Stratolaunch: The World’s Largest Aircraft To Ever Take Flight?

Despite the delays since it was announced back in 2011, is Scaled Composites’ Stratolaunch now the largest aircraft by wingspan to ever take flight?

By: Ringo Bones

Stratolaunch finally took its successful maiden flight back in Saturday, April 13, 2019 10:00 AM local time from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port, which now makes it the world’s largest aircraft to ever take flight. Its 385-foor wingspan beats out Howard Hughes Spruce Goose by a significant margin and its primary purpose is to launch satellites into space at a much reduced cost than existing launch methods.

Originally designed by Silicon Valley billionaire Paul Allen and its construction was made possible by the Northrop Grumman subsidiary called Scaled Composites and the plane’s completion was first announced back in 2011. Unfortunately, Stratolaunch remained on the ground far beyond its originally planned first test flight date back in 2016. Paul Allen died near the end of 2018 of complications related to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, though the project continued in his stead.

Despite being made almost entirely of carbon fiber material and related lightweight composites, Stratolaunch weighs in at 500,000 pounds. Much of it is due to the plane’s twin fuselage design and to further reduce costs, the plane uses six Pratt & Whitney jet engines similar to ones used on the iconic Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet and also the plane’s 28-wheel landing gear is also similar to the one used on the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet.

Only a handful of twin-fuselage planes have been developed in the past few decades and Stratolaunch will primarily be used for spaceflight – as in a satellite launch system for launching payloads into space. Even though it only attained a speed of 189 miles per hour during its maiden flight, the plane is still very capable of reaching 35,000 to 40,000 feet at such relatively low speeds because launching payloads into space at such heights provides significant rocket fuel savings compared to existing launch methods of using static rockets on ground-based launch pads.

Launching payloads at such altitude also minimizes complications from bad weather as the plane can simply fly over storm systems and further fuel savings can be made by flying Stratolaunch over the Earth’s equator and launch satellites there. The plane is capable of launching up to three of Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rockets. Sadly, due to the aircraft’s rather “unique” shape, there are still delays on the plane’s certification by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, not to mention additional more test flights before it can start launching payloads off the planet. And Stratolaunch is also facing competition from Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit – a satellite launch system that’s based on a modified Boeing 747-400 aircraft and due to Branson’s plane having a “more conventional profile” compared to Stratolaunch, Virgin Orbit could get FAA approval much sooner than the twin-fuselage Stratolaunch.

Can Weighing Passengers Make Civil Aviation Safer and Greener?

Will civil aviation become safer and more environmentally friendly if we precisely know how heavy each paying passenger is?

By: Ringo Bones

Nick Brasier - chief operating officer of the Berkshire-based start-up technology company - called Fuel Matrix claims that in the future every airline passenger will be weighed in order to make civilian air travel much safer and much more environmentally friendly that it is at present. And if Mr. Brasier’s discrete method of weighing passengers becomes mandatory, it could also slash ticket prices. Does Mr. Brasier’s Fuel Matrix really have the potential to transform civil aviation for the better?

Ever since Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth hit the movie theaters and people everywhere became conscious about the size of their carbon footprint, environmentalist had been, more or less unfairly, pointing their finger at civilian air travel for their excessive carbon dioxide emissions. Even though fossil fuel companies produce way, way more carbon dioxide than the global airline industry, any schemes that results in significant reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by airline companies seems to be only of political value at best, but as they say, every little bit helps.

The resulting safety improvements and operating cost reductions may be more of interest to the global airline industry than the resulting absolute reduction of carbon dioxide if Nick Brasier’s Fuel Matrix scheme gets widespread acceptance. At present, airlines use “assumed mass” – estimating the total weight of the passengers by using set figures. Typically each passenger is assumed to weigh 88-kilograms. Mr. Brasier believes that airlines currently load about one percent more fuel than they actually need and due to the unforgiving laws of physics and Mother Nature, consequently burn between 0.3 and 0.5 percent more fuel due to the very fact that they carry unnecessary surplus fuel. 

With the global airline industry spending an estimated 200-billion US dollars a year on fuel, the possible saving worldwide is up to 1-billion US dollars per year. In addition, safety will be enhanced by captains loading extra fuel when it is actually warranted – such as when several rugby teams are booked on the sane flight. Additional savings can be made by allocating passengers in the optimum seats to ensure that the aircraft is properly balanced. At present, pilots sometimes need to apply “trim” during flight to counter a weight imbalance, a procedure that adds extra fuel burn.

At present, Nick Brasier’s Fuel Matrix is already in discussion with a number of long-haul airlines, including at least one British carrier, about deploying the tech firm’s fuel-saving system. Back in 2015, Uzbekistan Airways said it would weigh passengers before takeoff in an effort to “ensure flight safety”. Back in 2017, passengers at Helsinki airport were asked to step on to weighing scales before boarding by Finnair. This was a largely voluntary scheme to gather data on average passenger weights. Also in 2017, Hawaiian Airlines implemented a new policy on flights to American Samoa to weigh passengers and assign them to specific seats to ensure weight is evenly distributed inside the plane.