Stratolaunch Roc: The World’s Largest Airplane That Almost Doesn’t Look Real – SlashGear

The Stratolaunch Roc is an absolute titan of aeronautic engineering, weighing in at 1.3 million pounds pre-takeoff and stretching out a mighty wingspan of 385 feet, longer than an entire football field. That incredible mass is carted into the air by a whopping six Boeing 747 jet engines. This plane is so big, it needs two entire fuselages to control, making it look like two jets that have been fused together at the wings.

So what does this enormous vehicle do? Much like its namesake company, the Roc’s duty is to haul payloads into the stratosphere, suspended by its central anchor point, then deploy them in the air. The Roc can handle payloads weighing up to 500,000 pounds, with its cargo of choice being smaller hypersonic vehicles. By manually carrying a vehicle into the air, the Roc can make the process of launching much simpler than it would be launching from the ground. It can even deploy multiple payloads at once in a customized sequence.