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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

The Antonov-225, the world's largest aircraft, was destroyed on February 24th. [1]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/antonov-an-225-largest-pl...

I saw this the other day and it makes me very sad. Obviously it's completely irrelevant compared to all the other attrocities happening in Ukraine, but at least for me personally the An-225 was a symbol of incredible engineering and perseverance to get it built. It's a huge shame it was destroyed.

I guess we can hope that after this war someone will put in the money to get the second airframe out of storage and get it finished. I'd assume the demand is there.

>after this war someone will put in the money to get the second airframe out of storage and get it finished

In Ukrainian news they say that they would force Russia to pay for restoring of the "Mria". Ukrainians are really berserks right now. No way to stop. Beside official army the civil population is getting involved more and more. Prepared millions of Molotov cocktails, and there have already been some Russian armor destroyed by it, and territorial defense units hunt down Russian advanced saboteur/spies teams and the likes and those Russian dispersed armor carriers and tanks. They joke that after seeing how they are beating Putin the NATO will be joining Ukraine instead of the other way around. While Russian tanks still continue coming, and massive Russian marines attack seems to be coming to Odessa, and Belarus forces are joining (btw that seems to me a sign of Putin's desperation as hitting Odessa would be as bad or even worse for Russian morale than hitting Kiev, and Belarus was probably kept as reserve) - it is pretty clear that they are coming to be blood bathed, and Ukrainians tell Russian soldiers to carry sunflower seeds in the pockets so at least sunflowers will grow when the soldiers die on Ukrainian land.

Hopefully that other airframe could be finished? Some say no and I'd believe them given the age of the technology.

https://simpleflying.com/second-an-225-economically-unviable...

On February 27th, per the article: "The fire at the hangar was detected at 11:13 a.m. on Sunday, according to the NASA data, which is obtained from a number of NOAA and NASA satellites."

To elaborate a bit, there was a shooting at the airport on the 24th, but Antonov the company confirmed that the plane was in good condition: https://twitter.com/AntonovCompany/status/149732108560330752...

Fighting continued (it's in a hotly contested airport just north of Kyiv), and then yesterday the company released another update that said:

> Currently, until the AN-225 has been inspected by experts, we cannot report on the technical condition of the aircraft.

https://twitter.com/AntonovCompany/status/149796783633704140...

Based on that, I wouldn't call it completely destroyed, but it will certainly need repairing.

I actually got to go into this plane when I was 7 years old when it came to the US to pickup emergency medical supplies during the fall of the USSR. I remember the pilots bought a ton of shoes and very particular other things (I can't recall exactly) while they were here.

I saw it once at an airport and wasn’t expecting it. It was a real WTF moment.

very sad. It was in the bay area just a few years ago! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWmkKE-9FgA

I was at the airport at this time and just randomly saw it. Didn’t even know this plane existed. You can imagine my face and that of everyone around me.

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