2. Use the carrier aircraft for massive lift operations when it is not being used for launches – exotic logistics – they have stated this explicitly

3. With this as a proven launch system, they can take the launch to the customer site and their payload and not ship the customer and their payload to the launch site. I wonder what sort of customer would find that attractive and why.

4. Alliance with Boeing – use of its airplane tech and parts and expertise – also dovetails with the potential to launch Boeing’s X-37B/X40 derivatives or any other “space plane” as the final stage

5. They may be shooting for recovering and reusing the 1st stage of the SpaceX rocket – which itself could be a 2 stage + final Dragon capsule/X-37B like space plane. Or more ambitiously a single fully recoverable stage plus the final space craft/reentry vehicle/lander stage

6. In the first phase they could go the proven conventional route and make the recoverable SpaceX rocket first stage (or the entire thing) splash down into the ocean to be recovered by ships.
I know this is outlandish. Hey I am just a dreaming amateur.
7. Maybe they are dreaming of capturing the SpaceX rocket on its way down (using multiple humongous parasails and maneuvering thrusters) using the same Stratolaunch carrier aircraft that launched it in the first place. That will be cool. 100% reusable, no ocean splashdown and you also have the holly molly Horizontal takeoff and horizontal landing starting and ending from the same location. It would be safe flexible as all the launch and recovery could be done over oceans and international waters fast turnaround as well as use excess capacity in for other more mundane logistical operations

What sort of applications do you imagine are there for a flexible, on-time, fully reuseable (i.e, reliable and low cost) system to take the stated weight to LEO? People seem to be included as the ultimate cargo of this system, if they can actually pull these things off. Sort of like the SpaceX approach, with evolutionary improvements leading to bigger and better things.

BTW, the cost of the launch aircraft – and eventually the rocket (hopefully) – would be amortized over many launches. I would expect the cost per pound would be much lower, even with maintenance costs, given the expected operational life of an aircraft is measured in years if not decades.

We have to be careful about depending too heavily on traditional cost models. Most are based on business as usual cost-plus development efforts and have not proven very accurate. Cost and schedule overruns abound in the cost-plus world because there is no incentive at controlling costs. Projects built on a non-cost-plus basis can come in significantly cheapter. For example, according to NASA, SpaceX spent approximately $300 million to develop the Falcon 9. Using NASA’s traditional development methods, it would’ve cost at least 10 times as much. NASA itself as admitted as much and their history shows their cost estimates are almost always too low.

Aviation Week is reporting that the company is looking to buy two used 747s to salvage for usable parts. There just happens to be a lot of old airliners including 747s parked at Mojave airport. They plan on salvaging the engines, landing gear, cockpit and other usable components. Used engines are perfectly acceptable for a plane that isn’t going to fly very much and will save many million dollars over new engines. Landing gear development is challenging and expensive so reusing 747 components will save a lot of money and time. Scaled Composites has decades of experience at building special purpose aircraft at far less cost than traditional companies. That’s why the company exists. Northrup-Grumman bought Scaled to obtain a highly capable “Skunk Works” of their own and have used the company to good effect.

Pretty much every retired SAC base has one, such as Bergstrom Airport in Austin Texas, as well as the large air carrier airports that serve international flying.

If an A380 can use the airport then so could a Stratolaunch.

This proposed airplane is big, but it’s mostly going to be hollow. At most only the crew cabin will be pressurized, perhaps not even that. It will have nothing like the complexity of a commercial airliner, so cost models for commercial or military aircraft will overstate the cost for a Rutan type design.

The primary flexibility advantages – no range scheduling, weather avoidance, launch to various inclinations – means a long runway near an ocean. But they have that.

Anom, we won’t be able to take the cost of the carrier aircraft and divide it into the payload weight to find the $/lb to orbit, since the aircraft is reusable. The SpaceX rocket portion would count towards the $/lb as long as it’s non-reusable, but I would imagine reusability of both the 1st & 2nd stages is high on their list of things to do, so we’ll see.

45 years later the patents are mostly shot.

Which may explain why they don’t use a 777 or a380