Elijah and His Stratolaunch

An airplane with a wingspan longer than a football field is getting ready to take off.

"The LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind" (v. 1).

Yes, a whirlwind.

The best flying technology of the ancient world.

Today, we have a brand-new airplane that can carry rockets and satellites into space. She has a wingspan longer than a football field, the longest in the world. From nose to end, she measures 238 feet. From the ground to the tip of her vertical tail, she stands 50 feet tall. She weighs 500,000 pounds and is powered by huge passenger jet engines.

Her name: Stratolaunch.

This colossal aircraft is the brainchild of billionaire Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft. The chief executive of the corporation behind the plane says that Allen has a "vision of normalizing access to low Earth orbit." He wants to carry payloads, satellites and humans into space in ways that are more economical and flexible than ground-based rockets. Stratolaunch is scheduled to take flight for the first time in 2019.

No whirlwind will be required.

Stratolaunch will make a connection...