ANALYSIS – This thing is huge! But is it needed? Does it have military potential? A U.S.-based energy startup, Radia, has unveiled plans to build the world's largest cargo aircraft, WindRunner.
The 356-foot-long, four-engine jet aircraft is designed to deliver giant wind turbine blades directly to land-based wind farms. This, especially in remote areas currently inaccessible by air.
The question is, do we need more and bigger, ugly eco-unfriendly wind turbines blighting our landscape? And don't clean energy folks have massive concerns regarding the future of jet aircraft because of their major contributions to emissions.
Well, I don't have those answers. (RELATED: Green Energy Transition Won't Happen Without Major Sticker Shock)
But I can tell you more about the concept. Current turbine blades are 230 feet long or less, but Radia wants to deploy blades up to 345 feet long. The company says its GigaWind turbines could be two to three times more powerful and two to three times more profitable than those typically deployed today.
The massive new blades will weigh upwards of 80,000 pounds and will be pulled out and installed right from the aircraft via its nose cargo door. Radia has patented a system for loading blades into WindRunner. It will operate on regional hubs where its blades are imported or manufactured.
As AvWeb notes:
Each flight will carry two blades. The aerial delivery is necessary because the big blades can't be moved by truck or train. The turbines using the big blades are said to be much more efficient than the current turbines, which use blades that are 100 feet shorter and can barely be accommodated by the highway and railway systems.
As for the plane, it will be loaded through a tilt-up nose and support all that weight on multiple trucks of gear assemblies. It will pick up the blades at manufacturing hubs and fly them at airliner speeds and altitudes to the wind farms with a range of 1200 miles. In terms of cargo volume, it's seven times bigger than a C-5. It's shown with four jet engines, but the manufacturer and type are not included in the specs.
It should also dwarf the Antonov An-225, the heaviest aircraft ever built, which was destroyed at the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (RELATED: Russia Targets French Troops Ahead Of Purported Deployment, France Denies Claims)
WindRunner will use “sustainable” aviation fuel (whatever that means) and needs only a simple 6,000 foot packed-dirt or gravel unimproved runway to land on, something no other large commercial aircraft can achieve. This is something that only the U.S. Air Force's gigantic C-5 Galaxy can now accomplish.
It is twice the size of New York's Statue of Liberty, with a cargo bay that's 12 times larger than a Boeing 747-400, WindRunner will be 355 feet long, 123 feet longer than Boeing's Jumbo Jet.
Radia says it's focusing “on existing technology and safety by using, where applicable, tried-and-true aviation materials, components and fabrication techniques that have FAA (U.S. Federal Aviation Administration) approval, are already in mass production and are lowest-risk.”
Mark Lundstrum, an MIT aerospace engineer, founded Radia in 2016. The company says its team includes advisers from Boeing, MIT, Rolls-Royce, the FAA, former U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and former Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull.
The company has, so far, raised more than $100 million out of a planned initial $300 million and is planning to have the gigantic aircraft in production by 2027.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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