Reborn in 2010, the AI ​​in my mind is too powerful.

Chen Yiran did not go directly to Alabama. He first had Chase Bank find all the information about the Stratolaunch Systems Company.

This company is still very young. It was co-founded in 2010 by Allen and American aerospace engineer Bert Rutan. The company plans to use the world's largest aircraft to carry rockets to the stratosphere before ignition and launch.

The air-launch method wasn't their original idea; in fact, it predates vertical launch.

Back in the 1940s, when the Germans were still drawing up the V2 blueprints, some engineers had already calculated on paper that if the rocket were carried to a high altitude before ignition, a large portion of fuel could be saved by traversing the dense atmosphere.

At the time, there were no airplanes capable of carrying rockets, so the idea ultimately remained only on paper.

However, this idea remained, and in 1958 the U.S. Navy conducted its first experiment, codenamed NOTSNIK, a combination of the Navy Ordnance Testing Station NOTS and Sputnik.

The Sputnik moment refers to a specific moment when a nation feels a sense of urgency due to falling behind its competitors in key areas. This term was coined after the Soviet Union's successful launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, in 1957, which triggered a collective anxiety and technological panic in American society.

At the time, the United States was in a state of panic, with questions about the Soviet Union's future everywhere. The institute's staff hoped to use the project's name to motivate everyone to achieve results and catch up with the Soviet Union.

They attached a small rocket to the underside of the F4D-1 Skylight fighter jet, allowing the Skylight to fly to high altitude before releasing the rocket to send the satellite into orbit.

However, all six test launches failed; the rocket either disintegrated in mid-air or failed to ignite. Nevertheless, they still accumulated a considerable amount of valuable data.

Based on this data, NASA designed the X-15 experimental high-speed rocket propulsion test vehicle, which has a very futuristic appearance.

Between 1959 and 1968, North American Aviation built three X-15 rocket planes. Each mission involved the plane being carried under the wing of a modified B-52 bomber and dropped from an altitude of 14000 meters.

The X-15 ignites its XLR-99 rocket engine within ten seconds. The 57,000 pounds of thrust is only enough to burn for 80 to 120 seconds, but that's enough to push it to the edge of the atmosphere.

The three X-15s flew a total of 199 times, with the highest distance reaching 108 kilometers, exceeding the 100-kilometer Kármán line. According to the International Aeronautical Federation's definition, this was a formal spaceflight.

It reached a speed of Mach 6.7, or 4520 miles per hour, a speed record for a manned winged aircraft that remains unbroken to this day. Furthermore, in all 199 flights, not a single person died in a flight accident.

The high-altitude, high-speed data collected by X-15 directly influenced the atmospheric reentry and thermal protection designs for Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle.

It can be said that without the X-15, the Americans would not have achieved what they have in the field of aviation, let alone gone all out to land on the moon.

Between 1966 and 1975, the same B-52 carried out 127 drop tests of the lifting body demonstrator.

Those demonstrator aircraft had no wings and were shaped like an upside-down bathtub, gliding from space to the runway using their own aerodynamic shape.

By the end of 2012, it had launched more than forty times, sending nearly one hundred satellites of various types into different orbits with a high success rate.

The existence of Pegasus proves two things: first, the engineering feasibility of air-launched satellites is beyond doubt; second, it is only suitable for small satellites, with a maximum payload of just over a thousand pounds, less than half a ton.

However, in 2004, Bert Rutan's Scaled Composites designed the White Knight, a carrier aircraft specifically designed to carry the spaceship, along with a hybrid-fuel spaceship called SpaceShipOne.

The white knight flew to an altitude of 15500 meters and began its deployment. SpaceShipOne ignited its hybrid rocket and burst into the atmosphere. This was the first manned spacecraft built by a private company in human history.

Scaled Composites also received the $1000 million Ansari X Prize, a space award established by the Ansari family to encourage innovation in new private human spaceflight technology.

Bert Rutan then used the money, along with some savings, to find Allen, and together they founded the Stratospheric Launch Systems company.

Interestingly, the materials contain the name SpaceX, indicating that the two parties have had some interaction.

Chen Yiran immediately picked up the phone and called Musk.

When Musk heard Chen Yiran ask about Stratolaunch Systems, he was a little surprised and said, "You're interested in them? We did try to collaborate. We signed a contract at the end of 2011, and we helped them design an air-launched version of the Falcon 9 called the Falcon 9 Air."

Theoretically, it's possible. Change the first stage of the Falcon 9 from vertical launch to horizontal release, reduce the number of engines from nine to four, add a pair of folding wings to the fuselage, and ignite them in the air after release.

But after we looked at the structural drawings for the first stage, we realized that this wasn't just a matter of changing a few pipes.

The entire first-stage load-bearing structure is designed for vertical launch, with the thrust transmission path entirely at the bottom of the rocket. If you were to lay it horizontally under the aircraft, all the stress points would have to be recalculated, essentially building a new rocket.

"Alan should be able to afford it."

"We can afford it, but our engineering team only has so many people. They are all tied to the vertical recovery of the Falcon 9. Even if we split them into two groups, we still can't change it."

Furthermore, Allen and I disagreed on the size of the rocket. He wanted a large rocket that could be carried under the plane, but I felt that if the first stage was made too big, the plane's carrying capacity would become a bottleneck.

We calculated for three months, and in the end, both sides concluded that the Falcon 9 Air couldn't be built. Another crucial point, according to my engineers' calculations, is that air launch requires a massive carrier aircraft plus a rocket system, resulting in extremely high fixed costs, and the economies of scale are far less than those of ground-based recovery.

"So, it's still a cost issue, not that this approach is completely useless?"

"Yes, and I actually think it would be better if they actually built that kind of large aircraft to test prototypes for other aircraft. I have the technical analysis here; I can send it to you now if you want."

"Send it to me so I can take a look."

Five minutes later, an encrypted document was sent to Chen Yiran's email address. The document was about thirty pages long and contained a detailed comparison between the Falcon 9 Air and the standard Falcon 9.

The last page contains a summary written by Musk at the time: technically it was feasible, but economically unfeasible. Once the Falcon 9's vertical recovery is successful, air-launched systems will offer no cost advantage.

Chen Yiran felt that this thing still had some advantages. First of all, it was safer than rockets.

In the event of a problem with the rocket after launch, the escape system requires far less thrust to operate in the thin atmosphere at high altitudes than it would on the ground.

Moreover, cost is also a factor Musk is considering in the long term. While its launch capacity is insufficient compared to the future Falcon 9, it still has advantages over current traditional launch methods.

Chen Yiran examined it for a while and decided it was worth a try. Anyway, Aurora Group had plenty of cash; throwing some in and seeing what it made was a worthwhile endeavor!