Exclusive: Space Company Founded by Billionaire Paul Allen Fencing – Sources

SEATTLE / ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – Stratolong Systems Corporation, the space company founded by billionaire and Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, is closing down its ambitious plans to challenge traditional aerospace companies in a new "race to space". "Four people familiar with the subject said Friday.

The company, a unit of Allen's private investment vehicle, Vulcan Inc., had developed a portfolio of launchers including the world's largest aircraft to launch satellites and eventually humans into the world. space.

Allen, who founded Stratolaunch in Seattle in 2011, died at the age of 65 last October.

Vulcan is exploring the possibility of selling Stratolaunch's assets and intellectual property, according to one of four sources and a fifth person.

A representative from Stratolaunch Systems Corp declined to comment. Efforts to reach Vulcan Inc. for comment were unsuccessful. The four people familiar with the case all spoke under the guise of anonymity, as did the fifth source, citing the confidentiality of the case.

A spokesman for Northrop Grumman Corp, owner of Scaled Composites, the main contractor for the Stratolaunch transport aircraft, declined to discuss the company's operations. Stratolaunch's goal was to launch Northrop's low payload Pegasus from the Stratolaunch carrier in 2020.

Allen's Stratolaunch was compared to Virgin Galactic, a Richard Branson billionaire, who is developing a similar high-altitude launch system, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX. They are all seeking to take advantage of the growing demand for satellite launch services and, possibly, space travel, a market long dominated by industry pillars such as the United Launch Alliance – a partnership between Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp.

Stratolaunch's strategy was focused on its carbon composite transporter plane, which is 117 meters long and powered by six engines. The plane flew for the first time in April.

In August 2018, Stratolaunch announced that a planned mid-lift rocket would fly as early as 2022 and that it was at the beginning of developing a variant with a larger payload capacity.

He also said design a reusable space plane to transport cargo to and from the Earth, as well as a variant to transport people.

SPACE DREAMS

Allen, who also owned the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League and the Portland Trailblazers of the National Basketball Association, said he had long harbored fantasies of space.

"I dreamed of becoming an astronaut," he said at the launch of the company in 2011. A bad view ruined his dreams as a pilot, but he claimed that his ambitions of traveling in the space n & # They were never dead. tinyurl.com/y6qp8bch

In January, three months after Allen Allen's death, Stratolaunch announced it was halting the construction of the rocket, but would continue to focus on its aircraft. "We streamline operations, focusing on the aircraft and on our ability to support a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL air launcher demonstration launch," said the company at the time, according to the GeekWire website .

As of April 1, Stratolaunch had only 21 employees, up from 77 last December, said one of four sources. Most of the remaining employees were focused on the test flight of the carrier aircraft.

Allen's sister, Jody Allen, president of Vulcan Inc. and trustee of the Paul G. Allen Trust, has decided to set an exit strategy, said one of four people and the fifth source in the industry.

Jody Allen decided to let the carrier plane fly to honor her brother's wishes and also to prove that the vehicle and the concept were working well, said one of four people.

According to a review of LinkedIn profiles, several Stratolaunch employees have switched to other aerospace companies in recent months, including Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada Corporation.

Some people still identify as current employees of Stratolaunch while they have taken a new job at another company.