Quote:
Originally Posted by Tervuren
How it works, is the airplane doesn't have to carry its own oxidizer(weight).
For the airplane it uses the atmosphere to get to that altitude, with initial velocity, and punching from a much thinner atmosphere the rocket doesn't have to carry as much fuel(weight).
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As an old flight test guy, there is the above and the fact that the launch aircraft will be flying at 250 plus knots...overcoming a static, ground based vertical launch is an engineering hump and drives design of virtually everything on a rocket.
There is nothing really special about the design of the Stratolaunch other than it's size. The control laws must be amazing.