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"  The world&amp;#039;s largest plane is going to be carrying some different cargo. Stratolaunch, the colossal launch system envisioned by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen and legendary engineer Burt Rutan, announced that it would no longer parter on the project with Elon Musk and SpaceX. A quick refresher: Stratolaunch is a giant aircraft built from the pieces of two 747s. It would fly into the atmosphere and drop a rocket, which would then ignite in air and zoom off into space. Air-launched rockets carry a weight advantage over their ground-launched counterparts; they can be lighter since they need to carry less fuel to reach orbit. When PopMech wrote a cover story on Stratolaunch this April, SpaceX was slated to provide a two-stage rocket to launch from the aircraft. But no longer. Stratolaunch CEO Gary Wentz said in a statement that changes to the aircraft&amp;#039;s design mean the mission now calls for a rocket that&amp;#039;s different from the Falcon derivative SpaceX had imagined. Orbital Sciences Corporation will take over. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a8567/spacex-bows-out-of-stratolaunch-mission-14793074/?src=rss>