One of the disadvantages was the chance of it all ending up in a mushroom cloud if the plane crashed....
How Big Can Airplanes Get?
- Thread starter asnys
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One of the disadvantages was the chance of it all ending up in a mushroom cloud if the plane crashed....
One of the disadvantages was the chance of it all ending up in a mushroom cloud if the plane crashed....
A mushroom cloud is pretty damn unlikely. Radioactive bits scattered over a wide area of the countryside, on the other hand...
A mushroom cloud is pretty damn unlikely. Radioactive bits scattered over a wide area of the countryside, on the other hand...
But once you get over the 5,000 tonne mark or so, you can use the reactor's radiation shielding as crash protection as well.
NothingNow
Banned
One of the disadvantages was the chance of it all ending up in a mushroom cloud if the plane crashed....
Yeah, actually that's all but impossible in a nuclear reactor. They're specifically designed never to do that, and the design of a Nuclear reactor inherently prevents it unless you drop it into fucking Jupiter or something.
Scattering radioactive particles is something else entirely though.
You mean like two separate fuselages, or more like MIT's "double-bubble" combined fuselage?
If I'm not mistaken, a real ekranoplan can't get higher than a few dozen meters, if so I wouldn't quite count them as aircraft.
And 3 pages on huge aircraft and no-one mentioned the Beriev Be-2500 yet?
Except that any power plant that generates enough power per unit mass to get a plane off the ground is going to be pusing it. Near weapons grade fuel, for instance. And how do you make sure the damping rods go where they are supposed to, when nothing else is.
Sure plants are designed to be foolproof. We still have chernobyl and fukushima. And thats without hotrodded reactors, or airplane crashes.
The thing could certainly go up the way Chernobyl or Fukushima did. (Hence why flight is dependent on an acceptance of the Radiation Hormesis Hypothesis, under which that's not that big a deal.) What it can't do is blow up like an atomic bomb. It could leak considerable quantities of radioactive material but it couldn't destroy a city in a fireball.
Given seaplane ekranoplans (is there a term just for them?von hitchofen said:and the small matter of how long the runway needs to be for it to take off safely - the Bristol Brabazon syndrome...
), not really an issue.This makes a lot of sense to me. There are lots of places with water access where traffic demand could justify 1000 seats: Hawaii, London, NYC, Chicago, Fiji...Gunnarnz said:
You wouldn't even need them that large to steal business from high-priority freight businesses IMO: about a 2000 ton payload would capture the "cream" of shipping as well as take over freight not capable of being flown now. Don't forget, shippers want it faster; ekranoplans aren't as cheap as ships, but they're cheaper than jumbo jets & almost as fast.Gunnarnz said:
For the military, I can see another use: Landing Ship Aircraft, flying right onto the beach.
Not landing an entire division, but maybe a battalion?
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Actually you DO need them that large. They use 'wing in groundeffect' to get their advantages. Which means the size of the wing goes up as the distance from the ground does. Which means being able to cope with pacific ocean waves gives you a plane bigger than a 747.You wouldn't even need them that large to steal business from high-priority freight businesses IMO: about a 2000 ton payload would capture the "cream" of shipping as well as take over freight not capable of being flown now. Don't forget, shippers want it faster; ekranoplans aren't as cheap as ships, but they're cheaper than jumbo jets & almost as fast.
For the military, I can see another use: Landing Ship Aircraft, flying right onto the beach.
Look up Boeing Pelican. Some articles at the time explained the reasoning.
A couple of things I see that are limitations
1) landing gear. You can add a lot of them to keep the groundpressure reasonable...but every gear added is more drag that you've got to overcome during take-off and more weight/space you are using within the plane itself
2) runways. a lot of airports have had problems expanding to handle the current crop of jumbo jets. If you build really, really big...you are probably going to have to have a limited number of dedicate airports with runways measured in meters of thickness to bear all that weight.
3) loading/unloading. If you are carrying passagers...you are talking more of a cruise-liner debarking/embarking than any aircraft in existence. Again, a custom airport is probably necessary.
I suspect the upper limit on size is less technical and more practical. Above a certain size...it just doesn't work economically. When you do the numbers, you find that a smaller vehicle that can use more dispersed airports makes more sense than something bigger where you have to transport cargo/passangers a greater distance along the ground to reach an airport able to handle the beast.
Very cool thread.
Tim
Regarding runway lengths, I've been reluctant to put this out here because it sounds even more insane than having planes this size in the first place, but I figured I might as well. The original CL-1201 study had a very simple plan to deal with runway lengths: they were going to make it V/STOL. Over 100 chemically-powered turbojets were going to pop out of the hull to give it this capability. You'd still need a very strong runway to put up with it, but not a very long one.
For landing gear, the studies indicate they planned to use an air-cushioned landing gear. I'm not clear on why this was considered preferable, but there you have it.
For landing gear, the studies indicate they planned to use an air-cushioned landing gear. I'm not clear on why this was considered preferable, but there you have it.
I fully agree with this; practical considerations will impose more limits on aircraft size then technology.
As far as really big craft go, your best bet is Wing-in-Ground technology (AKA Ekronoplans).
Here is a really comprehensive site on WiG technology: The WiG Page.
One quote from the page applies here: " A WIG craft that fulfills all efficiency expectations would be extremely big, hundreds, maybe thousands of tonnes. Only at this size the relative height will be sufficiently small to be more efficient than for example a 747 on a trans-Atlantic route and still be clear of the waves."
A nuclear turbofan powered WiG watercraft would seem to me to be a more practical craft as far as economics goes; also less worries about radiation and fears of radioactive crashes.
You're right, that does sound insane. But, given the size of craft we're talking about here, it might barely be practical. The lift engines and their fuel are only used for takeoff and landing and are dead weight the rest of the time - the thing is, a 10,000 tonne aircraft might be able to lift enough cargo to make that "dead" proportion of it's load capacity acceptable, as long as it doesn't cut into payload too much.
Personally I still think the idea of a flying boat is a better way to get around the runway issue, but this could work. I wonder how it's operating expenses would compare with a flying boat? Over 100 turbines and their fuel to look after, versus the expense of "marinising" the hull and keeping it shipshape...