Soon,massive plane to carry passengers to space

The company,called Stratolaunch Systems,plans to build a massive airplane that can tote a rocket high into the atmosphere before it is dropped for an independent ride into space. 

The new six-engine craft will be the largest ever flown,weighing more than 1.2 million pounds with a wingspan of 385 feet,longer than a football field. In contrast,the wingspan for WhiteKnightTwo,the carrier aircraft for Virgin Galactic”s commercial spaceship,is 141 feet. 

The system is similar,though much larger,to SpaceShipTwo,a commercial successor to SpaceShipOne,which clinched the 10 million-dollar Ansari X Prize in 2004 for the first non-government human space flights. 

“It’s a great honour for me to be back working with Burt Rutan,” Discovery News quoted Allen as saying.

According to Mike Griffin,a former NASA administrator,Stratolaunch expects to be able to launch medium-weight satellites and eventually crews of about six people at a time.  

The firm’s aircraft will be manufactured and tested at Scaled’s facility in Mojave. A launch site has not yet been selected. 

“The beauty of large turbofan airplane is it really meets the definition of re-usability,” Rutan said.  

“A typical 747 aircraft throughout its entire life spends somewhere between 12 or 15 hours a day airborne.” he said.