Asked by: Tracey Evans, Poole
The passenger plane with the biggest wingspan is the airbus A380 – a monster double-decker plane that carries 550 people, with a wingspan of 80m. But the overall plane with the biggest wingspan will soon be an aircraft that carries no passengers at all.
Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s richest men, has helped create the Stratolaunch. This will be an aircraft with six 747 jet engines and a twin fuselage (the flight crew are all in the right-hand one, and instrumentation is in the left one). The amazing machine will carry rockets high into the atmosphere to make launching satellites cheaper and more reliable. It’s still under construction, but its wingspan will be 117m.
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