![]() ![]() It will perform hypersonic flights over 1-minute durations throughout flight tests, following which it will glide back before making an autonomous, horizontal landing on a conventional runway. The hypersonic flying testbed will significantly advance US hypersonic capabilities and improve the nation’s ability to design/operate cutting-edge hypersonic vehicles. Stratolaunch’s Talon-A hypersonic flying testbed is an ambitious effort to develop a flexible, fully reusable, autonomous vehicle capable of attaining speeds up to Mach-6 and the company plans to start Talon-A flight tests in 2022. One of the models will be tested in Calspan’s Transonic Wind Tunnel in Buffalo, NY. In February, it announced that test models were ready to begin testing. Hypersonic aircraft and their components are exposed to extraordinary levels of heat, vibration, and shock, and Calspan has been contracted to build and test Talon-A models. In May, the company announced that it was making progress with its fleet of hypersonic vehicles and will continue to conduct its carrier aircraft flight tests as it prepares to launch these vehicles from its centre wing. This includes the need to significantly advance US hypersonic flight test capabilities and help improve the nation’s ability to design and operate cutting edge hypersonic vehicles. The company is now focussing on developing aerospace vehicles and technologies to fulfil several important national needs. Stratolaunch went through a period of transition following Allen’s death in 2018 and reinvented itself to emerge as a firm that would not only provide launch services for hypersonic (speeds at least five times the speed of sound or Mach-5) and aerospace vehicles but also develop its own hypersonic vehicles. It will be able to attain a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, at which height one or more high-speed vehicles are released, following which the Stratolaunch plane heads back to the runway to reload for its next mission. Stratolaunch’s unique air-launch system will allow high-speed air vehicles to be deployed over a single mission, and the aircraft can take off and land from a runway just like any other aircraft. The Stratolaunch Carrier made its first flight in April 2019 and has a 65-tonne Maximum Take-Off Weight (MTOW) and is 238 feet long. It was only the second-ever flight for the aircraft built by the US-based high-tech aerospace firm Stratolaunch Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen originally founded it in 2011 to develop a mobile launch system to provide more convenient, reliable, and routine orbital access to space. The sole flying prototype stayed airborne throughout the test flight for three hours and 14 minutes, attaining a max speed of 330 kmph and an altitude of 14,000 feet. ![]() The incredible aircraft, nicknamed the ‘Roc’ (a mythological bird of enormous size and strength), has a wingspan of 385 feet, nearly twice that of Boeing’s 747 ‘Jumbo Jet’ will provide aerial launch services for hypersonic and aerospace vehicles. In April, the skies over the dry and inhospitable climate of California’s Mojave Desert witnessed the improbable sight of an ungainly, six-engined aircraft with a wingspan (distance between one wingtip to the other) larger than the length of a football field (360 feet). ![]()
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