Space access gets more economical with Air launcher And the Virgin Orbit is the first one to use this. The spinoff of Virgin Galactic, Virgin Orbit, has scheduled its LauncherOne Mission in 2018. The LauncherOne Mission will take off on Air-Launcher. The launcher has been given an interesting name: ‘Cosmic Girl’. Converted Aircraft Boeing 747 will be used for the purpose. LauncherOne is designed to launch small satellites. It can carry maximum payloads of 200 kilograms
But how will it work?
Starting each mission with an airplane offers performance benefits in terms of payload capacity, but more importantly, Air-launch offers an unparalleled level of flexibility. However, the concept is not new. Paul Allen of Microsoft has also designed same concept. It’s called Stratolauncher. Stratolauncher can carry weight up to 6000 Kilograms
