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Comment by andrewflnr | Hacker News Reader

I saw one up close and personal for the first time recently, and was caught off guard by just how genuinely huge it is. I kind of expect things like "famously huge X" to be a disappointment in real life, but no, I was viscerally reminded that it's (at least!) a three-story building on wheels, and that's not even counting the extra story or so of space beneath it as it rolls. My younger airplane-obsessed self would have been pleased. Hopefully an air museum or three picks one up before they all go out of service.

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Wait until you see the Airbus Beluga [1] or Boeing Dreamlifter [2]!

I recommend going to the Davis-Monthan Air Force Boneyard in Tucson, AZ [3] and the nearby Pima Air & Space Museum [4] to see all the other big baddies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Beluga

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Dreamlifter

[3] https://www.airplaneboneyards.com/davis-monthan-afb-amarg-ai...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pima_Air_%26_Space_Museum

I look forward to seeing the replacement for the Antonov An-225, Mriya.

I saw the Mriya landing in my city once. I was right bellow her when she was on the final approach, less than 50ft above my head. The experience was... humbling, to say the least.

Apparently the airframe for the second plane is undamaged. So it may happen.

Sadly it seems the Boneyard tours are no longer:

https://pimaair.org/plan-your-visit/available-tours/

(They stopped at the onset of the pandemic and AFAIK never resumed.)

The museum is still well worth visiting, and driving around you can see some of the planes parked in the Boneyard. Davis-Monthan also puts on a pretty good airshow every couple years.

> (They stopped at the onset of the pandemic and AFAIK never resumed.)

From what I can tell, the pandemic gave many government functions and bureaus carte-blanche to stop working while collecting the same paychecks.

The same sorta happened to Paul Allen’s fighter plane museum in Washington. His sister manages his estate now, and has been ruthless at liquidating all the assets he collected for the public good. It’s infuriating.

Beluga isn't that special, if you live where they come and go daily, sometimes several times. Rather annoying, because loud. At least louder than an A380, which is really big, but not as loud.

One time I heard a different-sounding plane, I looked up, and it was one of them flying a different path than usual on their routine flights from Tolouse to Hamburg (Airbus sites), sadly it seems they haven't repeated that.

I live in Othmarschen and very often there are planes other than Beluga's landing at the site

The BelugaXL resembles even more of a beluga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_BelugaXL

The Beluga really looks ugly.

I live directly under the flight path for the Beluga's landing in the Hamburg airbus site, in a nice area north of the Elbe river.

One interesting thing about the Beluga: the pilots very often fail to land them and have to do multiple attempts! The Beluga landing is kind of loud, but it's nothing compared to the sound of the engines when they pull up after a failed attempt

Go around

What?

A "go around" is what they call an aborted landing attempt like the ones you describe.

Oh, why didn't he say that?

Some people like to just put their free word-associations into internet comments. Don't worry about it. :)

> One interesting thing about the Beluga: the pilots very often fail to land them and have to do multiple attempts!

They're likely just doing a fly by for a visual inspection of the runway since it's not a major public airport with full time air traffic control.

Most people are smart enough not to park something in the middle of a runway but might not have an intuitive grasp of how large a wingspan these things have.

Most of the time they land the first time and you can tell they’re coming in too hot when it happens. It could also be when there are container ships crossing the Elbe that they’re scared they might hit

I have been on two tours of the A380 final assembly building, the last time was with senior Airbus people so got basically the customer tour walking round the aircraft.

Have seen Belugas flying and on the ground at Toulouse.

Just saw beluga at Mumbai airport, huge !!

Fun statistic: the Wright Bros' first flight was shorter than a 747 is from tip to tail. (their 4th flight was a bit longer, though)

My dad’s favorite line about it: If you put all the blueprints produced during the design of the 747, in the 747, it wouldn’t be able to take off.

The whole thing was designed on paper, with hordes of draftsmen drawing every single section, detail, etc.

I’m always impressed at how complex things could be with no CAD

And that it was economically feasible to do so.

That's what engineering management is all about, taming and controlling complexity in such mega engineering projects.

Agreed. I kind of envy those guys working on these projects. I hope I was the one there.

That’s the dream, but need and incentive must meet for it to be the reality.

Your comment reminded me of an article about another massive manual-engineering feat: the F1 engines powering the Saturn V rocket. Just the amount of hand-welding alone is phenomenal.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the...

That article has such Asimov's Foundation vibes. Maybe it's just me. The amount of effort going into refurbishing old technology instead of designing something new reminds me of that decrepit old Empire that's reliant on technology designed and built thousands of years ago and all the knowledge being lost.

It’s weird for sure. The number of important things that people don’t understand is always surprising although it’s very common.

Early in my career I had an “Asimov moment” firsthand - I was an intern working on a project to instrument an industrial facility with better sensors, etc. The whole place was dependent on a 100 year old machine that just did its thing every day with only minor maintenance and repairs. (I think the power source has been swapped out a few times) The manufacturer was long defunct and the plan was to keep the thing running indefinitely. Pretty sure it’s still there!

That also reminds me of Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky

Amazing article - I don't know why but I just gulp everything I can about Apollo and related programmes, and that article was fascinating :-)

There is a great chapter on the F1's engineering and development in 'Apollo: Race To The Moon', Murray and Cox. The whole book focuses on the engineering and management challenges involved in putting a man on the moon and returning him safely in one decade.

i love engineering drawings. would be so cool if they could scan them all and put it up online at internet archive or similar.

There is likely OPSEC issues with making that intellectual property public. The government and military use a lot of 747.

The 757 was the last Boeing airplane drawn by hand. CAD systems were there, but they were terrible.

Drawn on paper, and calculations done with slide rules. They were still widely used in engineering.

One of the consequences of this was that there were many parts on the 747 that were fundamentally the same part but had different part numbers (think physical copy/paste). Boeing had a huge effort turn of the century to rationalize those types of situations.

My son is interning with an aviation parts supplier. He's had to deal with a few of those older drawings while developing custom jigs. They are amazing pieces of skill and fine detail.

I believe the Museum of Flight in Seattle has had the original production 747 for some time.

https://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-747-121

Indeed they do, the "City of Everett". You can walk around inside. Boeing used it as a test bed for various experiments. The Museum of Flight is really a gem.

Boeing used to offer tours of the 747 factory. It's immense. I wonder if they're spinning up a different manufacturing line in that building?

South of Portland is the evergreen air and space museum. They have the spruce goose in there, it's huge. The water park next door has an old 747 mounted on the roof, and I'd the start of 6 water slides.

https://www.wingsandwaveswaterpark.com/

That place is cool! Such a weird spot to put such famous flying craft but damned if it isn’t worth the drive.

Evergreen Air’s empire was/is based in McMinnville.

When I went through 20 years ago, it laid claim to “largest building in the world by volume.”

Not sure if it’s retained that title, but the inside is just insanely vast.

I knew a couple of people that had old bicycles from that plant. I'd love to own a Boeing bike.

This antique store had one on the floor, at least a few weeks ago.

https://second-chance-antiques-furniture.business.site

Still is, according to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings

Amazing to me that a building over half a century old is still the largest in the world.

If I recall correctly, that building was so vast that they had trouble controlling the weather inside on a few occasions. Trouble as in, clouds were forming and rain was falling.

May that's just myth, but I like that myth enough to not google it.

They claimed this when I visited in 2019 as well.

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Everett_Factory#Current...), they are left with just the 767 (currently only available as a cargo or military tanker plane) and 777. 787 production was moved completely to the (non-unionized and reputedly lower-quality) South Carolina plant in 2021.

I went in that tour about 5 years ago. It was fun. Would recommend.

If you’re impressed by genuinely large flying things, I can’t recommend the Kennedy Space Center enough. Just standing beneath one of the rockets is truly impressive. Just one of the stars painted on the side of vehicle assembly building is as tall as three Kerbals on top of each other wearing a trench coat and pretending to be one tall guy. Like wow!

That stuff is cool, but nothing has ever blown my mind like seeing the spruce goose. It’s at the evergreen aviation museum outside of portland, and it’s impossible to believe how big it is.

Going to museums like that is honestly one of the main reasons I'd like to visit the US. Unfortunately though, even just the biggest ones seem to be way too spread out to attempt in one trip, coming from Europe.

Recommended summertime itinerary:

Fly into New York City. Visit museums there for several days. See a Broadway show. See the Intrepid.

Take the train down to Washington DC. Several days at the Smithsonian there, including a trip out to the Udvar-Hazy Center. Take a day trip by train to Baltimore to see the National Aquarium and the Maryland Science Center.

Rent a car, drive to a beach town in Virginia for a weekend; drive back and take the train back to NYC. Or, drive up to a Delaware beach instead and return the car in NYC.

See the other museums in NYC that you missed the first time. Fly home.

Note, there are several Smithsonian museums.

E.g. Natural History, Air & Space, etc.

Growing up in the DC area has spoiled me for museums. They're high quality and generally free admission.

> See the Intrepid

Second this. Glad to see that it's still open. I was last there sometime in the early 90's.

If you could still go and see the Hindenburg, it would really blow your mind. It is almost three times as large: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Giant_Ai...

I would also recommend standing underneath the upright Saturn 5 at Huntsville. Those engines are unbelievable.

The Delta Flight Museum at the Atlanta Airport has one on display that you can go on board and walk around inside. They've removed the the interior paneling in places so you can see the wiring and flight control cables.

https://www.deltamuseum.org/

Didn't realize this existed. Will have to check it out!

Hrm. Imagine living near to the flight path of an airport. Say something like 1.5km to the side of it, at which point they are about 400m high, going between 280 to 320kph, depending on the wind, and model.

One late evening, shortly before 23:00, where airport is closing for the night because of local noise restriction laws, except for emergencies, otherwise heavy fines, something wasn't on that glidepath.

Immersing me in it's landing lights from beneath, and somewhere in the middle from each wing. Flew erratically. Curve to the left and coming down really low, then UP, then going back right towards the normal path. Coming directly over me.

While doing that the wingtips vibrated by at least half a meter, making the position lights a blurred vertical line. Wasn't even that loud, just BIG!

If it wouldn't have done the reclimb and curving back towards the path, it would have crashed into the highrises next to me.

What was it? A 747 from UPS, clearly visible because the golden letters against the brown tail were illuminated.

Sat there at my desk, thinking WTF?! Are you doing VFR, or what?

UPS always damages my packages or marks then delivered days ahead of the actual dropoff.

Once lived very close to an Air Force Base that got quite a bit of C-17 traffic. Not the quietest place to live.

If you are in Europe the Technik Museum Speyer has one: https://speyer.technik-museum.de/de/ And if you are in the general area, their sister museum in Sinsheim has a Concorde and its Russian counterpart.

...and I bet they are already shopping around for an A380 to put beside the 747, similar to what they did with the Concorde and the TU-144.

I've been inside the one in Speyer, it's really well done. And you can walk out on the wing.

I was used to seeing mostly smallish domestic flight planes up close and to me they seemed big but not imposing. Once I saw one of them parked next to 747, and boy was I blown away. The small plane's fuselage was sort of same size as the 747's engine; and 747 had four of those engines! That's when I realised how humongous 747 is. I still marvel at human agency; not only can they build structures as big as 747 it can also fly across continent, reliably and safely carry hundreds of passengers in total comfort.

> in total comfort.

That depends..

It certainly does. Not a knock on Boeing[1], but my least comfortable flight ever was on a Virgin 747 from London to New York. At 194 cm (6”4) I’m tall, but not insanely so. I got a middle seat in the middle section where it was physically impossible to fit my legs. Thankfully, before even taxiing out I was able to move to a bulkhead seat in the family row. Since then I insist on picking the seats (emergency exit row ftw) when travelling with someone.

[1] Though I believe that aircraft manufacturers should require some minimal level of comfort on planes they make.

Ultimately they're making planes for the airlines to buy though. If the airlines say they'd rather fit in 300 people by making most of the rows cramped together than 250 people with more legroom, the aircraft manufacturers will make sure they account for that in their design.

A 747 once carried more than 1000 people. No seats.

For anyone else wondering, this happened during Operation Solomon in 1991:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Solomon#World_record

What astonishes me is that they built the 747 first, before the small planes. It’s like Airbus’s birth was initiated with the Concorde, then the mass-passenger planes. All with negative timestamps, since we were before 01/01/1970 (joke).

Leaders of that time knew they had to start with the grandest project before cascading for a full range of smaller products; whereas leaders today roll out an MVP and try to grow from there.

It truly was another epoch, the epoch of mass amounts of money and resources, not little optimizations.

I don't think that's true. Pretty sure the 707 and 727 were launched and in service before the 747 even started development. The 737 was certainly in development as well, and was in service before the 74.

So by the time the 747 was flying with airlines, they already had the 707, 727 and 737 flying.

The 747 was the first widebody (dual aisle) plane ever produced, but the 707, 727 and 737 all came before it.

Boeing quite literally "bet the company" on the 747 and if it hadn't been as popular as it was the company would have struggled to continue, saddled with enormous debt and no products companies wanted to buy

Interestingly, one of the ways that they hedged this bet was by designing it to be easily converted into a cargo plane (though the assumption was the supersonic aircraft would be the replacements).

One of my favorite pictures is from 2007 when Boeing lined them all up and you can just how big the 747 is.

https://twistedsifter.com/2010/11/picture-of-the-day-boeing-...

Of those aircraft, the upper lobe of the 707, 727, 737 and 757 is the same. There's a lot of history still being carried over into aircraft manufactured today.

Indeed. I find it fascinating that the widespread modern generations of the 737 still have largely (or maybe entirely?) the same fuselage design as the now-ancient 707.

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_GE9X used in the 777x (assuming it eventually gets certified) is significantly larger than the 747 engines. Even the engines used on the original 777 from the 90s outsize individual 747 engines, which is somewhat terrifying.

The 777X engine diameter is about the same as a 737 fuselage

https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e4288424b0e63bb7cb098...

Yesterday, I took my 4-year-old son to la Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace in Paris so he could see and walk through a 747 in real-life. This was after flying to Frankfurt on a 787, and seeing a 747 and A380 on the tarmac there. He said, "I want to go on those ones."

Managed to fulfill the 747. La Musée had an A380 on the tarmac too, but not open to walk through.

Honestly, for aviation geeks, it's a worthwhile visit for the 747 and Concordes alone.

Exactly. Inside the 747 luggage bay, there is a brand new Renault Twingo 1 from the mid 90's. The plane is so huge the car looks like a toy (it's small, but still a car...).

I think the effect is partially due to all modern (well, jet age) airliners looking more or less the same at a glance. You can tell the 747 is larger than a, say, A320, because it has four engines and the second floor. But just how much larger the 747 is you see when they are parked beside each other.

I think there's quite a few in air museums - Qantas alone donated two of theirs to museums (the Qantas Founder's Museum and the HARS Aviation Museum).

I was so confused for a minute, thinking I’m reading about caterpillar smartphone

This is true for many airplanes. The first time I saw the SR-71 I was shocked at how large it was. The photographs simply don't do them justice and often the pics that are used are those of the planes flying which have no items to set a scale with.

For those wondwring, the Blackbird is the same lenght as a 737-600. So, the next time you board a 737, try to picture something that size going mach 3+...

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