From IEEE Spectrum, September 19:
Radia’s building an aircraft longer than a football field
The world’s largest airplane, when it’s built, will stretch more than a football field from tip to tail. Sixty percent longer than the biggest existing aircraft, with 12 times as much cargo space as a 747, the behemoth will look like an oil tanker that’s sprouted wings—aeronautical engineering at a preposterous scale.
Called WindRunner, and expected by 2030, it’ll haul just one thing: massive wind-turbine blades. In most parts of the world, onshore wind-turbine blades can be built to a length of 70 meters, max. This size constraint comes not from the limits of blade engineering or physics; it’s transportation. Any larger and the blades couldn’t be moved over land, since they wouldn’t fit through tunnels or overpasses, or be able to accommodate some of the sharper curves of roads and rails.
So the WindRunner’s developer, Radia of Boulder, Colo., has staked its business model on the idea that the only way to get extralarge blades to wind farms is to fly them there. “The companies in the industry…know how to make turbines that are the size of the Eiffel Tower with blades that are longer than a football field,” says Mark Lundstrom, Radia’s founder and CEO. “But they’re just frustrated that they can’t deploy those machines [on land].”
Radia’s plane will be able to hold two 95-meter blades or one 105-meter blade, and land on makeshift dirt runways adjacent to wind farms. This may sound audacious—an act of hubris undertaken for its own sake. But Radia’s supporters argue that WindRunner is simply the right tool for the job—the only way to make onshore wind turbines bigger.
Bigger turbines, after all, can generate more energy at a lower cost per megawatt. But the question is: Will supersizing airplanes be worth the trouble?
Wind Turbine Blade Transportation Challenges....
....MUCH MORE
Speaking of large airplanes:
I'd be willing to bet this is, hands down, the favorite airplane among the three-year-old set.
Here's another pic.
And on moving wind turbine blades:
And the damn things really are big:
How do you move a 200ft wind turbine blade? Carefully. Very carefully
This is quite amazing but the method we looked at in 2019 was almost mindblowing.
From TransInfo:
Luxembourg based P. Adams Schwertransporte, who specialize in the transport of heavy items, has revealed striking photos of how it transported a 67-metre-long blade for a wind turbine.
In the opinion of many, the head-scratching pictures look as though they’ve been photoshopped. However, the transport company assures they are genuine....
....MORE
And more from GeekWeek.pl at TekDeeps.
And from the BIG money post:
