Category Archives: Technology and Society

Stratolaunch

…wants to use Birdzilla to launch a reusable spaceplane.

Not sure what this means, though:

The Black Ice space plane — should it be built — would be about as big as the former space shuttle developed by NASA and capable of staying up for at least three days.

What does “as big” mean? Similar dimensions to a Shuttle orbiter? If it has to carry propellant, it won’t have much payload. I wonder what kind of GLOW that aircraft can handle?

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s another story on the subject from Eric Berger. Haven’t looked at comments yet, but there may be some discussion of performance there.