The AN-225: How the Cold War created the world's largest airplane | Hacker News Reader

The AN-225: How the Cold War created the world's largest airplane

cnn.com

104 pointspseudolus103 comments

I have been inside this airplane and I've got some pics to share: https://egorfine.com/photo/mriya/

Off topic, but I wanted to say thank-you. I've recently had to move away from an antiquated Gallery2 install, and these photos had me wondering how you were hosting a personal gallery. This led me to Juicebox which seems super-cool and perfect for meeting a lingering need. Thank you!

Although there were no updates to Juicebox for quite a time... :-(

Does it really need any? It seems to work just fine.

Looks like Nostromo: big, old, dark, messy spaceship.

Think of it, that entire electronic automation suite on board can be now replaced with a single 1$ smartphone chipset.

Thanks for this.. killer photos..

Was this at an airshow? Was someone following you around to make sure you didn't pull on any wires or anything you weren't supposed to be touching?

The last photo in the deck shows the plane with an engine removed; this makes me think the photos were taken during maintenance.

Shot during maintenance as many places you see are not accessible at all. Like, the booster systems are not human-accessible unless you are willing to disassemble part of the plane or crawl inside a very small and dark tube.

Great shots. I love interior photos of old military planes and for many of them, what's available is sorely lacking in quality, detailed exploration or perspective. Yours are a fine contrast to those tendencies.

The spare tires had me wondering though. I mean, if one were to blow upon landing, wouldn't that be such a disaster that having a spare inside the plane becomes sort of irrelevant? Or does the AN-225 have so many wheels (which I suspect given its huge size) that it could indeed blow a couple and still continue landing stably enough for a spare to be useful afterwards? On the other hand, in the air I assume they can hardly replace them and why would they blow while retracted anyhow? No expert but those images in particular sparked some extra curiosity.

There is a nice video listed below with a pilot of this plane (in russian but with decent english subtitles), he answers to this question. Wheels indeed deflate (not blow) occasionally, this happens when breaks overheat and special thermal plate (at 200C) melts and deflates the wheel gradually, which works as an indicator of overheated break/tyre. Since it happens gradually, there is no danger for the plane itself. The parts for this plane are not that common (they may be shared with An-124 though), so apparently it is easier to carry few wheels than wait for their delivery. The plane caries 10 m.tons of equipment anyway just to load/unload the cargo, so few wheels probably are not that much of a deal.

They have to carry lots of spare parts due to uniqueness of the plane. Replacement of tires is a routine job; much more cumbersome is her aircraft tow bar. It has to be unloaded from her prior to towing, but it can be unloaded only through the main cargo door. This is why Mriya may occupy the landing strip for half an hour before it can be towed. A major pain.

2 years ago they landed this plane here in Brazil, when they camt to pick hidroeletrical generator parts. I gone with a plane enthusiast friend to see the thing take off. I know the phisics, but amazes me that something that big can fly.

Theres hope that more of this are made in the next years. It looks like China is interested in making a few units;

It always amazed me that you could strap a space shuttle to a modified 747 and ... fly.

The whole idea of "just strap it to another flying machine and move it that way" seems like something my 4 year old would come up with.

It is clear my mental model of 'things that can fly good' is deficit when we see things like the AN-225 and etc.

Interestingly, there was some doubt within NASA as to whether the 747 piggyback was a good idea. One of the proponents of the idea was a scale model builder, and made a model to demonstrate it; the model's success was persuasive enough that they continued to study the idea.

In the end, the 747-Space Shuttle combo actually has better crosswind landing characteristics than a normal 747, but it has atrocious fuel economy.

I wonder how many great ideas have been missed out on because our most basic filter / mental models that allow us to just choose basic candidates for options are ... wrong.

"Wait no you can't do that, let's look into this other thing."

My favorite example of a near-miss because of that sort of opposition is lunar orbit rendezvous.[1] Yuri Kondratyuk, Tom Dolan, and John Houbolt were the protagonists in that instance; I generally disfavor the 'great man' theory of history, but I think those three made a real difference.

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Rendezv...

TIL that. Thanks for sharing.

Moving rockets and shuttle parts reminded me of the story of the limits hit when organising shuttle transport - railways have a gauge and tunnels are made to fit the gauge. The gauge was chosen based on cart wheel spacing and this was chosen by the romans.

A bit of googling suggests this may be an urban myth as weight. Eg https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/4064/how-fair-is-t...

Seeing it take off is really something. I used to work on the grounds of an international airport, and one of these flew in one day to pick up a crane or something.

It dwarfed the other planes, 747s included. And seeing it slowly rumbled down the runway gave you the impression that there was simply no way it would have enough speed by the time it reached the end, but somehow it lifted off and flew.

It is weird how the size of a plane screws with how our brains interpret the speed.

I've always explained this to myself by saying the apparent speed correlates to body lengths per unit of time. Hence jumbo jets look like they are creeping along, but a bumblebee or hummingbird looks like it's got afterburners.

As a political stunt, Polish government has chartered this plane to deliver medical supplies to Poland. What a sight! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnQPcMcGVZ8

However, the costs were insane - around $3 million . Transporting the same amount of cargo with 777 would cost about $1 milion.

But the political stunt was priceless.

"The uploader has not made this video available in your country"

Having countries matter on the internet now feels like going back to the 90's after living in the future for a while. :/

The 90s Internet didn't have deliberate region blocks. The future is old, and it is dying.

While the connection speeds of today are hard to give up, I liked having oceans of smaller sites instead of a handful of larger ones with content shared from the others. http://c0rk.tripod.com

Canada too. I think it landed twice in Montreal.

https://youtu.be/OGbtUHEYJ3M

Maybe it was a political stunt, but actually there are two justification of that.

1) The volume. The masks and other protective gear is volume-demanding cargo, since the overall density including packing (boxes) is low. The Boeing 777 Freighter (777F) has 518m3 of cargo volume on main deck [1], An-225 has 1200m3 [2], so the price per 1m3 of volume is 1930$ and 2500$ respectively (ratio 1.3).

2) The demand and the quarantine itself. During March-April demand on masks was enormous, everyone tried to buy them, some countries even tried to take over deliveries for other ones. China and many other countries were not accepting flights, so arranging even a single flight was challenging (thats why An-225 was flying through Almaty city that many times when making China-Europe routes, all other airports simply didn't accept any planes for transit and refueling). As a result, one huge plane was much more beneficial than 2-3 smaller ones.

[1] https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_...

[2] https://www.antonov-airlines.com/our-fleet/an-225

Edit: correcting An-225 cargo volume from 1100m3 to 1200m3 using data from the official website.

Antonov airlines have a much more cheaper, and more available An-124 with 1000m³ useful cargo volume. An even more easily available, and thus cheaper to hire, 747 has 500 to 600m³ volume in different configurations.

Except again, at the time when this happened everyone raised their prices so that even a single 747 was more than 1/2 price of the antonov. In normal conditions, absolutely, but at the time the demand was at the peak time high. I still think it was a stunt more than anything, but not because of the airplane.

Yes, An-124 is indeed a good cheaper alternative with comparable capabilities for this kind of cargo, but in March-April it seems there was a high demand on all Antonov fleet [1] plus the PR factor is not playing the last role here.

[1] https://www.dw.com/uk/protydiia-koronavirusu-mriia-y-ruslany... or https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

Another factor that was mentioned when it flew medical supplies to Montreal is that the An-225 always flies with all the crew it needs, including replacements, and so it was feasible for the plane to wait for a few hours while the logistics were being sorted out (e.g. cash-and-carry deals right on the tarmac, the situation was reportedly crazy in march/april). With another plane/airline, the time slot may be too tight because of crew schedules, etc.

"...20 tons of fuel per hour..." holy cow. Pretty impressive statistics all around, apparently the A380 uses closer to 12.5 tons per hour to put it in perspective.

Pretty impressive given that:

  Type MTOW [kg] ICAO category
  Antonov An-225 640,000 Heavy
  Airbus A380-800 575,000 Super

and that 225 is made with much less than an ideal aerodynamics, heavy frame, 6 thrust reversers, and oversized control surfaces to accommodate external cargo.

Its 6 engines are also prehistoric. D-18T was made with a much more focus on getting the highest take off thrust over cruise speed performance.

Such a large, wide wing apparently gets very little aerodynamic losses, even with all above considered.

Why is 60% more fuel for 10% more weight "pretty impressive"? I mean, you just listed several reasons why it might be "not bad", but what's your baseline expectation that makes it impressive?

One is a passenger airliner, made with relatively new engines, and material technology, designed with the aim of flying as economically as possible, another is a one of a kind cargo plane, that from the start had, uniquely, no design aim of flying efficiently.

Also, for that 20t per hour, we need to know if it is for the loaded, or a ferry flight.

Yes, that is why it is not surprising if it uses 60% more fuel. My question was why is it impressive? What would you expect given all the things you have mentioned? Twice as much fuel? Ten times? 100 times?

I'm not arguing against your opinion, just asking for context that seemed to be missing.

> What would you expect given all the things you have mentioned? Twice as much fuel?

Pretty much. Most 4 engine airplanes can fly with just 2, or 1. Take off thrust is few times the cruise thrust an all jet airplanes. In flight, the engines needed to achieve the take off thrust are dead drag, and dead weight.

This is why one of crazy ideas for very early large jet planes was to have parachutable, jettisonable engines, or having RATO on civilian planes.

Speaking as a passenger, the right solution is CATOBAR. Passenger airports should install linear motor catapults that can get a 500-ton aircraft up to Mach 0.85 in about 10 seconds. (it can support the plane, allowing launch with already-retracted gear) They should also install arrester cables, or something better, such as a moving platform that could handle both tasks.

A much cheaper solution is just having really long runways.

That doesn't really work for Monaco, Vatican City, or Gibraltar. War is not cheap.

There is no reasonable way to expand London City Airport. Bulldozing London's financial industry to make more room for runways would mean bulldozing the primary customers.

Also, as a passenger, I just want CATOBAR.

I've heard the opposite: that the large, high-thrust engines needed on twin-engine wide bodies for takeoff and ETOPS certification can have greater aerodynamic and performance losses at cruise, as well as higher maintenance costs, than the smaller engines on four-engine wide bodies. And in the specific case of the A380, having four engines did not put them at a fuel economy disadvantage, notwithstanding the widely held belief that it did.

A greater difference in fuel economy, however, comes from the generation of the engine. The A380 is no longer cost efficient not because it has 4 engines, but because those 4 engines are 1.5 generations behind modern engines.[1] Airbus and Emirates killed the A380 mere months after Rolls Royce firmly shut the door on developing an engine upgrade, and the whole multi-year saga hinged the entire time on Rolls Royce's vacillations. (Of course, Rolls Royce wouldn't invest in the engine because the market was too small, and they were also struggling with other issues that required their time & capital, but those are different matters.)

[1] Likewise, the 747 was less efficient than the 777 partly because the 777 was equipped with a newer generation of engines. But this difference was never factored into the calculus that gave rise to the belief that two engines were inherently more efficient than four, regardless of context.

Curious where you got the category info there. ICAO doesn't have a super category (proposed designation was `J`, but they don't publish anything under that).

FAA list the 225 as NOWGT, which puts it over "heavy", requiring 10nm separation.

Concorde was only 26 tonnes an hour, although it did use two tonnes taxiing to the runway.

Saturn V: 20 tons of fuel per second. Yes, it's a silly comparison, but also fun.

The pumps alone that can deliver that volume are an engineering marvel

The turbines driving the pumped produced 41 MW or 55,000 horsepower each. Absolutely stunning.

Few facts from the excellent An-225 pilot interview and the plane tour video [1] put by @prehistoricdog in this comment section:

- The plane, when empty, can fly for about 16 hours without refueling covering about 13000 km

- Cruise speed is 800 km/h (maximum 840 km/h)

- Fully fueled plane can include 350-370 m.tons of kerosene (around 450000 liters)

- When empty it consumes 16 m.tons of fuel every hour, when fully loaded with cargo - 22 m.tons/h

- The weight of the plane is 290 m.tons (with all the cargo loading equipment and spares carried along)

- There are 35 seats and 20 beds for crew, engineers and cargo escort personnel

- Important for plane spotter, I guess :) Right before departure, at the beginning of a runway, the plane always stays for 4 minutes stationary with engines running at 70% thrust to heat them up, which is imposed by their manufacturer

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TX9L62_Eac (in russian with english subs)

Small correction with regards to AN-124's name, Ruslan doesn't stand for "condor", condor is its NATO reporting name, Ruslan is just a popular Russian name.

Antonov is really struggling to keep the shop open, I wonder if it's possible to keep such plane operational with the manufacturer on the brink of bankrupcy. Las time I checked Boing was supplying some parts that couldn't get imported from Russia now, but AFAIK the are not really having many customers.

I don't see Antonov disappearing anymore than GM, Boeing or Volkswagen. I'm sure the Russian state will continue to protect them in one form or another.

that's the problem, Antonov is based in Kyiv, Ukraine

And that's the problem. The state of Ukraine is just few months away from going bust.

If Ukraine falls, EU will have big problems.

Why would Ukraine defaulting cause big problems for the EU?

Presumably because that would push them into the hands of Russia (whether they want it or not).

Because Ukraine army salaries are paid by the government of Ukraine?

If Ukraine falls, Russian tanks will be withing zero kilometres from EU border, and four states who are only relatively recent NATO members, without much weight in the NATO block.

Add to these that all four of those states are far from being 100% reliable, with clepto-political elites who are very similar to ones who switched sides to Russia in the Ukraine conflict.

The nightmare scenarios is of course if Poland gives in. Then, you will only have 300-500km of very flat land, and good roads in between them, and Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Dresden, Nuremberg, Munich, and ability to cut off the Eastern route around alps.

Brexit .. and to a lesser extent, Ukraine-fail .. is the least of EU's problems. It was, in the first place, formed to guard against these kinds of circumstances. So, its probably better to say "EU will be unit tested" by Ukraine's disruption, rather than 'have big problems' ..

I would worry about Russia more. It will go bust sooner or later. If Russia is now a problem for everyone, then it can be not a problem but a disaster.

Yes, completely right. EU, and NATO will have a problem almost on the same scale if Russia collapses on them, as if it will launch an attack on them.

Russia has 8 times the population of Syria, and people can't live on a big part of its territory without artificial heating (and thus fuel supplies; your heating bill is pretty much a live or die price in a lot of places there,) or completely reliant for on long range freight for essential supplies.

This kind of already happened in the 90s? And to some extent is why the current problems exist.

The state was far from complete failure, very far from it. Nowhere near Syria.

The state kept control of the military. Troops were orderly demobilised.

The criminality was comparatively low in comparison to Putin's years. The state-mafia fusion came long after the years immediately following the collapse.

The same is for much of the industry, much of it has failed over nineties, and not immediately after.

The remnants of state economy at least managed to keep supplies going. Utilities in cities on "life support" were failing, but otherwise kept working at any cost.

If Russia will fail today, the collapse will be much less gradual, and this time, there will be a civil war, and warlordism, and famine, and mass humanitarian catastrophy.

Antonov is a Ukrainian state enterprise, no problem for Russia to see them go under.

Makes sense. Thanks for the correction.

By the way, is there any Russian made cargo aircraft?

Il-76.

Both Tupolev and Ilyushin are still producing commercial aircrafts. Maybe some others too, but AFAIK this are the two main russian companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Superjet_100

Antonov Airlines is said to have made a windfall on COVID supplies recently, with countries, and relief organisations putting bigger, and bigger bids.

The reasons it's not going to bankrupt, as well as will not develop any AN-225v2 are: Antonov is not a private company. As a part of Ministry of Defense, it may let itself to be unprofitable and not competitive, cause the losses would be covered by budget.

And yes, it is not considered a desirable workplace among locals due to rather low salaries and predominantly well-aged equipment. Moreover, Antonov suffered from breaking it's supply chain in 2014. Apart from that, everything's absolutely great! Obviously, it is not the Golden Age of Antonov's assembly, nor it's development, nor anything else, but it happened so I live 1 block away from Antonov design bureau and every morning I see quite impressive flow of employees heading in there. I mean, of course, except the shutdown period and it's just my personal 'seems quite impressive'.

PS English is not my native, so it may be clunky or poorly readable)

How is Ukraine doing with its tech and military industry? Are they keeping up with the times or slow fading away? I don't see them doing much active development, amd I wrong?

here is a great tour inside the aircraft with 1 of it's pilots (in russian, but with a comprehensible English subs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TX9L62_Eac

Really enjoyed the video (I speak Russian though).

Couldn't agree more)

Wow, just wow.

I knew it carried its whole crew with it, but the cabins are almost a little hotel, two kitchens! Three sleeping quarters! And that's all just tucked into the parts that aren't used for cargo.

I got a few good chuckles out of the back-and-forth, just from the subtitle, I'm sure it's even better if you speak Russian. Well worth a watch, thank you for posting it!

There was a piece, where the pilot explained why airports are not in favor of accepting AN225 for landing and takeoff on theirs runways: they have to check the runway surface after landing/takeoff. but even more crucial (not now, but in those times) is that suitable for landing airports are in most cases are those with high throughput of aircrafts and tight schedule and according to the international safety regulations it is possible give permittion for the next takeoff only after 7-10 min due to turbulent wake(is it the right term?). while common passenger flights have an interval of 30 sec

Jeez CNN is really terrible. The Myasishchev VM-T didn't "carry the spacecraft unassembled" as anyone with eyes can plainly see, and the AN-225 was designed as a replacement for the VM-T (and, truth be told, as a sort of stunt).

In the linked article the image clearly shows, the Buran was not fully assembled. For example the vertical tail rudder was missing, and probably a lot of other things which might have decreased the weight of the Buran.

Well, the plane shown in the first photo is clearly carrying an incomplete spacecraft. To find out that it was in fact able to carry the completely assembled Buran, you'd have to actually read the article ("During another flight in 1988 — this time with a flight-worthy Buran orbiter"), and that's probably too much to ask nowadays...

>> Jeez CNN is really terrible.

Related: it was very satisfying to watch uBlock Origin block no less than 82 scripts/trackers.

I never knew they had a second, unfinished, airframe ready for assembly.

I remember a Discovery program showing what supposedly was an AN-225 airframe parked in a field somewhere. The story was that it was finished, but never certified for flight, and was eventually used for parts to keep the one 225 operational.

I can't find evidence online to back this story up though. Not sure of this was the second airframe shown in the article, or that this may have been a third airframe.

The H-4 Hercules could plausibly be considered larger. It has a larger wingspan, height, and cargo volume, but only ever flew once (for about a mile) and has significantly lower weight capacity. It was also bult several decades before the AN-225.

cf https://www.theaviationzone.com/factsheets/hk1_specs.asp

Stratolaunch has widest wingspan, Hercules has highest height and Mriya is the longest/heaviest. So... they are all demonstrations for how we learned to build extreme aircrafts.

There's no shortage of documentaries on Youtube on the AN-225 [0][1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsh2GSHM2TA

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sggQqdvqHs

I saw it once at an air show in Pretoria, along with some other cool planes like the Sukhoi SU-35. The Russians actually loaded up all their other planes into the Antonov, and flew it straight from Moscow to Pretoria in one shot!

It's crazy how this can be economical with economics of scale=1. Every replacement part for maintenance must be custom-made, there must be no market for trained pilots and technicians on that particular plane, etc.

They cross-train for AN-124, which is quite similar, though obviously smaller.

Paul Allen's Stratolaunch has a wider wingspan, but less cargo capacity. Wonder where that monster will end up. It's intended for high-altitude rocket launches and not useful for much else.

Whatever its future, that is one monster plane I would love to see fly. Given the 747 has no future now and even the A380 is not that popular and might vanish, we may never see such a huge plane again.

Saw it once visiting DLC, probably the only time visiting that airport, this was ~2008. The airport is pretty downtown; fences at each end of the runway (3,300m, pretty tight) were removed and the motorway immediately adjunct to the airport shut down. It was reported as delivering oil/gas supplies for the shipyard and no smaller plane could do it. Searched for a local media report but seems pains of time mean they're no longer up.

747s are still used for cargo. I saw one fly over my head just yesterday.

Yeah...while there probably won't be many/any new 747s built, they'll probably be flying cargo for many decades. Last II knew, FedEx was still flying 25 or so Douglas DC-10 cargos, more than 30 years after the last one was built.

Hour-long video showing parts of a whole mission: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eNxTq9RrOs0

I don't think it's the "Cold War" that created it per se - it was the Space Race. We need another one of those, doesn't matter with whom.

And the space race was created by the Cold War. Without the Cold War, I doubt we would have ever sent a man to the moon.

True. But I feel like Space Race eventually took a life of its own, and it was not military in nature. You don't do joint space programs if you're having a "war".

But military requirements seem to have played a significant role in how the Shuttles became what they were. A purely civilian space race wouldn't have had shuttles at all, or at least a very different design.

largest by payload - unless the Stratolaunch gets uprated.

They don’t make ‘em like they used to

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