Rockets bound fbr orbit could one day be fired not from launch pads, but from the underbelly of the largest aeroplane ever built -according to Stratolaunch Systems, a company that was announced on 13 December. Stratolaunch, which is headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, has influential founders: aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan (who won the Ansari X Prize in 2004 for designing the SpaceShipOne rocket-plane, the first private craft to reach suborbital flight) and Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen. They say that the air-launch-to-orbit system (intended to carry both cargo and human payloads) would be cheaper and more flexible than the conventional launch-pad approach. See go.nature. Com/ead2ql for more.
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机译：根据12月13日宣布成立的Stratolaunch Systems公司的说法，有一天火箭可能不是从发射台发射的，而是从有史以来制造的最大飞机的机翼发射的。 Stratolaunch总部位于阿拉巴马州的汉斯维尔，拥有颇具影响力的创始人：航空航天先驱Burt Rutan（他因设计SpaceShipOne火箭飞机而获得2004年安萨里X奖，这是首款进入亚轨道飞行的私人飞机），并且是Microsoft的联合创始人和亿万富翁保罗·艾伦。他们说，空中发射到轨道系统（旨在同时载运货物和人类有效载荷）将比传统的发射台方法更便宜，更灵活。参见go.nature。 Com / ead2ql了解更多。
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