By Beth E. Stanton, EAA 1076326
It’s dawn in the desert and I’m staring straight down the departure end of Runway 30 at the Mojave Air and Space Port. In the gray early morning light, I squint and see a surreal sight. Stratolaunch, the largest airplane ever built, hulks silently at the opposite end of the 12,503-by-200-foot runway, wings extending more than 90 feet beyond on either side.
I can see lights from ground vehicles milling about the behemoth, like flies flitting around an elephant. In my mind, I am imagining the excitement, the adrenaline, and the focus that the ground and air crew must be experiencing at this exact moment. An electrically charged hush encompasses the few square miles where people have gathered to witness what was about to happen. No one spoke a word. Instead, giddy grins and thumbs-up were flashed.
Bright white landing lights blinked on. Excitement intensified by telepathic transmission. Since I was a couple of miles away, at first I couldn’t hear the roar of the six 747 jet engines. Then, at 6:58 a.m. on April 13, 2019, someone yelled, “It’s on the roll!” My hands began to shake. My fingers felt numb and clumsy as I switched from video to photo on my iPhone, attempting to capture every instant of this slice in time.
Imagine if an ocean liner or skyscraper magically got some airspeed and lifted up into the sky. That was what it was like watching Stratolaunch take off. For such a lumbering vehicle, it had a stately elegance as it rotated and majestically flew upwind directly over my head before making a graceful right turn toward Edwards Air Force Base. It seemed to be barely moving in slow motion, the Citation chase plane at its side, a speck of rice.
In 2011, late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen partnered with Scaled Composites to develop a radical approach to space transportation. They had an idea to create a composite twin-fuselage aircraft as a reusable platform designed to release a satellite-bearing vehicle that would rocket into orbit. The ability to take off from a 12,000-foot-long runway and a flight radius of 1,000 nm would create the option for more missions and increased opportunities to put satellites into low Earth orbit at a decreased cost.
The specs of Stratolaunch are astounding. It has a 385-foot wingspan (longer than a football field), is 283 feet long and is powered by six Pratt & Whitney PW4056 engines that create a total of 340,500 pounds of thrust. It has an astonishing maximum takeoff weight of 1.3 million pounds and can carry a 500,000-pound payload.
During its 2.5-hour test flight Saturday morning, Stratolaunch flew laps around the desert at about 15,000 feet and 175 mph as the crew evaluated performance and handling characteristics. As I zipped around outside the airport searching for the elusive dirt roads leading to prime viewing positions (thwarted at times by sheriffs), I could tell when the plane was over the airport by the number of people pulled over on the side of the road, staring agog at the sky. Its gigantic size skews perspective; at 15,000 feet, it looked bigger than a Cessna cruising 1,000 feet overhead.
As part of the research for the article I wrote about Scaled Composites (“Design. Test. Build.”, featured in the March 2018 edition of Sport Aviation magazine), I had the opportunity to tour the Scaled Composites facility in October 2017. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it. Talk about Willy Wonka giving you the keys to the chocolate factory!
The guys from EAA flew out from Oshkosh to join me: Jack Pelton, Sean Elliot, Rick Larsen, and Jim Busha. The highlight of our tour was walking into the cavernous Stratolaunch hangar. We stepped up and stood on top of the wing, the only vantage point from which you can see the entirety of the plane while it is on the ground.
Many words have been written attempting to describe the sheer scale of this colossal aircraft. Trying to describe Stratolaunch is like saying the Grand Canyon is a really big hole in the ground. Like pondering infinity or the universe, it’s hard to wrap our tiny brains around such immensity. So let’s just say that Stratolaunch is big — really, really big.
After switching my location to the approach end of Runway 30 to watch Stratolaunch’s low approach and landing, I climbed on top of a pickup truck and looked around. It was a festival atmosphere with a jumble of trucks, cars, tripods, cameras, and people looking up and pointing. The plane was a few miles out coming in head-on and I didn’t have visual contact. “Look above that peak and below that cloud,” my friend said. Immediately, the plane popped into view. I started taking video and realized it would be boring to watch with just airplane noise, so I started narrating. If I’d known that this video posted to my Facebook page would get more than a quarter of a million views, I would have rehearsed a little, rather than making it up as I went! Stratolaunch came back around a second time for a beautiful landing amidst whoops, hollers, cheers, high-fives, and beaming smiles all around.
It’s not every day that you get to watch history being made. I showed up at Mojave to attend the seventh annual Mojave Experimental Fly-In (MEFI) and got to see this. Each year at MEFI, awards are given for Best Design, Best Build, Best Test, Best Overall, and Best Effort. This year’s Best Test went to (take a wild guess): Scaled Composites Model 351, Stratolaunch.
On the way back to the airport after watching the takeoff, I stopped by my hotel to grab some breakfast. The room contained two older women, rubbery scrambled eggs, and a droning television. It was strange to step back into the mundane world while still encased in my bubble of wonder. I couldn’t resist casually asking the ladies, “Did you happen to hear a plane overhead?” They had not. “The world’s largest airplane just flew for the first time,” I explained. One of them said, “Boy, I wish I could have seen that.”
I’m so thrilled that I did.
Photo by Dustin Mosher.