Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Is Building the World's Largest Airplane

The latest entrant into the new space race has a wingspan longer than the distance traveled by the Wright Brothers in their earliest flights. Its landing gear has a total of 28 wheels. And the local county had to issue special construction permits for the scaffolding needed to build what would be the world's largest airplane.

Only someone like Paul Allen - the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, owner of the Seattle Seahawks, dreamer and space enthusiast - might attempt to build something like this: a twin-fuselage behemoth as wide as a football field that, fully loaded, would weigh 1.3 million pounds, be powered by six 737 engines and have 60 miles of wiring coursing through it.

Called Stratolaunch, the plane would be bigger than Howard Hughes' famed Spruce Goose, which flew once, in 1947. But Allen's creation comes as the space industry is being disrupted by entrepreneurs, such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, who like him, aim to revolutionize space travel. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

And so this very, very big plane is designed with beyond-Earth ambitions: to carry a rocket tethered to its belly to an altitude of about 35,000 feet. Then, once aloft, the rocket would drop, fire its engines and "air-launch" to orbit.

The Stratolaunch, the world's largest airplane, is 76 percent complete.

Created by Microsoft cofounder and Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen, the Stratolaunch will be larger than any other airplane every built.According to Christian Davenport at The Washington Post, the plane is staggeringly huge:

FEATURES OF THE PLANE

·         Its wingspan measures more than the length of a football field - 385 feet.

·         The landing gear contains 28 wheels.

·         Once loaded, it'll weigh 1.3 million pounds.

·         It contains 60 miles of wiring.

·         It's powered by six 747 engines.

Originally announced by Allen in 2011, the plane has "beyond-Earth ambitions": It's designed to carry a rocket to 35,000 feet. At that height, the rocket (which is tethered to the plane) will "air-launch" into orbit.

"When such access to space is routine, innovation will accelerate in ways beyond what we can currently imagine," Allen said in a statement to the Post. "That's the thing about new platforms: when they become easily available, convenient and affordable, they attract and enable other visionaries and entrepreneurs to realize more new concepts."

So far, no set date for the plane's first flight has been revealed - and, according to the Post, the plane still needs to go through a ground-testing program - but Allen's Vulcan Aerospace is on track to launch rockets by the end of the decade.

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