After years of study and development, on Saturday the largest aircraft in the world took off for the first time in Los Angeles: a six-engine jet with two cockpits, two fuselages and a wingspan of 117 meters, more than a football field. The plane – which is 72 meters long and weighs 500 tons – was built by US company Stratolaunch Systems, founded in 2011 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died last October. The plane will serve to bring satellites into low Earth orbit more economically than rockets, and should be exploited for this purpose by NASA and other private companies. The test flight brought the plane up to 279 kilometers per hour and an altitude of 4.5 kilometers; lasted about two and a half hours.
