It's obvious to me that China doesn't care that much about the AN-225 design as for the design of the D-18 turbofan. They still can't design or manufacture a heavy turbofan domestically. This has seriously hampered their heavy airlift project (the Y-20, who first flew using Soviet-designed low-bypass 12-ton thrust D-30 fans, which killed its range). The domestic WS-20 turbofan design that was supposed to power the production Y-20 airlifter is still under wraps, which usually means the prototype is not doing well.
Getting access to a 20-ton thrust high-bypass turbofan design is a huge step for them.
Why is it difficult enough that not even a nation state as large and powerful as china has obstacles to develop a heavy turbofan? With respect to other tech they've developed I don't know what is technologically difficult here -- I'm asking genuinely as a layman, it's not a rhetorical statement of disagreement.
"it carries a world record payload of 250 tons (to put this into comparison, it can carry around 300,000 lbs more than the US military's Boeing made C-17"
What was the writer thinking? My readers won't understand what 250 tons is, so I'll use imperial metrics, too? Net effect is that this only makes full sense to those who understand both metric and imperial units.
(I think a pound is 454 grams ('easy' to remember because that's the unit most jam is sold in in the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_King...). That would make 300,000 pounds about 135,000 kg or 135 tons, so it carries about double what a C17 can carry)
It's also unclear why they compare to the C-17 instead of the C-5, which is larger and handles a heavier payload (by about 100,000 lbs). Heck, even a 747 has a higher payload than a C-17. Being the biggest wasn't the C-17s goal.
Might as well tell us how much more payload it has than a Cessna 172
Given the publication, I would imagine he's an American author writing to an American audience. I didn't think twice that 1 ton = 2,000 lbs so it made perfect sense here.
Makes sense it would be confusing to people on the metric system, but I doubt he thought twice about it.
The AN-225's little brother the AN-124 was once used to fly a diesel locomotive from Canada to Ireland. It worked out cheaper for the train manufacture to pay to have it flown over, and meet the contractural delivery date, rather than shipping it by sea and paying the fine for missing the deadline.
The PLA is trying to establish a power projection capability.
There are very few militaries in the world that can routinely operate on a large scale a long way from their home bases. The US can and does. Russia can do it with difficulty. Britain can do it on a small scale. Beyond that, few armies have the logistics capability. China is gearing up to join the club.
There's also the PLA Navy's aircraft carrier program, which is progressing slowly. They have one refurbished USSR aircraft carrier in commission for training purposes, and two ramp-type carriers under construction.
This doesn't seem to be the PLA's big effort, though. Most of their new weapon systems are for sea dominance in China's coastal waters, broadly defined.
From the title, I thought this was going to be about the Spruce Goose, but it turns out the Spruce Goose was designed only for a 75-ton capacity, not the 250 tons of the Ан-225. The Spruce Goose had a larger wingspan (97.5 m rather than 88 m) but the Ан-225 is longer (84 m rather than 66⅔ m).
It's interesting to reflect that the previous "world's largest plane," and still the one with the widest wingspan, dates from WWII. In a sense this reflects changing social priorities, and in another sense it may reflect a generalized form of Conway's law: giant aircraft are produced by giant monolithic bureaucracies brooking no dissent, like countries in wartime or totalitarian governments.
If that's the case, maybe we'll see more such planes if the wars in Syria and other places continue to spread, pushing countries like the US and the EU powers onto more of a wartime footing. But it's not clear they'll be strategically beneficial for fighting in the Drone Age; they're too hard to build and too easy to destroy.
So this was originally made to carry the USSR's Buran space-shuttle-like project. I'd never heard of Buran before, but I have heard many critiques of the US's space shuttle program. Yet Buran looks almost identical from a cursory view.
> Why would the Soviet's independently develop a highly flawed project?
Probably a few reasons:
* At the point of starting Shuttle operations, the flaws of the design weren't as apparent, especially not to general public.
* Even though it LOOKS similar, it's actually not all that similar in design. The main difference is that it doesn't actually carry engines (which are the most expensive and problematic part of Shuttle due to their planned reuse) - Buran was taken into orbit by an expendable Energia rocket, which "solved" the problems with expensive engine rebuilds and testing.
* At the end of the day, Buran never got past the prototype stage. It flew a single mission (empty, fully automated), landed and was then shelved. Only two prototypes were ever built.
It's rammed with fantastic photos by Ralph Mirebs of the hangers at the Baikonur Cosmodrome used to house it (complete with an ageing, abandoned Buran inside).
Is an aircraft of this size economical, or is it a fuel hog useful only for carrying huge single-piece cargos that smaller aircraft cannot? Is it useful, or is it sheer size-vanity?
I doubt there's enough heavy commercial cargo in the world that would support a fleet of these aircraft. While the current AN-225 is busy, it doesn't appear to be busy enough to financially justify restarting construction on the second airframe.
I expect this is desired for a few reasons - heavy military airlift, to match what the US has had since Vietnam with the C-5 Galaxy. Access to licensed construction of the D-18 engine (as mentioned by ovi256). And ego.
It's not just the size, it's also the shape of such airlifters that makes them non-economical for commercial use.
For example the USAF's own data shows that the C-17 burns more fuel per hour than the KC-10 but carries 20 tonnes less payload by weight, all because of the fat rear-loading-for-tanks fuselage ( that's seldom used for such ) and thick wing.
Both the C-17 and the C-5 were touted on the civil market but had zero uptake.
This particular aircraft ain’t economical by today’s standards.
Here’s some comparison to a popular modern cargo plane, based on public data: https://1drv.ms/x/s!AKpTxXHPN4XIj9tN
As you see, fuel economy is somewhat worse compared to that Boeing.
I don’t think the main problem is size or weight. I think the main one is age. AN-255 is 30 years old, Boeing 747-8 is 6. That’s almost 25 year or progress in aerodynamics and engines development.
The article seems to think that it will have military use, but I personally don't see the big advantage of lugging 4 tanks in one plane instead of splitting them across two planes.
If the plane were economical for general cargo lift they would have made more than one.
(I think the typical reader will have little intuition for the cargo capacity of the C-17, so the more instructive comparison looks at the most capable operational US plane.)
Nice to see this incredible cold war era plane not go the way of the concord. But in its case there is still a possibility of a profitable market for transporting very large and heavy machinery via aircraft.
The main problem for most post-Soviet production has long been that the supply chain now includes 2+ countries. Antonov is a prime example - had AN-124 and AN-225 been "Ukrainian" planes, we would have seen more production and commercializations.
The problem is that these are Soviet planes and with the current Russian-Ukrainian relations in shambles, the production has stopped. Much of avionics and those turbofans are (were?) made in Russia: http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/ukraines-antonov-will-weste...
In my view, this is just thrashing in a frantic bid to keep the company alive. Sad, given its storied past.
There is very little chance that story is even remotely true. The story had 2 sources - Saddam Hussein, and Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf aka 'Baghdad Bob' (if you don't remember him, look him up - he was a meme before the Internet made memes a thing). On top of that, the story changed from a farmer to a few peasants and back again depending on who was talking and when.
It was propaganda to make the US military look weak and ineffective - the same kind of propaganda that let us watch a split screen of al-Sahhaf's press conference saying the US hadn't taken Baghdad airport and US forces strolling around its tarmac.
To make it possible Ukraine and Chine will need to redevelop many technologies that were used to build Mriya. The technologies were gone when USSR collapsed.
Not that many the bulk of manufacturing was done in Ukraine what was sourced externally can be sourced from subcontractors. For example engines are manufactured by Motor Sich (Ukraine based) which is still a fairly large engine manufacturer etc.
Tyler Rogoway (formerly of Jalopnik's FoxtrotAlpha and now writing for TheDrive.com) had a take on China's goals(1). He seems to think that the plane's ability to act as a launch craft is a notable. I've found Rogoway to be a pretty good source of digestable and non-sensational military tech info.
Air launch is an incredibly tricky operation. Even something as trivial as a 500 lb. bomb undergoes lots of trials before it is accepted for use.
The US Space Shuttle program only ever did glide testing of the orbiter off the back of the 747 carrier. A real launch of an orbital vehicle off the back of an AN-225 would mean serious envelope pushing and would be putting an extremely expensive aircraft at risk every time.
[+] [-] ovi256|9 years ago|reply
Getting access to a 20-ton thrust high-bypass turbofan design is a huge step for them.
[+] [-] wallace_f|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ting_bu_dung|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Someone|9 years ago|reply
What was the writer thinking? My readers won't understand what 250 tons is, so I'll use imperial metrics, too? Net effect is that this only makes full sense to those who understand both metric and imperial units.
(I think a pound is 454 grams ('easy' to remember because that's the unit most jam is sold in in the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_King...). That would make 300,000 pounds about 135,000 kg or 135 tons, so it carries about double what a C17 can carry)
[+] [-] johnhess|9 years ago|reply
Might as well tell us how much more payload it has than a Cessna 172
[+] [-] tw04|9 years ago|reply
Makes sense it would be confusing to people on the metric system, but I doubt he thought twice about it.
[+] [-] chatmasta|9 years ago|reply
It's equivalent to saying "Mt Everest is nearly 6 miles, or 29,000 feet, high."
[+] [-] diarmuidie|9 years ago|reply
https://www.flickr.com/photos/48073612@N04/5124447894
[+] [-] garrettheaver|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
There are very few militaries in the world that can routinely operate on a large scale a long way from their home bases. The US can and does. Russia can do it with difficulty. Britain can do it on a small scale. Beyond that, few armies have the logistics capability. China is gearing up to join the club.
There's also the PLA Navy's aircraft carrier program, which is progressing slowly. They have one refurbished USSR aircraft carrier in commission for training purposes, and two ramp-type carriers under construction.
This doesn't seem to be the PLA's big effort, though. Most of their new weapon systems are for sea dominance in China's coastal waters, broadly defined.
[+] [-] kragen|9 years ago|reply
It's interesting to reflect that the previous "world's largest plane," and still the one with the widest wingspan, dates from WWII. In a sense this reflects changing social priorities, and in another sense it may reflect a generalized form of Conway's law: giant aircraft are produced by giant monolithic bureaucracies brooking no dissent, like countries in wartime or totalitarian governments.
If that's the case, maybe we'll see more such planes if the wars in Syria and other places continue to spread, pushing countries like the US and the EU powers onto more of a wartime footing. But it's not clear they'll be strategically beneficial for fighting in the Drone Age; they're too hard to build and too easy to destroy.
[+] [-] tgb|9 years ago|reply
Why would the Soviet's independently develop a highly flawed project? This article does a decent job answering that: http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a9763/did-the-...
[+] [-] izacus|9 years ago|reply
Probably a few reasons:
* At the point of starting Shuttle operations, the flaws of the design weren't as apparent, especially not to general public.
* Even though it LOOKS similar, it's actually not all that similar in design. The main difference is that it doesn't actually carry engines (which are the most expensive and problematic part of Shuttle due to their planned reuse) - Buran was taken into orbit by an expendable Energia rocket, which "solved" the problems with expensive engine rebuilds and testing.
* At the end of the day, Buran never got past the prototype stage. It flew a single mission (empty, fully automated), landed and was then shelved. Only two prototypes were ever built.
[+] [-] corford|9 years ago|reply
It's rammed with fantastic photos by Ralph Mirebs of the hangers at the Baikonur Cosmodrome used to house it (complete with an ageing, abandoned Buran inside).
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SideburnsOfDoom|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiph|9 years ago|reply
I expect this is desired for a few reasons - heavy military airlift, to match what the US has had since Vietnam with the C-5 Galaxy. Access to licensed construction of the D-18 engine (as mentioned by ovi256). And ego.
[+] [-] dingaling|9 years ago|reply
It's not just the size, it's also the shape of such airlifters that makes them non-economical for commercial use.
For example the USAF's own data shows that the C-17 burns more fuel per hour than the KC-10 but carries 20 tonnes less payload by weight, all because of the fat rear-loading-for-tanks fuselage ( that's seldom used for such ) and thick wing.
Both the C-17 and the C-5 were touted on the civil market but had zero uptake.
[+] [-] Const-me|9 years ago|reply
As you see, fuel economy is somewhat worse compared to that Boeing.
I don’t think the main problem is size or weight. I think the main one is age. AN-255 is 30 years old, Boeing 747-8 is 6. That’s almost 25 year or progress in aerodynamics and engines development.
[+] [-] jandrese|9 years ago|reply
If the plane were economical for general cargo lift they would have made more than one.
[+] [-] finid|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] to3m|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksrm|9 years ago|reply
250 tons = 227 tonnes (227,000 kg)
300,000 lbs = 136 tonnes
Why the second figure wasn't just given as 150 tons I have no idea.
[+] [-] maxerickson|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy
(I think the typical reader will have little intuition for the cargo capacity of the C-17, so the more instructive comparison looks at the most capable operational US plane.)
[+] [-] sschueller|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sologoub|9 years ago|reply
The problem is that these are Soviet planes and with the current Russian-Ukrainian relations in shambles, the production has stopped. Much of avionics and those turbofans are (were?) made in Russia: http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/ukraines-antonov-will-weste...
In my view, this is just thrashing in a frantic bid to keep the company alive. Sad, given its storied past.
[+] [-] djrogers|9 years ago|reply
It was propaganda to make the US military look weak and ineffective - the same kind of propaganda that let us watch a split screen of al-Sahhaf's press conference saying the US hadn't taken Baghdad airport and US forces strolling around its tarmac.
[+] [-] macintux|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doctorstupid|9 years ago|reply
I expect a scientific publication to not popularize the misuse of 'exponential'.
[+] [-] kostyash|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qaq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_mitsuhiko|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perrylaj|9 years ago|reply
1. http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/5083/why-china-wants-to...
[+] [-] coredog64|9 years ago|reply
The US Space Shuttle program only ever did glide testing of the orbiter off the back of the 747 carrier. A real launch of an orbital vehicle off the back of an AN-225 would mean serious envelope pushing and would be putting an extremely expensive aircraft at risk every time.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] smegel|9 years ago|reply
> Oops! Something went wrong. Please scroll down to find your content.
[+] [-] base|9 years ago|reply
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