Webster

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." --American Statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852)


Sunday, August 10, 2014

Airplane shopping?




I don't know...I saw this picture somewhere and I immediately had this image of Murphy shopping for another airplane.... I remembered I did a post of the Antonev 225 almost 2 years ago.  My son still talks about that airplane.

Antonov An-225 "Mriya" is the world's largest aircraft. When it was built, it surpassed any airliner built before by 50%. It was designed for the transportation of the Russian Space Shuttle "Buran" by the Antonov Design Bureau (HQ in Kiev, Ukraine), which already had built good and large cargo aircraft such as the Antonov An-124 "Ruslan". The basic configuration of the An-225 is the same as the An-124, except the An-225 is longer, has no rear ramp/door assembly, and incorporates a 32-wheel landing gear system (two nose and fourteen main wheel bogies, seven per side, each with two wheels). 




The Antonov An-225 Mriya (Ukrainian: Антонов Ан-225 Мрія, Dream, NATO reporting name: "Cossack") is a strategic airlift cargo aircraft that was designed by the Soviet Union's Antonov Design Bureau in the 1980s. The An-225's name, Mriya (Мрiя) means "Dream" (Inspiration) in Ukrainian. It is powered by six turbofan engines and is the longest and heaviest airplane ever built with a maximum takeoff weight of 640 tonnes. It also has the largest wingspan of any aircraft in operational service. The single example built has the Ukrainian civil registration UR-82060. A

second airframe was partially built; its completion was halted because of lack of funding and interest.
The Antonov An-225, originally developed specifically to transport the Buran spaceplane, was an enlargement of the successful Antonov An-124. The first An-225 was completed in 1988 and remains in commercial operation with Antonov Airlines carrying oversized payloads The airlifter holds the absolute world records for an airlifted single item payload of 189,980 kilograms (418,834 pounds), and an airlifted total payload of 253,820 kilograms (559,577 pounds) It has also transported a payload of 247,000 kilograms (545,000 pounds) on a commercial flight.




Based on Antonov's earlier An-124, the An-225 has fuselage barrel extensions added fore and aft of the wings. The wings also received root extensions to increase span. Two more Ivchenko Progress D-18T turbofan engines were added to the new wing roots, bringing the total to six. An increased-capacity landing gear system with 32 wheels was designed, some of which are steerable, enabling the aircraft to turn within a 60 m (200 ft) wide runway. Like its An-124 predecessor, the An-225 has nosegear designed to kneel so cargo can be more easily loaded and unloaded. The An-124’s rear cargo door and ramp were removed to save weight and the empennage was changed from a single vertical stabilizer to a twin tail with an oversized horizontal stabilizer. The twin tail was essential to enable the plane to carry large, heavy external loads that would disturb the airflow around a conventional tail. Unlike the An-124, the An-225 was not intended for tactical airlifting and is no turbofan engines


Initially the An-225 had a maximum gross weight of 600 t (1,300,000 lb) but from 2000 to 2001 the aircraft underwent modifications, with a reinforced floor and increased the maximum gross weight to 640 t (1,410,000 lb) at a cost of US$20M.
Both the earlier and later takeoff weights establish the An-225 as the world's heaviest aircraft, being heavier than the double-deck Airbus A380 even though Airbus plans to surpass the An-225's maximum landing weight with 591.7 tonnes (1,304,000 lb) for the A380. The Boeing 747 Dreamlifter has a bigger cargo hold at 1,840m3 (65,000 cubic feet)



 The Hughes H-4 Hercules, known as the "Spruce Goose", had a greater wingspan and a greater overall height, but was 20% shorter, and due to the materials used in its construction, also lighter. In addition, the Spruce Goose flew only once, making the An-225 the largest aircraft in the world to fly multiple times.







5 comments:

  1. Very cool. I learned a lot. Never have seen one of those before.

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  2. Speaking of flying space gear haulers, NASA still has a Super Guppy in service. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/multimedia/photos/2014/super-guppy-cryotank.html#.U-jgYfldVrI

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  3. I've seen/been in a 124, that thing was HUGE, cannot imagine the 225. You'd have to pack a lunch to walk from the front to the back!

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  4. Sweet But too hard to climb up on it to wash the windscreen.

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  5. Hey Momma Fargo,
    I have never seen one of these in person either...but one day I might.
    Hey Doug;
    I read on the super guppy and the airplane that Boeing uses to carry parts back and forth. I did remember reading one time that Boeing had to hire the 225 to take a replacement pressure dome for an airplane damaged in Paris, I think it was a 767 so the pressure dome was pretty big.
    Hey Old NFO,
    It seems to be pretty big, I always thought that the C-5 was big...but this thing is bigger.
    Hey Murphy,
    You could always have the spud do it...

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I had to change the comment format on this blog due to spammers, I will open it back up again in a bit.