Wow, the airlines should love the equivalent passenger model. 1,000,000 lbs is equivalent to roughly 5000 passengers. Now if they could figure out how to fit the seats on board.
Pretty darn cool!
Maybe I missed it in the article, but I can’t figure out why anybody would want to make such a heavy airplane.
Mighty expensive “because we can.”
And they even claim it’s reusable. Don’t believe it, the inherent technical challenges are far too high for that….
😉
Barbara, it would perhaps be beyond the scope of the article to explain why men would want to see how much load their planes could take, how fast their cars can go, how many GHz they can over-clock their CPUs, etc.
Maybe I missed it in the article, but I can’t figure out why anybody would want to make such a heavy airplane.
Is this sarcasm?
Anyway, a million pounds is impressive, but the A380’s MTOW is about 1.25 million pounds.
Next week they plan to fly two million pounds of parakeets. All they have to do is keep half of them flying around inside at all times.
^^^ Now that is sarcasm….
IIRC the 747-400 TOGW is around 800,000 lbm. As noted above, the A380 is over 1 million pounds. Wikipedia, the repository of all human wisdom, says the An-225 is “the world’s heaviest fixed-wing aircraft” at 1,323,000 lbm.
“Anyway, a million pounds is impressive, but the A380’s MTOW is about 1.25 million pounds.”
And the AN-225 MTOW is 1,323,000 lb. But it’s six-engine, and has a huge undercarriage — everything is specially engineered just for that load. And they only built one. It is supposedly a “stretched” AN-124, which is a C-5 class aircraft. But it’s really a whole new airplane.
Stretching the 747 by this amount is a real feat…
The bigger they are the harder they will fall or FAIL. Bigger buildings, bigger cars even bigger homes – maybe. But bigger commercial airliners? No need! Although after seeing it in action, it does seem mighty impressive.
Wow, I think that almost everyone missed the fact that this is a freighter and that having more payload is a good thing, especially if it is cheaper to operate than the A-380 or AN-224 or 225.
Acuvue, it’s not an airliner, it’s a freight hauler. Like the AN-225, the forthcoming A 380-800 or the venerable Guppy family, it’s destined to carry outsized cargo and/or huge amounts of regular cargo (the AN-225 delivered 188 tones of MREs to Oman in ’02).
All of which should be very interesting to us and our friends who are in certain lines of work that require large sub-assemblies delivered to space ports…
This article informs the reader with no more than the 1 million lb number – nothing about what the payload or range. Wiki has the AN-224 with a MTOW of 1.41 million lbs and a payload of 550 klbs, and the 747-8 with a MTOW of 975 klbs and a payload of 308 klbs. That gives a payload fraction of 0.390 (with a range of 2500 miles) for the Russians and .315 (with a range of 4500 miles) for Boeing.
So the 747-8 has a payload-range factor (I just make this up) of .315 x 4500, or 1417.5.
AN-225 = .390 x 2500, or 975.
So I think that the Boeing aircraft is about half again better.
Wow, the airlines should love the equivalent passenger model. 1,000,000 lbs is equivalent to roughly 5000 passengers. Now if they could figure out how to fit the seats on board.
Pretty darn cool!
Maybe I missed it in the article, but I can’t figure out why anybody would want to make such a heavy airplane.
Mighty expensive “because we can.”
And they even claim it’s reusable. Don’t believe it, the inherent technical challenges are far too high for that….
😉
Barbara, it would perhaps be beyond the scope of the article to explain why men would want to see how much load their planes could take, how fast their cars can go, how many GHz they can over-clock their CPUs, etc.
Is this sarcasm?
Anyway, a million pounds is impressive, but the A380’s MTOW is about 1.25 million pounds.
Next week they plan to fly two million pounds of parakeets. All they have to do is keep half of them flying around inside at all times.
^^^ Now that is sarcasm….
IIRC the 747-400 TOGW is around 800,000 lbm. As noted above, the A380 is over 1 million pounds. Wikipedia, the repository of all human wisdom, says the An-225 is “the world’s heaviest fixed-wing aircraft” at 1,323,000 lbm.
“Anyway, a million pounds is impressive, but the A380’s MTOW is about 1.25 million pounds.”
And the AN-225 MTOW is 1,323,000 lb. But it’s six-engine, and has a huge undercarriage — everything is specially engineered just for that load. And they only built one. It is supposedly a “stretched” AN-124, which is a C-5 class aircraft. But it’s really a whole new airplane.
Stretching the 747 by this amount is a real feat…
The bigger they are the harder they will fall or FAIL. Bigger buildings, bigger cars even bigger homes – maybe. But bigger commercial airliners? No need! Although after seeing it in action, it does seem mighty impressive.
Wow, I think that almost everyone missed the fact that this is a freighter and that having more payload is a good thing, especially if it is cheaper to operate than the A-380 or AN-224 or 225.
Acuvue, it’s not an airliner, it’s a freight hauler. Like the AN-225, the forthcoming A 380-800 or the venerable Guppy family, it’s destined to carry outsized cargo and/or huge amounts of regular cargo (the AN-225 delivered 188 tones of MREs to Oman in ’02).
All of which should be very interesting to us and our friends who are in certain lines of work that require large sub-assemblies delivered to space ports…
This article informs the reader with no more than the 1 million lb number – nothing about what the payload or range. Wiki has the AN-224 with a MTOW of 1.41 million lbs and a payload of 550 klbs, and the 747-8 with a MTOW of 975 klbs and a payload of 308 klbs. That gives a payload fraction of 0.390 (with a range of 2500 miles) for the Russians and .315 (with a range of 4500 miles) for Boeing.
So the 747-8 has a payload-range factor (I just make this up) of .315 x 4500, or 1417.5.
AN-225 = .390 x 2500, or 975.
So I think that the Boeing aircraft is about half again better.