Two 747s Mashed Together – World’s Biggest Airplane Takes Flight for the First Time

For some reason, human nature really makes folks have this fascination with what’s the biggest. Whether we’re talking about trucks, boats, or even airplanes, that which is the most massive really can grab our attention. This phenomenon becomes even crazier when we turn our attention toward the sky. When we sit down and actually mull over air travel, its absurdity really strikes us. After all, there’s something about hundreds of thousands of pounds flying through the that almost seems physically impossible.

This time, we take the opportunity to look at the airplane that can now call itself the biggest in the world. Weighing in at over 500,000 pounds, the Scaled Composites Stratolaunch really has quite the story behind it. The plane originally started off as a pair of 747 jumbo jets. Now, most folks would be impressed with just one of these jets. However, the folks behind this one took two of them and combined them into one massive structure. It’s so massive, in fact, that the wingspan is almost as large as a football field. It’s a little hard to wrap the mind around this dual fuselage platform as it absolutely dominates the sky.

So what’s the big deal? Why would somebody ever want to make an airplane this big? Is it to carry an obnoxious amount of people from one place to the next? While the heart and soul of this project are rooted in commercial air travel, it’s probably not in the way that most people would think. The airplane that we saw a flying for the first time for 2.5 hours at 17,000 feet over California instead is aimed at space travel. It’s essentially designed to act as a flying launch pad for rockets to make their way into space. All of this comes on the shoulders of the hopes to commercialize rocket travel to the level that regular airplanes are accessible today.