By Alan Boyle
The band is getting back together:?Seven years after winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize, software billionaire Paul Allen and aerospace guru Burt Rutan are teaming up with SpaceX and other top-flight rocketeers to create an air-launched orbital delivery system. They say the?venture will require the construction of the largest aircraft ever flown.
Allen is unveiling his new company, Stratolaunch Systems, at a Seattle news conference today. It marks his first space venture since the partnership with Rutan and his colleagues to build the prize-winning SpaceShipOne rocket plane, which became the first privately developed craft to reach outer space in 2004.
"I have long dreamed about taking the next big step in private spaceflight after the success of SpaceShipOne ? to offer a flexible, orbital space delivery system," Allen said in a news release issued before the briefing. "We are at the dawn of radical change in the space launch industry. Stratolaunch Systems is pioneering an innovative solution that will revolutionize space travel."
Rutan, who retired from Scaled Composites in April?at the age of 67, will serve as a board member for Stratolaunch.
"Paul and I pioneered private space travel with SpaceShipOne, which led to Virgin Galactic's commercial suborbital SpaceShipTwo program," he said in the release. "Now, we will have the opportunity to extend that capability to orbit and beyond."
The new?venture is?significant for the revival of the Allen-Rutan partnership, with the addition of California-based SpaceX and Alabama-based Dynetics as?suppliers. It's?like?putting Roy Orbison and Bruce Springsteen on the same music stage.?
Other players include Gary Wentz, a former chief engineer at NASA, who will serve as Stratolaunch's CEO and president; and former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, who is on the board. "We believe this technology has the potential to someday make spaceflight routine by removing many of the constraints associated with ground-launched rockets," Griffin said in the news release.
Mothership plus rocket
The Stratolaunch system would super-size the arrangement used for the SpaceShipOne launches: Scaled Composites has been tapped to build a carrier airplane that weighs more than 1.2 million pounds, with a wingspan of more than 380 feet. That tonnage rivals the weight of the Antonov An-225, which is recognized as the world's heaviest aircraft. Stratolaunch's dual-fuselage plane would be powered by six 747 engines, and would require a 12,000-foot runway for landing.
The plane would be capable of flying up to 1,300 nautical miles to reach its launch point. SpaceX would provide a modified version of its Falcon 9 rocket?for the next phase of?Stratolaunch's route to orbit. The multistage booster would be attached to the plane using a mating and integration system developed by Dynetics, and released during the mothership's flight at high altitude. After release, the 490,000-pound rocket would light up to launch commercial and government payloads into orbit.
"Human flights will follow, after safety, reliabiliity and operability are demonstrated," Stratolaunch said.
Stratolaunch's briefing materials said more than 100 people have already been assigned to the effort in California, Florida and Alabama, where the company is headquartered. Flight tests are projected to begin in 2016.
Re-entering the space race
Allen and his partners say air-launched systems can?send?payloads into space at lower cost, with greater safety, more flexibility and faster turnaround time than ground-launched systems. That would be because the?carrier airplane effectively gives the rocket a head start on its ascent to orbit, and can launch from a variety of midflight locations. But there are?challenges as well: In the past three years, two high-profile NASA missions, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory and the Glory satellite, were lost after airplane-based launches by Orbital Sciences' Taurus XL system.
The launch industry is also becoming more competitive, thanks in part to the rise of SpaceX and smaller rocket companies such as Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace. Allen and Rutan might even find themselves in competition with Virgin Galactic and The Spaceship Company, which has incorporated SpaceShipOne technology into the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane.
The?commercial space race may have changed over the past seven years, but?Allen clearly wants to get back on the track. At the end of his autobiography, "Idea Man," he dropped?a broad?hint about the plans announced today.
"I'm just now considering a new initiative with that magical contraption I never wearied of sketching as a boy:?the rocket ship," he wrote. "Someone, after all, is going to have to get behind SpaceShipThree."
More on the future of spaceflight:
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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