- Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, unveiled the world’s largest plane with a wingspan of 117 metres
- The plane stands 50 feet high, has 28 wheels and is expected to have a range of 2,000 nautical miles, flying at the altitude of around 35,000 feet
- The dual-hulled Stratolaunch aircraft with six engines designed to carry a rocket and payload with a combined weight of up to 250,000 kg
- Initiated in 2011, the Stratolaunch aircraft is designed to be able to launch multiple rockets, and doing so from a moving aircraft can evade the weather problems that afflict many rocket launches
- Satellite networks, based on low-cost spacecraft, are the fastest-growing segment of the global satellite industry which reported more than $208bn in revenue in 2015
- The Stratolaunch was built by Scaled Composites and is similar to Scaled’s aircraft built to ferry spaceships into the air and release them for independent rocket rides beyond the atmosphere
- The Stratolaunch has surpassed Howard Hughes’ “Spruce Goose”, the enormous wooden plane built by the famous entrepreneur that made its first flight in 1947
- Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, and has a net worth of USD 21.4 billion (GBP 16.6 billion), making him the 35th richest person in the world
- Paul Allen has previously been involved in the SpaceShipOne project, which was the first privately built craft to enter suborbital space
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