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Does not look right to me

Don McManus
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/paul-allens-stratolaunch-worlds-largest-airplane-completes-key-taxi-test-days-after-his-death

Quite an airplane. Not an aerospace engineer, but I so not see this handling any sort of turbulence very well without a continuous horizontal stabilizer connecting the two tail.

Perhaps it is safe with current fly-by-wire technology, but the center wing spar does not seem deep or long enough to counteract the forces that can be generated on and by the two tails as distant as they are from the spar.
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3 comments

Date Votes
  • Rocky Raab
    Well, the Vari-EZ and the Long-EZ didn't look "right" either, but they fly very well indeed. The Voyager went around the world on one tank, and looked just as odd. Composite construction turned everything on its ear, engineering-wise.
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  • Don McManus
    Followed the Voyager flight, Rocky. Was quite the achievement, though I never understood why a KC-135 couldn't have done it in the 60s.

    Voyage, however did have the two external nacelles physically connected to the fuselage by both the main spare and a forward spar. The EZs while unconventional, are both single fuselage airplanes and wouldn't be subject to the forces generated by the tails of the Stratolaunch.

    Yes, composites have dramatically changed aerospace engineering, but force x distance still needs to be counteracted by force x distance, and the forces that the center spar in the Stratolaunch could potentially experience would be incredibly high.
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  • Smitty500mag
    They should have contacted the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, OR first and saved them selves some money. The museum would probably be glad by now to get rid of Howard Hughes old Spruce Goose.
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