Legacy of the An-225 - The future we never got...

this video is brought to you by my other channel aviation station the anton of an225 was just the beginning the engineers had big plans for the aircraft and by big we mean huge meet the an325 and its bigger brother the antonov aks they were templates for a new soviet space faring future from shuttle transport to space plane launchers to even future designs that were somewhat wacky and out of this world but with the news of the destruction of the one and only an225 in ukraine it comes the end of an era perhaps even the end of the last soviet union mega project in today's video we won't just be looking back at perhaps one of the most magical aircraft to ever fly but appreciate the good that it did during its life and what could have been this is the future that we never got [Music] the an225 began its life as a heavy lift aircraft designed to carry the energia rocket boosters and the soviet shuttle baran either way up to 200 tons of cargo could be carried externally on top of the fuselage its configuration was much like the nasa shuttle transport 747 used by the united states to bring the shuttle back from the landing side to its launch pad with six engines and a horizontal stabilizer wing that was bigger than most jets actual wingspan it was a striking image of raw power and some would say arrogant defiance of gravity other than the impressive external load capacity the an-225 could carry up to 250 tons of internal cargo engines generators tanks planes or helicopters you name it during its long career it broke many world records like lifting the world's longest airlifted piece of cargo or the world's heaviest cargo transported by air and if you're wondering just how many passengers it could carry i've actually already done all the maths right here but the real advantage of having such a large aircraft that could be used not only just for transport but it could be used for launching rockets as well the an225 by design was future-proofed in the 1970s both the ussr and america were pushing the limits of ground based rocketry but always a sticking point was going from zero on the ground into the sky rather than actually reaching orbit if a rocket could skip the first stage moving from under the full influence of gravity to terminal escape velocity that would mean far less payload for fuel and more for scientific or perhaps military endeavors hence the idea to launch from an aircraft instead the an225 being large enough to carry not just a shuttle for transport but enough rocket fuel as well could be used as a launch platform in itself dubbed the max the multi-purpose aerospace system this program was focused on developing a set of different spacecraft which could be used with the an225 as a launch platform there were three main variants the max os which included a fuel tank and a smaller manned max molyneux spacecraft with approximately 7 tons of cargo next we have the max t an unmanned version with a fuel tank which could be used to send heavy cargo into orbit and the max m which could carry a larger spacecraft like the buran or the tupolev oos which we'll talk about in a bit the program was eventually cancelled in 1991 along with the cancellation of the other aircraft projects around that era as well as the entirety of the ussr but that's a video for a future time but what if they wanted to launch something say a smudge bigger than a simple little shuttle well they would have to start putting the word humongous in front of everything in the 1990s the british approached antonov to produce an updated version of the an225 one called the an325 a plane with a super creative name that would have an additional engine on each side to a total of eight with four of them positioned as pairs on the same pylons a similar solution to the one used on the b-52 this humongous aircraft would be able to take the new british horizontal takeoff and landing spacecraft or hot h-o-t-o-l a single stage to orbit aerospace vehicle that you can expect us to cover very soon the soviets did extensive wind tunnel testing and concluded that the project would be possible but the next year the ussr wouldn't even exist anymore and the project lost interest this wasn't the end of the an325 project however in 2005 it was actually the ukrainians who started to think about the future use of this platform eugenoya design bureau and antonov started working on a new spacecraft called the svitsiats which would launch from the an325 or the an-225 and if you didn't know there's actually another an-225 fuselage sitting in ukraine but it was never completed but i'll get back to that in a minute because first this piggyback ride to space is going to get even more crazier back in the 80s during the one-stage spacecraft race tupolev design bureau was working on a completely new project called the tupolev oos where oos stands for well one stage orbital craft so we're talking here about a possible nuclear-powered double the size of the baran craft that could be launched from an aircraft but not exactly the one you're thinking special note these 3d graphics that you're seeing comes from haze grey art who is a fantastic 3d artist who does all sorts of wild and crazy spacecraft so i put a link here and in the description for you to check out you see one of the launch options was from mid-air or to be more precise from an airborne launch platform such as the an225 however due to the massive size and weight of this new spacecraft tupolev and antonov started to work on a new project called the antonov aks why this is so crazy you may ask this thing was proposed to be a massive double fuselage an225 built out of the two existing fuselages it would have 18 d18t turbo fans with a combined thrust of 420 000 kilogram force and be able to carry up to 1 650 tonnes or 3.6 million pounds its wingspan would be 153 meters or 500 feet long twice that of the boeing triple 7x we have today ironically it would not even be the most insane aircraft planned by the soviets during that era such as the malnia 1000 heracles which deserves its own video as for the an225 the future was bright and their dreams were big but sometimes dreams don't happen and unfortunately it's the part of the video where we have to talk about the present rather than the future as you may have probably heard by now there is evidence that one of the biggest aircraft in the world and the only one of its kind was destroyed during the ongoing russian ukrainian conflict after the russian troops stormed the hostimo airport which is used by the antonov company and where the myria was stationed there was some heavy fighting over the next two days and we got images of the an225s hangar or rather cover burning further satellite imagery confirmed that there was an airplane there and we can say with first certainty that the an225 is either damaged or destroyed at this point what i'm about to show you next might be shocking for some viewers the latest info we could find is a video where you see now and it shows that the an225 is clearly destroyed and burned perhaps beyond repair although at least some of the engines might still be usable and could be removed and now this is where that second fuselage comes into play there's a complete second airframe of the exact same design that is somewhere around 60 to 70 completed and it is likely stored at the exact same airport in the past the chinese have been interested in buying and completing this second aircraft and using it as a heavy cargo transport platform but the deal was never finalized the owners themselves have said that the simple cost of 300 million and three years time would turn this airframe into an actual aircraft so again we can hope that this airframe can either be used to repair the current aircraft or as a base to build a new one no matter what side of the fence you sit on you can appreciate the magic that the aircraft was but perhaps since maria means dream in ukrainian we can now only dream for a brighter future for the an225 the antonov bureau and ukraine as a whole thanks again so much for watching if you'd like to become a patreon and support the channel then there is a link down in the description [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Found And Explained

Views: 401,490

Keywords: an-225, an-325, an aks, tupolev, space travel, space race, space plane, rocket plane, mustard, real engineering, maks, ukraine conflight, russia, russia war, ghost of kiev, antanov, destroyed, lost future, future tech, soviet, ussr, antonov 225, biggest airplane in the world, antonov an-225, antonov airlines, antonov 225 destroyed today, antonov 225 destroyed video, antonov 225 takeoff, antonov 225 landing, antonov 225 cockpit, antonov 225 size comparison

Id: VFRAx12TLTY

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 05 2022