Virgin Orbit - First Captive Carry Flight

[Hman]

This is something that had passed me by - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7Z8nDShFes.

747 as a stand off delivery system...

[Martin H]

hmm Skybolt lives!

[Nick]

Is that the same place they mount spare engines when transporting them? A ready made pylon?

[PR19_Kit]

I don't think 747-400s still carry spares normally, IIRC only the early -100s and -200s did that.

JCF will be able to tell us more I'm sure. 

[scooter]

Great, it flew with the missile under the wing.  Not really a reason to break out the champagne.  Now, if the damned thing fires and *doesn't* blow up on its way to orbit, then there's a reason to break out the bubbly.


And life is imitating art, Dale Brown wrote about this in Sky Masters...except he used a DC-10 with a bomb bay.

[PR19_Kit]

Oh yes, the NIRT sats. 

Someone did it with a Tri-Star for real too, but I can't remember what happened to the project. IIRC they actually launched their spacecraft too.

[Weaver]

Oh yes, the NIRT sats. 

Someone did it with a Tri-Star for real too, but I can't remember what happened to the project. IIRC they actually launched their spacecraft too.

The Tri-Star was Orbital Sciences, now merged into Orbital ATK, and the rocket is called Pegasus. They're still going, but IIRC it's only just commercially viable: there arn't that many payloads that it can carry that can't be carried by some other means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(rocket)#Launch_history

Another air-launched system in the works is this monster, rolled out recently and due for a first launch next year:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_Stratolaunch