Gigantic new aircraft design aims to create the largest plane ever to fly | Hacker News Reader

Gigantic new aircraft design aims to create the largest plane ever to fly

cnn.com

29 pointspeutetre34 comments

I follow the CNN website, driven by some morbid compulsion, and this is one of the characteristic dark patterns that can be found any day or hour. It's always in the center column of the -- desktop -- site, like this one I just collected on the site: “Prioritizing THIS could lead to a happier life, according to expert”. The themes range from oddities like desert complexes to underwater houses, orbital tourism spacecraft, you get the idea. Always posed as if it was the next big thing. If you haven't seen it, don't worry. They are recycled after a few weeks/months and the law of eternal return always brings them back. This week it was this ugly plane. Click bait.

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This makes no sense to my eye.

It's like making a startup to make delivery vans or stretch limos.

There isn't enough economy of scale.

The economically efficient approach would be to do what the military and other manufacturers would do. What Boeing has been doing to the 737 for decades.

Leverage an existing airframe, stretch it, re-engineer what's needed.

Building a bespoke plane, a bespoke plane manufacturer, and all that goes with it is a tall order. Why not fly fed ex packages too? It's just not really specific, or big enough of a market, no?

Doesn't make intuitive sense to me why you'd need a whole new airplane for this. Can you not rig something up to let one of these blades ride on top of an existing plane like the space shuttle transporter? Or would Sergey Brin's giant dirigible work? Or two helicopters flying in formation? Or just make the blades come in two pieces assembled on site?

Just seems very hard to believe a project as massive as a whole new airplane is the best solution to this problem.

For one thing, a 747 is only 250 feet long. So a 300-foot blade on top would trail significantly.

For another, the shuttle piggyback worked partly because of the shuttle’s aerodynamic profile. It’s designed to go straight forward into the wind. This means the 747 still handled well. A windmill blade, though, would present a very different cross section to the oncoming air, and seriously screw up the host’s aerodynamics.

So you could mask it and put fairings on it, and by the time you’ve done that 500 times you’ll wish you’d just built a special-purpose airplane to begin with.

The Boeing Dreamlifter is literally that. There's also the Airbus BelugaXL. Taking big cargo aircraft and putting bigger cargo fairings on it has been going on since the 60s.

None are capable of a 300' length, but they're also not far off. I'm not sure what Radias gameplan here is but I'm extremely doubtful they'll be able to spin up a bespoke airframe for this one market before Boeing/Airbus have built a FeverDreamlifter or BelugaXXL off an existing airframe.

Especially with A380s to be had rather on the cheap these days.

So I’m no expert, but I’m not sure I agree. For one thing, a Dreamlifter is 235 feet long. They’d have to add nearly 100 feet to that before it fit a 300-foot blade. I think that makes it a completely different airplane.

Also I wonder about density — turbine blades are really light, and this Radias seems not to have a huge wingspan. Perhaps it’s optimized specifically for long, low-density cargo. That’s not the market that Boeing or Airbus are going for with their craft.

I would love to deliver a TED talk on the costs and issues with developing new airframes vs adapting existing ones to new roles.

However I'll leave you with an analogy. If you were in the business of delivering mattresses, would you rather have a GMC cube van that is perhaps not aerodynamically optimal and has a weight capacity that exceeds your requirements but has parts available around the world and every mechanic and driver has seen before. Or would you rather develop a custom mattress delivery vehicle that no one knows what to do with, doesn't fit in normal parking lots and can only be maintained and driven by your own specially trained team of mattress delivery vehicle specialists. How many mattresses do you have to deliver in a year before that option makes sense? What happens when GMC sees this giant mattress delivery market and pulls the box off one of their larger pickups and attaches a mattress carrying unit?

External transport of wings has been done:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/wreq34/antonov_an...

That is much smaller and straighter compared to modern turbine blades

I actually know someone at radia and asked them this exact question last year. Apparently the blades are also extremely fragile and couldn't withstand the forces of being mounted on an aircraft. The problem with lighter than air is that the wind farms tend to be in places with, well, a lot of wind. Not ideal places for lighter than air vehicles.

Helicopters just aren't efficient enough, would have the same issues with wind (especially when carrying a giant airfoil), and would damage the blade if they came out even a bit out of formation.

You're right it doesn't make intuitive sense, but the people doing this are pretty damn smart and actually did think of these things!

I really don't think they did, the problems that need to be solved to retrofit existing airframes to carry a lightweight 300' load pale in comparison to what's needed to design a whole new jumbo sized airframe. Especially since once they've designed an airframe that's only good for carrying large low density loads to rough fields, then that will be the only thing it's good for.

A large wide body airliner with a big-ass shell and gravel kit retrofitted is still a large widebody airliner. Just one that happens to have a decent amount of headroom.

> The problem with lighter than air is that the wind farms tend to be in places with, well, a lot of wind.

On the other hand, an airship doubles as a crane, so there would be no need to truck it from the airfield and then crane it into place. You can deliver it directly to the rotor hub.

Countering the wind with computer-controlled thrusters would seem to be the way to go. Also, there is a large tower already there that you could use as a stabilising mast.

It all depends on how big the "wind turbine blade shipping" problem is - and how big it'll be in future.

Would a blimp be able to deliver these types of loads? This cargo doesn't really need to get there fast right?

I guess it has an advantage that it doesn't have to take off fully laden from such a short runway.

It reminds me of visiting the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where there was a bike path on an old rail line, and the grade was surprisingly steep. But I realized that the trains would only carry a load when going downhill -- from the ore mines to the shipping port, and would climb the grade empty.

> Online reports say commercial operations as soon as 2027, but there’s no timeline confirmed on Radia’s website.

Yeah that ain’t happening. From renders to flying in three years for an aircraft larger than the A380? Nah.

It's not flying passengers; but not sure if the certification path for cargo only is any shorter.

Jury-rigging one of the A380s would be cheaper and faster, in my opinion. Also there is an unfinished An-225 somewhere in Ukraine, so that is another option.

Those don't meet the short-runway requirement mentioned in the article. In fact there's very few airports that can handle an A380.

Considering they mention packed-dirt short runways it sounds like the plan is to create a temporary runway directly at the wind farm site, eliminating even the road transport from the airport to the construction site. That's a pretty smart idea if they can make it work. An A380 definitely won't do that job.

I seem to also remember that the A380 needs additional strengthening to be used for freight, there was some talk of developing a freight version but it was never done. For this particular cargo perhaps it isn't needed though as I assume those blades aren't super heavy.

Submitted a week ago too. I really had a fun time running the numbers & trying to scope what they're trying to do against existing planes & existing windmills.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690182 80 points, 7 days ago, 131 comments

> What’s the solution? A Colorado-based energy startup named Radia has an idea. It’s developing the biggest aircraft in aviation history.

It is of course, not the biggest aircraft in aviation history — that honour belongs to the two Hindenburg-class airships, LZ 129 Hindenburg and LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin.

It's also shorter than the SpaceX Starship + Super Heavy combo is tall, (356 vs 397 ft), so it wouldn't even be the largest current aircraft. (Arguably a rocket isn't an aircraft, but Starship has large flaps, and Super Heavy has grid fins, so I think they count.)

It can safely claim the title of longest airplane. I don't understand why companies and media agencies feel the need to overclaim.

Biggest aircraft really is a fuzzy thing.

What is big? The StratoLaunch, the Hughes H4 and the An-225 have a bigger wingspan. The Beluga Xl, the DreamLifter and the AN-225 have a bigger lift capacity.

What is an aircraft? As you mentioned airships and the Starship + Super Heavy both outclass it.

There is no shame in claiming longest plane or largest internal volume plane instead of biggest aircraft.

7 days ago | 131 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690182

Don't bring the finished product to the site, bring the manufacturing capabilities and raw materials to the site.

Aren't the wind farms where these blades are going to be installed out at sea?

Doesn't it make more sense to build the factory (for the blades) at a port and transport the blades via ship.

This whole idea sounds like poor planning.

The idea behind this plane is to enable the construction of the largest wind turbines specifically on land

Perhaps they could construct it on some of the land that touches the ocean

Like where most of the people live and where the ships are!

Windmills have giant turbines eh?

Wouldn't it be easier to just invent an IKEA windmill blade than an entire frickin airplane?

That's what one would think would be the better solution. Designing a windmill blade that assembles from three pieces. But apparently they do the giant single piece polymer forming because the lower weight means it's less prone to fatigue and keeps the blades from bending under their own weight. The math is just so ridiculous to keep the blades with a weight and shape that lets them spin without breaking.

With a plane they can fly out the waste blades currently accumulating on wind farms and dump them in the ocean.

Why are there waste blades - this isn't the razor-and-blade model for wind energy is it?

The blades get worn in time (decades) due to multiple factors like: mechanical fatigue, erosion, UV, evolution of technology, etc.

They can not be refurbished or recycled into new blades but they can be repurposed to produce street furniture, reinforced plastic pellets or even as a concrete ingredient. So far there is not enough of an economic incentive to find uses for the quantity of blades being discarded instead of just dumping them. There are however companies and research projects working on making blades more recyclable and sustainable.

I also don't think dumping them is a huge issue. They do not leach toxic chemicals, do not produce microplastics, do not decompose into greenhouse gases. They are just a very voluminous waste product. In the transition towards a sustainable future I believe wind turbine blades are a really cheap technical debt to acquire.

I don’t know the reasons, perhaps stress or replacement cycles. What I can tell you, if you look closely when driving by the big wind farm near Desert Hot Springs, they have blades in many places on the ground.

Have a look for yourself, pan around a bit... https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cabazon,+CA+92230/@33.9100...

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