I always wanted to see the Spruce Goose fly, and now, Paul Allen and Burt Rutan partner with SpaceX to create a launch system with “…a gross weight of more than 1.2 million pounds and a wingspan greater than the length of a football field, making it the largest air launch system ever developed”. Not only will it be the largest aircraft, by wingspan, to fly, IT WILL HAVE A ROCKET STRAPPED TO ITS BELLY!
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Don Lindsay, and 
Xeni Jardin 5:02 am on 12/14/2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks!
Don Lindsay 2:59 am on 12/15/2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
But it’s been done before. By Rutan !
To be specific, he designed the wings of the Pegasus rocket, which Orbital Sciences has air-launched something like 40 times. So the only thing that’s new here is they’re going to use a custom airplane instead of modding a commercial airplane.
So this is *not* exciting because it’s innovative. It isn’t. They aren’t even dropping a new rocket: they’re using a smaller version of the SpaceX Falcon 9, which already works.
What would be exciting, would be a believable claim that it lowered launch costs. The mainstream media seems to have dropped the ball on that one, choosing to focus on absolute trivia like wingspan. Maybe BoingBoing can do better. ANYONE ??