Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is 4. really doable? Would have thought landing while carrying a fully fueled rocket might be pretty high risk.
Could always dump fuel on the way back.
How much fuel the plane carries?
Paul Allen's new rocket-launching plane
121–130 of 170 posts
Re: Paul Allen's new rocket-launching plane
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
The primary advantage of airplane launch is that you can fly to into a launch window for an orbital rendezvous. Otherwise you'd have to wait for the target's orbit to be just right w/respect to the launch site, or do a long orbit matching process. This is very useful if say you want to very quickly and quietly launch something towards another satellite. People are making comparisons with the Spruce Goose, but the Glo…
The largest downside is the rocket needs to be strong in more than one direction which adds a lot of weight. Sub Mach 1 first stage will save a little net weight but significantly less than you might diets assume.
Sure, but the strength it needs to have in the additional "hanging horizontal" orientation is only 1g -- much less than the many-g strength that all rockets need to have along their thrust axis. It adds some weight, but not enough to ruin the other benefits.
Re: Paul Allen's new rocket-launching plane
#123Scaled Composites built it. It should work. Although Rutan has retired, the company goes on. It's interesting that they didn't connect the tails, like the old Lockheed P-38, but there's probably some good reason for that. Launching a Pegasus XL has to be just a demo. That's normally launched by dropping it from an old Lockheed L-1011; it doesn't need this monster. They need something bigger to launch. There was a con…
>The 747 engines are probably used. There are lots of retired 747s around, many at the Mojave boneyard. Great aircraft, but a fuel hog by current standards. Correct. They just flew in two used 747s and cannibalized them for parts. http://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/paul-a... > The crew’s flight deck is literally that of a 747. > Allen bought two used jumbo jets formerly flown by United Airlines and…
That's absolutely how I would've done it. Way cheaper to make a monster hybrid of two used 747s than to try to make a one-off custom airplane from scratch. Sure, it won't be as efficient at its job as if it were purpose-built, but you'd never get all of that R&D money back.
Re: Paul Allen's new rocket-launching plane
#124This might be a dumb question, but it looks like there are two cockpits on this plane. I imagine the plane is drive by wire, so it doesn't matter where you are on the plane. Why do they have two? Extending my question further, why does this plane have a cockpit at all? Isn't this something you could remotely pilot, especially to mitigate the potential risk of being at 30k feet with thousands of kilos of RP-1 or simil…
They just bought two used 747s and stuck them together. Way more work to remove the cockpits than just leave them intact on their individual airframes.
Hell, for all we know, this could be remotely piloted.
Re: Paul Allen's new rocket-launching plane
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
The traditional rocket companies have no interest in reducing launch costs. Now they're looking like fools for letting SpaceX patent critical tech they could have developed 20 years ago.
SpaceX doesn't patent anything[0]. Tesla does file for patents, but has basically made all their patents free to use for all[1]. Seems like Musk is just not a fan of the patent regime. [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-patents-2012-11 [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
Yeah, but if they'd gotten the patents then they could profit off them (i.e. rent-seeking). Elon Musk getting the patents removes those revenue streams.
Re: Paul Allen's new rocket-launching plane
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's only one flight deck and it in the right-hand fuselage. I was at a recent friends and family day at Scaled Composites and was able to see and touch this amazing plane.
I see, so it's just uniformity of production. How fortunate that you are to be able to tour this! Cheers.
It's literally just two cannibalized used 747s attached together, with a minimum number of necessary modifications made (which doesn't include changing the cockpits or forward sections of fuselage).
Re: Paul Allen's new rocket-launching plane
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's only one flight deck and it in the right-hand fuselage. I was at a recent friends and family day at Scaled Composites and was able to see and touch this amazing plane.
Both fuselages seem to have identical windows. Is that just so they can use the same tooling for both, or is there something else in the left fuselage? Passenger/observer seating, maybe?
The fuselages are used 747s that were repurposed. They have identical windows because of the design of a typical 747, not anything purpose-specific to this mission.
Re: Paul Allen's new rocket-launching plane
#128Dumb question: why don't they launch rockets from the tops of mountains?
Being close to the equator is more important. And mountains that could be used to construct a base are not so high.
Those are not mutually exclusive, you could build one on some plateau in the andes near the equator. But I guess the economics still don't work out for that.
Re: Paul Allen's new rocket-launching plane
#129Re: Paul Allen's new rocket-launching plane
#130385-foot wingspan 1.3 million pounds 65 feet 2,000 nautical mile I'm sorry, I know it has been mentioned a billion times already, but can someone make a browser plugin that converts everything on a website to normal SI units? As a non-american I have no idea how big this aircaft is or how much it can lift - sure I can look up conversions(I have) but it would be awesome if there was an automatic website conversion opt…
I second the request. I had an unit conversion extension once, but it would slow the whole browser down to a crawl when it activated on a large and complex page, like Facebook or GMail. So I'm looking for something smarter / more efficient.