World’s Largest Aircraft ,Built To Launch Rockets Into Space,Flies For The First Time

Stratolaunch, the private spaceflight company founded by the late billionaire Paul Allen, has flown its gigantic Roc aircraft for the very first time on Saturday.

The dual-fuselage rocket carrier, which took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California , completed a roughly 150 minutes ( 2 ½ hours) journey, reaching a maximum speed of 175 miles per hour and a peak altitude of 15,000 feet.

The test flight makes the the 500,000-pound plane with a 385-foot wingspan — length of an American football field, the world’s largest aircraft to fly.

With two fuselages and six Boeing 747 engines,the Stratolaunch is built to launch rockets into orbit from the air. It has the ability to carry rockets up to about 35,000 feet , where it can drop rockets that ignite their engines and boost themselves into orbit around the planet.

The advantage of such a system is that the carrier-plane can take off from any runway that’s long enough to accommodate it, fly around bad weather as well as launch a satellite into any orbital inclination.