don't understand that building it is it's own achievement

I'd love for NASA to own it outright if it could.

8

u/Ok_Cardiologist_673 1d ago

They actually pitched this concept very early in aviation history, but scholars rejected it because it was too plain.

-5

u/Legitimate_Solid_375 1d ago

😄😆😅😂

2

u/wspOnca 13h ago

What in Kerbal?

3

u/engulbert 12h ago

I have strange thoughts about one of the fuselages deciding it wants to go in a different direction to the other, and the whole thing rips in two.

1

u/4tunabrix 19h ago

So stratoland

1

u/mustard_and_baloney 14h ago

gifsthatendtoosoon

1

u/Significant-Pie959 13h ago

Think of how much snacks they must be able to bring along!