Get a closer look at Paul Allen's crazy Stratolaunch plane
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's mind-bogglingly huge Stratolaunch airplane rolled out from its hulking hangar recently. Let's check it out.
Paul Allen likes to go big.
The entrepreneur and Microsoft co-founder owns a 414-foot (126-meter) superyacht and is now also responsible for bringing us the world's largest airplane. Workers towed the Stratolaunch out from its massive hangar at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California last week, giving us a good look at the monster machine.
The Stratolaunch has a 385-foot (117-meter) wingspan, a tail height of 50 feet (15 meters) and a matching pair of fuselages that measure 238 feet (73 meters) in length. All that bulk requires a lot of wheels. The Stratolaunch has 28 of them.
The plane is designed to carry a rocket high up into the sky. The rocket would then disengage, fire its engines and head off towards space with the aim of reaching low Earth orbit.
The first Stratolaunch takeoff should happen sometime in 2017, but we'll have to wait until around 2019 before the big bird is ready for a rocket-launch test. Allen hopes the deployment of the Stratolaunch will offer an easier and more efficient way to get satellites into orbit.
From the wheels on up, get a closer look at this fascinating machine:
