I am sure, the title of this entry makes you puzzled, well..i deliberately wanna attract your attention, coz it’s a very important thing to read 
. It’s about Air Launch System (ALS). As posted earlier, Indonesia will have spaceport (few countries have it), and it will be developed and maintained by Indonesia and Russia. The technology is new where satellite will not be launched on land, it will be launched from the air. How does it work?
First, you must use a very big and powerful vehicle to lift the sattelite to the sky, and Russia will provide Antonov AN-225 for this purpose. The Maks system consists of two stages:
1. Antonov AN-225 carrier plane is the world’s largest aircraft.
2. Space Stage will be carried on top of the An-225. It can take-off from suitable airports around the world and transport the second stage for launch on any staging point above the Earth. The An-225 will use in-flight refuelling for equatorial launches.
Three Space Stages are envisaged:
- Maks-OS (Reusable Spaceplane) with an external tank. It would be used to carry from 2 up to 6 crew.
- Maks-T uses an expendable unmanned stage instead of the Maks Spaceplane to launch payloads up to 18,000kg to low earth orbit or 5000kg to GEO.
- Maks-M will be the ultimate version of Maks. It will be a fully reusable spaceplane
How does it work?
1. The An-225 carrier plane with the second stage will takeoff from a suitable airport. For equatorial launches, in-flight refuelling will be used to reach the destination.
2. The An-225 will fly to a starting point above the Earth’s surface. At 9km altitude, the Antonov An-225 will perform a pre-start manoeuvre and follow a shallow decent, then on the pull-up manoeuvre the RD-171 rocket engine is ignited.
3. The carrier plane and second stage separate at the required trajectory angle. The An-225 returns to the base airport. Maks spaceplane / Maks-T/ Mak-M fly to orbit.
The good thing is that Indonesia’s Biak Island (the planned site) is the best and most efficient site (in term of cost) to build this system.
Popularity: 5% [?]
There are some errors in your article.
AN-225 Mriya, is the aircraft developed from the AN-124 Ruslan that specially designed to carry Buran, the only shuttle that had been developed by Soviet and until now had never been successfully launched into space. Mriya was actually not to transport the Buran into space, but only for transportation from one place to another, as did the B-747 to NASA’s shuttles.
While the orbiter is planned to be built satellite in Biak, it is not with the shuttle system, but with a rocket system. Only first rocket was flown into the air by using a plane. AN-124 Ruslan is large enough for a satellite rocket launcher.
Then about MAX Space Plane, this really was a Soviet project proposed in 1988 but was canceled in 1991.
thank you
Iklannya keknya cocok neh: …Yang lain makin ketinggalan….!!!
From what i heard from reliable source, Yes..it is going to be An-225 for this purpose. The max system will still be implemented, only maybe with different name. Thanks a lot for the input, Mr. Fathi
Last week, Russian FM came to Indonesia, to pursue this project, seems like Russia is getting more unpatient now
@Akhyari
Do you have any video for this news?
I’m very interested to watch this on TV/Video.
Youtube ! keyword ALS (air launch system)