{"id":17859,"date":"2019-12-11T22:14:50","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T14:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/exclusive-buyer-of-paul-allens-stratolaunch-space-venture-is-secretive-trump-ally\/"},"modified":"2019-12-11T22:14:50","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T14:14:50","slug":"exclusive-buyer-of-paul-allens-stratolaunch-space-venture-is-secretive-trump-ally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/exclusive-buyer-of-paul-allens-stratolaunch-space-venture-is-secretive-trump-ally\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Buyer of Paul Allen\u2019s Stratolaunch space venture is secretive Trump ally"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Stratolaunch built the world\u2019s largest plane as an aerial launch vehicle for space. (Stratolaunch via YouTube.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The new owner of Stratolaunch, the space venture started by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is Steve Feinberg, a secretive billionaire with close ties to President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

In October, Stratolaunch announced that it had transitioned ownership from Allen\u2019s holding company, Vulcan Inc., but did not identify who had bought the company. Now business filings obtained by GeekWire show the new owner to be Cerberus Capital Management, a controversial private equity firm specializing in distressed companies.<\/p>\n

Cerberus\u2019 holdings have included GM\u2019s finance division, defense contractor DynCorp and Bushmaster, a manufacturer of AR-15-style rifles. Feinberg, the firm\u2019s co-founder and CEO, donated nearly $1 million to then-candidate Trump in the last week of the 2016 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

Eighteen months later, Trump named Feinberg to chair the President\u2019s Intelligence Advisory Board, an intelligence oversight panel with access to some of the country\u2019s most closely held secrets.<\/p>\n

Stratolaunch was founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2011 to provide a fast, cost-effective air launch system for small satellites. The company built the world\u2019s largest plane, incorporating parts from two Boeing 747 jumbo jets, but did not manage to fly it before Allen\u2019s death in October 2018.<\/p>\n

\"Stratolaunch
The world\u2019s biggest airplane taxis along the Mojave Air and Space Port\u2019s runway during a ground test conducted by Stratolaunch. For a size comparison, note the pickup truck driving between the plane\u2019s twin fuselages. (Paul Allen via Twitter)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although the carrier aircraft made a successful maiden flight in April this year, Vulcan was already scaling back its efforts and cutting workers. In June, it was said that the company was for sale with a $400 million price tag, reportedly prompting Virgin Galactic owner Richard Branson to make a counter-offer of just $1.<\/p>\n

Neither Stratolaunch nor Cerberus would confirm the actual purchase price of the company to GeekWire. Filings with regulators in California and Washington show that a new LLC business, also called Stratolaunch, was incorporated in late October, at Stratolaunch\u2019s existing offices in Seattle and Mojave, Calif. The new Stratolaunch\u2019s executive vice president is named as Michael Palmer, Cerberus\u2019 managing director.<\/p>\n

Private-equity firms typically replace existing managers as a prelude to realigning businesses they buy, which can involve firing, automation and offshoring.<\/p>\n

However, it appears that Jean Floyd, Stratolaunch\u2019s president and CEO since 2015, remains in his roles for now. On Tuesday, Floyd tweeted that Stratolaunch had grown from 13 to 87 employees over the past two months and that the company\u2019s new mission was \u201cto be the world\u2019s leading provider of high-speed flight test services.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/WJeanFloyd\/status\/1204552846143713280<\/p>\n

He also wrote that Stratolaunch\u2019s new vision was \u201cbreaking barriers.\u201d This suggests a pivot away from satellite launches to hypersonic flight tests. These are difficult to carry out over land due to disruptive sonic booms, but much easier to conduct over the open ocean from an air-launched system.<\/p>\n

Militaries and defense companies around the world are in the process of developing hypersonic vehicles to deliver both conventional and potentially nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

All the jobs currently listed on Stratolaunch website are at its Mojave flight facility, raising the possibility that the company\u2019s Seattle office is living on borrowed time. Job descriptions make no mention of satellite launches, instead noting that \u201cStratolaunch is developing an air-launch platform to contribute to high-speed research and development.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal of Stratolaunch is to use the air-launch platform for enabling technologies that may not exist otherwise,\u201d the job descriptions say.<\/p>\n

Neither Stratolaunch nor Cerberus immediately replied to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stratolaunch built the world\u2019s largest plane as an aerial launch vehicle for space. (Stratolaunch via YouTube.) The new owner of Stratolaunch, the space venture started by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is Steve Feinberg, a secretive billionaire with close ties to President Donald Trump. In October, Stratolaunch announced that it had transitioned ownership from Allen\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4909,2672,4910,2489],"class_list":["post-17859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cerberus","tag-paul-allen","tag-steve-feinberg","tag-stratolaunch"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17859"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}