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Love this. Just wish the grain filters weren't applied to footage so recent.

“Longer than any commercial aircraft in the world, just barely beating out the A380” As a picture appears on the screen showing the 747-8 at 3.3m longer 🤦

Note to editor: the background music and degrading filters take attention away from the story.

Impressive. Very nice. Now let’s see Paul Alan’s space launcher.

Why in the fk would you use old timey black and white filter???

Nothing is more ironic than Richard Bransons bid of $1 for Stratolaunch, just for his own company Virgin Orbit to go bankrupt and for Stratolaunch to buy their 747 called cosmic girl. Also Talon A just completed a powered flight!

I'm glad elephants are mentioned here again, though differently from the usual MegaProjects manner.

Dope content as always, however, I'm not digging the black and white, old film filters.

The video filters are horrible. Listen to the comments and ditch the filters please!

My dad passed a couple years back and I had to drive cross country back to Oregon after that. That was a few years after Allen had died and stratolaunch was being shipped for sale. As I drive through the Mojave past stratolaunch’s hanger, the plane was on the tarmac right outside the hanger. Calling it massive vs a regular airliner is an understatement. It was rather impressive to see as I drove past.

The Roc was developed by Scaled Composites for Paul Allen's Stratolaunch, hence the brainchild of Burt Rutan, who designed Spaceship One, also funded by Allen. A reasonable overview but very light on the technical side.

Seems like a missed opportunity to mention that the US military got involved too, hiring Stratolaunch to help test additional hypersonic systems, and Talon-A is also part of the project to eventually develop a hypersonic target drone to train weapon systems against. As well, it's been reported that Stratolaunch might become a backup/alternate option to SpaceX in terms of rapidly deploying smaller, replacement satellites in a wartime scenario; at least until the US finally buys their own militarized variant of Starship.

So happy to hear this plane is finally being used for something useful!

One of my old coworkers is one of the test pilots. Got to take a tour and go in the cockpit. Pretty wild airplane. Looks like it is made of paper mache up close

Damn Simon’s getting roasted on this one. The edits were becoming a bit much though

Simon, you KNOW that there is nothing new here. Even before Burt Ruttan from Scaled Composites built Spaceship One, and the Virgin Galactic mothership that looks very similar to your twin-hulled beheamoth, there was the Pegasus rocket (a souped-up Space Shuttle SRB) dropped from a modified 747 for exactly the same reason. Go back 65 years, and B-52's were dropping X-1B's and X-15's in the same manner. Billionaires building joyrides for millionaires is not how humanity is going to permanently set up shop on the Final Frontier. Our best chance, at the moment, is, of course, SpaceX and the Starship-SuperHEavy fully reusable launch system. If that system works as advertised, it will have the democratising effect of lowering launch costs on a per pund, or per kilo basis, and also be able to take more than a half-dozen people up at once- perhaps as many as 100 on one flight. The Startolaunch ROC is a nice looking bird. So is Howard Hughes' 'Spruce Goose'. Sadly, like the Wooden Wonder, the Stratolaunch will have an impossible time competing against SpaceX, especially once Starship is operational. You nd your team put good effort into this vid, and |I thank you for it. But, a ticket to the future this idea ain't. See you at Boca Chita! One request, off-topic: please ask your technicians to stop antiqing video clips to suggest 'way back in history'. A plane this modern and advanced was never films on black and white film, and left in a cupboard for several decades, causing dirst and lint to show up on each film frame. It's an untruth, and a manipulation at several levels, not least is a distortion of history usingf what I call visual rhetoric, the aforementioned antiquing. It's worse than stylized cinema verete. Let's keep it real, boyo!

I worked on that for about 7 years. Attached the wing to the body and the trailing edge to the wing. Its like going through a maze crawling through the wing. Inside the body its like a parking garage. Mostly empty. I used to fart into the air conditioner that blew into the wing and listen to the screaming inside.... Then casually walk away. Another time i got stuck in a hole on the bottom of the wing. Lost my pants when they pulled me out!

I keep seeing you do this! 227,500 kg is exactly 227.5 tons, not 215 or whatever you said

I honestly thought this was a Russian plane from the late 60s early 70s before I started watching

Simon, I normally don't complain, but the background music is very distracting and loud. Has been on the past few videos.

Editting footage from 2018 and 2023 to look like the 1960's is a bit weird. Sure, there was a space race in the 1960's but there is HD footage of the Roc.

As of the release of this video, talon flew 5 days ago

I’m honestly surprised the US space force hasn’t scooped this up to launch military sats

I was working on there in the Mojave during that time. Was amazing watching that bird taxi and fly that year!! Such an awesome looking plane!

Next Megaprojects? - The big 3 MBTs Challenger II 🇬🇧 Leopard II 🇩🇪 M1 Abrams 🇺🇸

Such a great company to work for

12:30 is this music necessary?

Wow, despite an unremarkable top-speed, it none-the-less seriously hauls mass. Plus, I love that it has so many wheels... enabling it to Roc-and-Roll with the best of them.

How wide is the wingspan if measured in lengths of Danny DeVito?

Informative introduction

Any heavy-lift capable craft is always going to find a use, be it trucks, trains, planes, or ships.

My cousin was a hiring recruiter for this project. She didn't get to talk about it until the news came out about it.

ive climed through the fuselage of this plane - it's amazing that it gets off the ground! also, talon a 1 flew last weekend! love vids like this

The conjoined twins of airplanes.

Damn I still love this song! As a Papuan 🇵🇬 Islander it resonates in my soul. I don’t speak the language but I hear the message at the depths of my being. We share this common love. Respect to all my brothers and sisters across the vast Pacific.

Might need to to have someone that goes all stock editing lol

ROC such a cool name!!!

Bv385 is a German ww2 plane that at its time was the biggest plane built it probably deserves a video on this channel

I've known about this thing for a long time but I've never heard it called 'The Roc"

If you want to get your weird on, there are aysmetrical mult-tail aircraft out there, which just make my head feel like it's full of mush.

Thanks to those payload measurements, I've learned that imperial system not only has weird pounds but also a ton that doesn't equal 1000kg.... (they actually have two, long and short one because why not .. ) Great video about plane though!

Early concepts for this aircraft involved joining two 747 jetliners together by a common wing. Scaled Composites however discovered that they could create a much lighter aircraft from scratch enabling a heavier payload.

Awesome aircraft. DrZ🙏🏻

Can you imagine seeing that thing flying over head? Even at altitude, thats gotta be a very impressive sight.

Sound mix is way off. The background music is far too loud, especially in the first few minutes.

Dogma or Slick I think that the episode made it clear that this character doesn't follow orders, which is not very Cody no matter the mind wipe. I think it will be a character we know, but it needs to be one that makes sense

This plane is wild... the coolest aerospace project I've seen in a long time.

If theres any sci-fi nerds out there who have read the great insurrection series. The hero of the story whos name is Alistar Caine aka Prometheus, travels to the home planet of his friend, a bipedal rock creature called a Gigante named Ceaser. On this unimaginably dangerous planet there are massive flying creatures resembling dragons in a sense. They're called Rocs in the books. Which i just now found out where the name came from in this video. Check out that book series. Other than the iron hand books they're by far my favorite and theres 9 of them.

It's basically just two planes stuck together isn't it!!

"Longer than any commercial jet aircraft in the world," despite the diagram clearly showing that the 747-8 is 3.3 meters longer.

Hi Simon. Thanks for again great video ! Can you tell me which track is playing from 14:35? Awesome

I find it a pity you didn't mention the Heinkel 111Z (zwilling), that's certainly a lot more relevant to this plane than the twin mustang for so many reasons. Otherwise, great vid as always!

Since the payload is so large, build a massive fuel tank and fly around the globe. Set a speed and altitude record for around the world, non stop flight.

Pretty cool plane

Have any of your channels done a video on the Indiana Bell Building?

I will be surprised if this plane doesn't get to fulfill its primary function. People now know it works, and it seems to eliminate much of the fuel cost of a first-stage rocket.

feet.. meter... we need real units like Danny DeVitos!

Nice overview of the aircraft. But as others have pointed out, some math issues converting Metric to American and comparing aircraft sizes. And the editing and sound is not up to your previous standards. The instagram film filters and the scoring leave a lot to be desired and detract from the content.

Surely it could also find work as a heavy lift aircraft.

How about we attach a giant-ass passenger compartment onto the thing and use it for commercial flights? I'm sure you a lot of people and compartment can fill 1 million pounds.

The Stratolaunch concept is a supersized Pegasus which was a commercial failure so the logic was questionable. It was built using two 747s for donor parts. All the structure is unique but most of the systems are borrowed which is smart. My favorite is the design engineers used elephant-miles as a unit of measure when designing the wing; even better with its namesake.

Awesome content but the background music is distracting

Scaled Composites built the airplane

The manager - we need a twice bigger plane. The engineers - no problem, let's weld two planes together. Problem solved.

Hmmm… so those space ships in Star Wars’ Cloud City were based off a real thing

Background music sucks. It's too loud and it's distracting. Did I mention it Sucks?

How about doing a video about Japanese armoured vehicles in WW2.

I also dislike the grain filter on recent footage

@megaprojects9649 can you do a review on the a-1 skyraider

All that to launch a 6000lb vehicle? They could've borrowed a B-52!

Love the beards 😎

Decoding the unknown

Everyday Astronaut did a really good piece on why launching rockets from planes was never going to fly (adiós Virgin Orbit) kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d6ekbLp1tquxn3U.html Hypersonic vehicles are another story entirely, and might actually work better this way. The Roc may yet have a better future to come

How come the Roc is "the longest commercial aircraft in the world" when it is shorter than a 747-8 and the Antonov AN225? Also the Antonov 225, at more than 1.4 million pounds, has a greater Max takeoff weight than the Roc.

10:24 what year is this? What does he have an I phone

Roc: "What's your wingspan, son?" Spruce Goose: "Well sir, it's...." Roc: "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR WINGSPAN IS!!!"

The 747-8 is actually longer at over 250 feet. Wingspan is shorter though 6:43

I haven't read all the comments, but I cannot be the 1st one to say Can you smellllll.... what the ROC....is cookin'???

The Roc (mythology) is an enormous legendary bird of prey in the popular mythology of the Middle East.

@megaprojects9649 just out of curiosity, may I ask why there is a difference from kg to tons when you tell us the wheight of something (ex. 600'000kg but then you say it's 650 tons). As far as I know, 1 ton equals exactly 1000kg, but maybe I'm wrong? 🤔😅

6:45 It's shorter than the 747-8.

3 minutes in and this background music is just too much. Or is it Simon talking in the background at this point?

imagine this thing launching that Japanese rocket that exploded last week, would the plane have survived?

What's up with the dumb old timey filter on footage from just over a year ago? There's barely any untouched footage of the aircraft that is supposed to be the entire subject of this video.

Maybe before I die. I'll go back to visit Mojave one last time. Class of 92, Go Mustangs.....

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to wait for fine weather?

1 dollar, what a greedy goblin

I would comfortably live inside if it had a pathway to cross to the other plane just incase the other plane fails 😅😅😅😅

at 6000 mph metals heat up to over 3000*C, are these rockets made of Tungsten?

I just want to know why that door is always open behind you!

Why not cargo pods?

Imagine boeing building this 😂

Richard Branson is such a vulture.

If only it made sense, at all, to air launch rockets. It only makes sense to clueless investors.

Why did he say that it's max takeoff weight is 650 tons or almost 600000 kg? Shouldn't it be 650000 kg? Aren't 1000 kg=1 ton, or are they using that strange long and short ton thingy?

What the hell is with the pointless imovie effects? Did a high schooler edit this?

The fuselage of the roc looks like a stretched helicopter body, is it just me?

How does this compare to the "Virgin" aircraft from 2001-2003...

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