Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. This is John Bachelor, conversation with my colleague Bob Zimmerman of Behind the Black about Strato Launch, the history

of Strato Launch, a giant, giant plane 2 747 put together and its recent success winning an Air Force contract to do with testing

hypersonic engines, hypersonic acceleration, the latest in missiles and warfare.

Shadow, Strattle Launch, reconfigured everything, and Bob now explains what it is, how it works, and its early success and its competition, commercial space.

Bob Zimmerman, behind the black.

Yes, Strattlelunch was a company formed by Paul Allen, one of the co-founders of Microsoft. The idea was to

they took two states, they salvaged parts from two 747s to make a giant plane

the biggest ever flown called Rock.

The idea was originally they were going to put a rocket at the base of Rock and put it into orbit

and use it to launch satellites.

That didn't work. They couldn't get anybody to launch satellites. That didn't work.

They couldn't get anybody to go along with it.

Then Paul Allen died.

The new people who weren't in the company decided to reshape the company entirely

and instead use Rock as a test bed for launching... the company's own

own hypersonic test vehicles called Talon.

These test vehicles would be used to do actual hyposonic flight tests.

And they've got an Air Force contract to do that,

and they've been doing test flights of Rock with

Talon A, their first test vehicle, attached to the bottom.

They've done capture carry tests and takeoffs and landings.

Well, this past weekend,

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