Photos: Paul Allen Builds The World's Biggest Airplane!

Paul Gardner Allen (born January 21, 1953) is an American philanthropist, investor and innovator, best known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation alongside Bill Gates. As of January 2015, he was estimated to be the 47th richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $17.5 billion.


Allen is the founder and chairman of Vulcan Inc., which manages his various business and philanthropic efforts. Allen also has a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio including technology companies, real estate holdings, and stakes in other technology and media companies. He owns two professional sports teams, the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League (NFL), and the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and is part-owner of the Seattle Sounders FC, which joined Major League Soccer (MLS) in 2009.

He is also the founder of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the Allen Institute for Cell Science and Stratolaunch Systems.

It must be nice to be filthy, stinking rich. I’m not talking ‘comfortable retirement’ kind of rich, I’m talking ‘build your own bloody plane’ rich. Paul Allen, net worth $17,5 billion, definitely falls into the latter category.

So how big are we talking here? Well right off the bat we can tick off the largest aeroplane in history. The plane has been named the Stratolaunch carrier aircraft, nicknamed the ‘Roc’. These dimensions taken from Gizmodo:

It has a 385-foot (117-meter) wingspan beast designed to carry and launch a giant rocket to space, with a combined weigh of 1,200,000 pounds (540,000 kg).




The above two pics are artist impressions. Here is what the beast currently looks like.



So how does that stack up against the other big-winged metal birds of the sky then? PC Mag has this comparison:




The plane has a range of 1000 nautical miles (1 850 km) and has been built to carry the Orbital Sciences Pegasus II rocket, also known as “Thunderbolt,” to a height of nearly six miles. At this point the rocket will be released and head for space, making it (according to designers) the safest way to get crewed and uncrewed missions into space.