The Future of Outsized Cargo Airlift

@Archibald : Certainly in the range of the largest load so far known. The wing torsion box would have been clearly dimensioned for that and not much more.

(bracing struts could otherwise be used to link both fuselages and that hypothetical central wing pod)
 
I’d there was a demand, perhaps a re-manufacture of stored C-5s to a Myria configuration. I would think it would need a big backer though - at least major changes needed to the wing, some extra frames needed, and the tail would need work too.
 
I really don't know about any C-5 based solution. The aircraft is 50+ years tech level now but there is something much more annoying with it.
Basically it relates to Lockheed screwing it back in 1968-1972.
- C-5 seems to be expensive to maintain, even for the mighty USAF
- they seems to be reliability pigs
- the flaws in the design that exploded into Lockheed face back in 1969-72 have been corrected obviously, but may return haunting any atempt at designing some kind of Stratolaunch out of mothballed C-5s.

Straight to the point: Stratolaunch was build out of 747 parts and guts, not stored C-5s. There are probably good reasons for that.

So how about building a US Mriya out of 747 parts, rather than C-5 ?

Main problem: the wing is not at the right place.

I wonder however if one could take a 747-200F or 747-400F, scrap the wing and central fuselage section, and replace it by a C-5-like high wing fuselage ?
Note that the 747 wings and engine pylons could be reused - except put 4 freakkin' GE90s on them for max power. With the wing moved above the fuselage, there should be ground clearance aplenty.

Considering the butchering Boeing did with the Dreamlifter, maybe there is hope...

Fun fact: the end result would be a Frankeinplane that would look like... Boeing C-X / C-5 bid that lost to Lockheed back in 1965.
 
I remember having see some projects of airships for (slow) moving of heavy lift... bur where?
 
Archibald said:
Main problem is that only Mojave and too few other airstrips can handle that beast wingspan
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You also have the nontrivial problem of purchasing/maintaining a bunch of pods, and having space on the tarmac for several pods awaiting use.
 
_Del_ said:
Archibald said:
Main problem is that only Mojave and too few other airstrips can handle that beast wingspan
Click to expand...
You also have the nontrivial problem of purchasing/maintaining a bunch of pods, and having space on the tarmac for several pods awaiting use.
Click to expand...

Yeah they tried that a long time ago with a C-119 (AFAIK) and quickly found the flaws in the basic ideas...
 
_Del_ said:
Archibald said:
Main problem is that only Mojave and too few other airstrips can handle that beast wingspan
Click to expand...
You also have the nontrivial problem of purchasing/maintaining a bunch of pods, and having space on the tarmac for several pods awaiting use.
Click to expand...
Which raises the question of how much specialized ground support equipment will be needed (e.g. GPS guided vehicles to open and close the tail cone on Boeing Dream Lifter).
Do you want a vehicle that can simply lay the odd-sized cargo n any concrete ramp? .... or something that is thousands of pounds/kilograms lighter, but needs its weight in specialized ground support equipment?

At the exotic end of the scale, I can envision an overly-specialized cargo plane flying 3 missions to deliver a single exotic piece of cargo. Flight number one delivers specialized ground support equipment. Flight number 2 delivers the cargo and flight number 3 moves the specialized ground support equipment to the next destination. Holy "extra flight hours Batman!"

OTOH, the ideal military transport lands, and opens the rear ramp. It drops an anchor and slowly taxies away from the anchor, which pulls the cargo out the back end. The transport then (hydraulically) closes its rear doors and flies away.
 
At some point sooner or later a clean sheet design will be required, based in COTS components from existing airliners and likely a multi-country project, also there are the Franken-jets much like was the An-225 build on AN-125, Boeing or Airbus could start with the Wings and engines from some twin engines civilian jet, build an An-225-like center fuselage with an special Box-Wing add 2 Extra engines and more wing area, even a mixed lifting body mixed with wings/engines from an commercial jet, of course not an optimal design but something based on a B777-900X could lift 200T and be available moreless quickly.

Also and optimized design just recycling commercial engines and subsystems its also possible, but may require being tax-funded as dont have economic sense.
 
I wonder if something like the 747 ATOCA proposal could be dusted off:


Not exactly a 1-1 replacement for some of the AN-124's wider loads. On the other hand, seems to me like some engineering work was already done to redevelop the front fuselage, flight deck, etc. Not to mention that this has the added bonus of the 747 tooling still being around (I assume the C-5 tooling is long gone by now).
 
An-124's still exist outside of Russia for specialized loads. I think the answer is simply a mix of improved 747-8Fs and keeping the An-124s flying. That should be a decent bridge until a clean sheet design comes around.
 
Dear pgd2000,
Boeing will not keep the 747 tooling for much longer.
Any heavy-lift company would be wise to start negotiations now, before Boeing closes the 747 production line.
 
Desertfox said:
An-124's still exist outside of Russia for specialized loads. I think the answer is simply a mix of improved 747-8Fs and keeping the An-124s flying. That should be a decent bridge until a clean sheet design comes around.
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A few are owned by Russia. Western airspace is closed to them. What happens to the Ukrainian ones remains to be seen. The UAE has one (Maximus air cargo). Even if Russia doesn't seize Antonov Airlines, they might make it impossible to keep the An-124s flying by denying spares deliveries or e.g. revoking the type certificate.

There are/were 20 An-124 in commercial operation, plus the occasional An-225 flight. That's a tiny market to finance a new heavy-lift design.
 
Antonov being registered as an Ukrainian company, an internationally recognized government of Ukraine would have to sign for that. Not something that we can predict for now. ;)
 
Hobbes said:
Desertfox said:
An-124's still exist outside of Russia for specialized loads. I think the answer is simply a mix of improved 747-8Fs and keeping the An-124s flying. That should be a decent bridge until a clean sheet design comes around.
Click to expand...

A few are owned by Russia. Western airspace is closed to them. What happens to the Ukrainian ones remains to be seen. The UAE has one (Maximus air cargo). Even if Russia doesn't seize Antonov Airlines, they might make it impossible to keep the An-124s flying by denying spares deliveries or e.g. revoking the type certificate.

There are/were 20 An-124 in commercial operation, plus the occasional An-225 flight. That's a tiny market to finance a new heavy-lift design.
Click to expand...

I think the biggest danger for Antonov Airlines is the risk of all the specialized infrastructure needed to perform heavy maintenance being destroyed if the airport where their base of operations is gets bombed. Imagine servicing these aircraft without maintenance records or spare parts.

The 747-8 production line has already been shut down. To negotiate with individual suppliers to restart production would push up the price of each airframe to a level that most carriers would reject. There's no chance of this happening. Honestly we won't see any new oversize airlifter enter service for at least 20 years. The AN-124 fleet that Russia has can continue to keep flying for many years to come. They also have a lot of airframes in storage that can be brought back into service if needed.
 
Archibald said:
Sundog said:
Make multiple cargo pods for this. It can fly in, release one pod, taxi forward and pick up the next preloaded pod, refuel and be on it's way.

Stratolaunch Carrier
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Main problem is that only Mojave and too few other airstrips can handle that beast wingspan. Range also seems a bit limited.

Otherwise I readily agree one could bolt a giganormous cargo pod under that aircraft central wing. I often wonder how large could it be: diameter*length.
Click to expand...

Tandem wings would allow you to increase weight without increasing span.
Perhaps steal wings, etc. from retired Boeing 747s and bolt them onto new fuselage booms. That would give you 4 large wings powered by 8 large engines and close to double the gross weight of a B 747 freighter.
Tandem wings are also more forgiving of clumsy load-masters who are too lazy to balance the load.
 
It wouldn't 'stall' as such, rather than just descend more or less rapidly . . .

cheers,
Robin.
 
Well, supposedly Antonov will turn the static test 225 into a flying article once the shooting stops over there.

As to any new heavy-lifters, unless the USAF does a push for a C-5 replacement and the maker runs a few more off for civilian side outsized loads, I'm not sure I see anything happening on that front.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Well, supposedly Antonov will turn the static test 225 into a flying article once the shooting stops over there.
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They may as well declare their own starship after the shooting stops.
Antonov is dead, and the chances of its resurgence are negligible. Just see how much the company has achieved since 2015.
 
TomcatViP said:
More than less.
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What I've not been able to find yet, it was proportion of the total lift is provided by :-
Static lift from the gas in the sphere,
Dynamic lift from the Magnus effect,
Thrust from the engines,
and lift from the 'fuselage'.
Also, how this proportion varies with different flight conditions, mission profiles, etc.

cheers,
Robin.
 
Ainen said:
They may as well declare their own starship after the shooting stops.
Antonov is dead, and the chances of its resurgence are negligible. Just see how much the company has achieved since 2015.
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Two words: War reparations.
 
Scott Kenny said:
We'll see.
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We'll see what?

Money influx ever doing good at creating highly specialized high-tech industries in a country that doesn't need them, supported by a block that doesn't need an aircraft industry there? That's unicorns and ponies, and that's before things like corruption or even the very question of who'll be paying.

Ukrainian choice in 2014 was among others specifically about its path - and it's precisely engineers of those industries who had the highest degree of wrong views. Because the only country interested in Ukrainian airspace industry was exactly Russia - and by now it doesn't anymore. Not that current Antonov is capable of anything useful.

The very first thing most happy cheerleaders here will do if Antonov ever becomes a thing again is whine about them being a commercial threat and a potential source of know-how for China.
 
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Ainen said:
We'll see what?
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If war reparations enable Antonov to build some more outsized cargo lifters, which is their one serious niche that nobody else has bothered to explore.

Ainen said:
Money influx ever doing good at creating highly specialized high-tech industries in a country that doesn't need them, supported by a block that doesn't need an aircraft industry there? That's unicorns and ponies, and that's before things like corruption or even the very question of who'll be paying.

Ukrainian choice in 2014 was among others specifically about its path - and it's precisely engineers of those industries who had the highest degree of wrong views. Because the only country interested in Ukrainian airspace industry was exactly Russia - and by now it doesn't anymore. Not that current Antonov is capable of anything useful.

The very first thing most happy cheerleaders here will do if Antonov ever becomes a thing again is whine about them being a commercial threat and a potential source of know-how for China.
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Meh, make it a national prestige project or two and it's no longer a commercial threat, given the amount of times the An-225 gets used annually. The -124s get used more often, though I don't know if they're still in general production or not. If they're not, a civilian available rough field heavy lifter is still a viable commercial niche.

Though I'd laugh my ass off if Antonov provided a plane for the C-5 replacement bid.
 
Scott Kenny said:
If war reparations enable Antonov to build some more outsized cargo lifters, which is their one serious niche that nobody else has bothered to explore.
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It isn't a strategy game, where you dig some gold from a mine to produce a gnomish helicopter.

Antonov can't produce big aircraft anymore. Just like BSS(Ukraine) can't produce nuclear aircraft carriers anymore.

It lost most engineers who still remember how to get aircraft to production. Some of them are in prison, some in Russia, a few in the West, maybe; some are retired. We're talking about circles with the strongest ties to Russia.
It is cut off from its whole supply chain. All of its internal design standards - oriented at Russian MIC - became irrelevant in 2015, down to the last bolt and last piping.
Antonov desperately tried to go western with some flying gulf money - it also failed the moment Arabs understood its actual shape. (re: An-132 tragedy)

It isn't a money problem at this point. Post-1991 Ukraine had very low chances to keep its superpower plants, because the only path to keep them went against the chosen national path. After 2014 it became simply impossible, and many people involved in designing them turned into political enemies.

By now it's simply a statement - Y-20 will probably remain the last Antonov-designed big airlifter. And even if Antonov will somehow arise as an aircraft producer again - it won't be through superheavy lifters.

Scott Kenny said:
The -124s get used more often, though I don't know if they're still in general production or not
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An-124 line was in Russia (Ulyanovsk). Antonov can only service them.
Russia does indeed work right now on a replacement superheavy airlifter - because it needs it. In fact, I won't be terribly surprised if OAK now employs quite a few former Antonov employees there.

Scott Kenny said:
Meh, make it a national prestige project or two and it's no longer a commercial threat
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Then why independent Ukraine must create a whole industry - thousands of companies producing hundreds of thousands of articles most people don't even imagine exist - for the sake of something that doesn't even make a commercial threat?
If it isn't commercially competitive - then it's just a money laundering vanity affair. Antonov produced well over 20k aircraft(with thousands still in operation around the world) - it was one of the largest and most capable producers worldwide.
Reanimating it to produce one superheavy - and that superheavy does require a whole thing - makes no sense.
Scott Kenny said:
Though I'd laugh my ass off if Antonov provided a plane for the C-5 replacement bid.
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That's the cruelty of the situation. You'd laugh if they will try to do what you want them to.
They actually tried to bid for a US air tanker - that was exactly what everyone did about them. Everyone laughed, and even Airbus paired with mighty Lockheed ended up losing the NIH-game.

But what it leaves to Antonov?
 
Ainen said:
That's the cruelty of the situation. You'd laugh if they will try to do what you want them to.

They actually tried to bid for a US air tanker - that was exactly what everyone did about them. Everyone laughed, and even Airbus paired with mighty Lockheed ended up losing the NIH-game.

But what it leaves to Antonov?
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You misunderstand entirely.

I would laugh at the US using one of "the enemy's" aircraft in a serious bid.
 
They do actually fly Polish made aircraft, not less than with their elite and prestigious special and air forces.

Project:

Image-1-MC-145B-Coyote-aircraft.jpg


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Tough little flying truck. Used much during the 20 years of the American counter insurgency mis-adventrure. Not overly sexy, looks like a lot of other aircraft in the area and it could land on dirt tracks, which were the big roads in some of the places it operated. Well liked by the crews. Sadly made redundant when you need lots of money for your new 6th generation fighter.

But not what I think of when discussing "outsized".
 

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