The world’s biggest aircraft is almost ready to Roc – The Blueprint

It’s a carrier plane built by Stratolaunch with a wingspan longer than a football field. But unlike other aircraft of its size, The Roc isn't a heavy cargo lifter. Instead, it’s being trialed to serve as a platform for testing hypersonic payloads.

For this flight, it carried the Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle (more of which, shortly.) This is the ninth test flight for the company, but only the second where it carried the Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle. This flight represented an important phase in plans to begin hypersonic testing later this year.

To find out more, including what Talon-A actually is, where they’re at with it, and what all this is actually for, we caught up with the people behind the development. 

What is Talon-A?

Talon-A is a rocket-powered reusable test vehicle that is 38 feet (8.5 m) long and has 11.3 feet (3.4 m) wingspan. The test vehicle sits on the pylon under The Roc's center wing, which boasts a fuselage and three jet engines on either side of the central wing and a total wingspan of 385 feet (117 m).

The Talon-A can be fitted with various research payloads, which can then be fired to travel at speeds between Mach 5 and Mach 10, while The Roc cruises at altitudes of 35,000 feet (10,000 m). The test vehicle also has its own landing gear, which can be recovered on any conventional runway and reused again. Interestingly, the wide space of the central wing means that The Roc can carry up to three Talon-As at once.

The recent flight was a “captive-carry” test, where the Talon-A was carried into the skies as part of the groundwork to drop from The Roc in future flights.

An idea of the scale

The Roc is massive. In fact, it positively dwarfs even some of the biggest widebody aircraft we all know and love, such as the Airbus A380, which has a wingspan of around 260 feet. 

The Roc measures around 239 feet in length and 50 feet in height. It can carry a total payload of 500,000 pounds, and is so large that it requires a runway that's at least 12,000 feet long.

It features a dual fuselage design, which can accommodate flight crew in the right fuselage, and flight data systems in the left fuselage. It will incorporate modular avionics control hardware (MACH) supplied by Orbital ATK.

It includes three seats for crew members and two jump seats, in a standard seating layout.

It’s designed to carry rockets between the two fuselages. It is designed to take off from a runway and fly to cruising altitude to place a satellite-bearing launch vehicle – the aircraft can then be landed on a runway for reloading, refueling, and reuse.

According to the company, the take-off avoids risks associated with conventional ground launches, including inclement weather, airborne traffic, and heavy marine activity. Its airborne launch platform also reduces the risk of delay costs or cancellations.

So, what’s it all for?

“Our amazing team is continuing to make progress on our test timeline, and it is through their hard work that we grow closer than ever to safe separation and our first hypersonic flight tests,” says Stratolaunch CEO Zachary Krevor.

“We are excited for what’s ahead this year as we bring our hypersonic flight test service online for our customers and the nation.”

In the end, he says he wants to use The Roc to offer “convenient, affordable, and routine” access to space. …which sounds not dissimilar to Virgin Orbit’s plans. 

Where they’re at now

The flight test from Mojave Air and Space Port was the second one with Stratolaunch’s Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle on board. The company now hopes to perform the first “drop tests” later this year.

During this flight, Stratolaunch practiced maneuvers and communication sequencing for the first-ever separation test.

What is Stratolaunch?

A private spaceflight company, founded in 2011 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. He wanted to make space launch “more reliable, affordable and accessible than ever before”. 

The company made its first flight in 2019, which was performed under new owners, following Allen’s death the year before. 

What happens next?

Kate Squires, Communications Leader and Strategist at Stratolaunch, says: “A series of flights is imminent”. She adds that the company has now “completed taxi testing” for the upcoming series of flights, but that there is now “quite a bit of data to plow through.” 

Following the analysis of this data, alongside the completion of other preparations, Stratolaunch could fly again “in the next few weeks” …but no date has officially been released at the time of writing. 

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