Super-Lifters: The Mega-jets that can Carry Anything

they are the rarest sort of aircraft the kind of plane that even the most DieHard Aviation enthusiasts often just hope to see once in their lifetime capable of lifting the biggest heaviest and most persistently unwieldly Cargo in the world and bringing it halfway across the planet on a moment's notice they are some of aviation's unsung heroes throughout the past half century or so they also and this is a fact look absolutely ridiculous it's at this intersection of extreme lift capacity and utterly goofy appearance that we find the super lifters an exclusive Club of some of the most immense bubble bodied aircraft of all [Music] time today's Journey Begins all the way back in 1960 in the earliest days of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration better know today as NASA back in the day NASA had a lot of overlapping responsibilities but there was one big overarching task that encompassed most of their missions build a really massive rocket and launch it into space it's kind of what NASA does as it turns out though rocket Parts can't be made by just anybody and it's here that NASA found themselves in a bit of a quandry that's going to come up again and again and again throughout today's video someone with a lot of money in this case the United States government had big heavy materials in one place and they wanted those big heavy materials to be somewhere else in this case rocket parts that were on the American West Coast that needed to be on the American east coast and as we'll see again later that someone again NASA wanted those big heavy materials to move a lot faster than they were currently capable of moving which in this case had consisted of them being loaded onto barges and eventually tugged all the way down to the Panama Canal and then to the Gulf of Mexico but as we'll see again and again the parts NASA needed to move were just so big that the aircraft of the day simply couldn't handle them and now enter into the picture John M Conroy a World War II bomber pilot who saw the potential for a solution in the form of the Boeing 377 Strat Cruiser by this time the strata Cruiser was Obsolete and while it had been a pioneering plane for commercial Aviation it had gotten no thanks at all from the airline industry Conroy was aware of the problems over at Nasa and he worked out that the Strat Cruiser was actually capable of generating the required Liv to carry the rocket parts NASA had in mind the problem wasn't in their weight but in the unwieldly shape and size yet that problem too could be fixed if only the dimensions of the Strat Cruiser could be changed when Conroy presented his idea to NASA it received only a muted response but nonetheless he pushed on anyhow conro established a company to build his concept aircraft and using a strat Cruiser that had been sold off by its last Airline he modified the planes at a new 6 M wide upper fuselage slapped on top of the current fuselage the tail and rear section of the plane were made so that they could be taken off to load cargo and the entire thing was given a cohesive outer layer of metal sheeting to keep it aerodynamic the result was an aircraft that for its time would have looked like a monstrosity if we imagine the front of the plane as its face then the pregnant guppy had a forehead that a gang of middle schoolers would describe as a five head but when it came pretty good when it took to the skies for the first time during an unsanctioned test flight in September 1962 in which not one but two with its four engines were nonfunctional the plane somehow performed pretty beautifully within just a few months of its first flight Conroy's plane named the pregnant guppy as a tongue-in-cheek nod to a comment made by a NASA official when the idea was first presented had now been approved to haul NASA's Cargo in the early months it could move components of the Titan 2 rockets for the Gemini program later it would carry parts of the Saturn one Rockets flying cross country with a crew of three the pregnant guppy could at speeds of 370 mph just under 600 km per hour although it cruised at 224 mph or 361 km an hour in all it could carry payloads of up to 34,000 or 17 tons doing the work of the prior seab barges in a fraction of the time and at a lower overall cost the pregnant guppy would serve NASA until 1974 at which time it was sold off to carry Airline parts for a couple of years before retirement but if the pregnant guppy was somehow not impressive enough already it's here that we introduce it successor craft the super guppy this was built at a time when NASA's rocket Ambitions had moved beyond what one solitary pregnant guppy could carry in its fuselage let alone what it could carry while taking one at a time trips across the us and this subsequent line of five Super Guppies was an answer to all of NASA's problems it was designed to carry a completed s5b stage of the Saturn 5 rocket which was to form the backbone of the Apollo program during the 1960s the super guppy used a heavier duty military grade version of the Strat Cruiser known as the c97 Strat freighter to accommodate the cargo be carrying the fuselage was lengthened from 110 to 141 ft with an interior compartment of 25 ft it was also given new engines to boost its power and range and its tail and wings were altered to increased lift and maneuverability all told the super Cy could carry a load of £54,000 27 tons or a full 10 tons more than the pregnant guppy had been able to it cruised along at a much faster 300 mph 48 km an hour at a range of nearly 2,000 Mi which is just over 3,200 km the super gubby program though nearly ended in tragedy when in 1965 the Prototype suffered a fuselage collapse in its upper bulbas section while practicing high-speed Dives at Edwards Air Force Base luckily all parties survived the accident and the aircraft was saved before being rebuilt with significant reinforcement to its upper fuselage the second model was built with even better engines and was modified to lengthen the cargo compartment even more four of those later models the super guppy turbines were constructed in total including two made by the then independent UTA French Airlines also during this time two smaller mini guppy planes would be constructed offering a smaller packaged version of the same features as their predecessors today one super copy still flies with NASA where it is the last operational Boeing 377 in the world now it does double duty for the Department of Defense and other government contractors have used it to move among other things entire other aircraft nestled inside its other fuselage it continues to beat out the US military's heaviest lift aircrafts including the C5 Galaxy in terms of the sheer size of the cargo it can carry and it's likely to play a major role in preparation for America's Artemus series of moon missions three others are on display including one in Arizona one in too and one in [Music] Hamburg from the super guppy we move to the dreamlifter better known as the Boeing 747400 large cargo freighter or lcf first announced in 2003 and first taken to the skies in 200 6 Boeing's Fleet of four dreamlifters is a far more sophisticated advancement of the oversized load carrying aircraft but where the super guppy and some of the other planes that we'll discuss today are distinguished by their bulbous upper fuselage the dreamlifter is distinguished by its gantu and humpback the dreamlifter was conceived just over two decades ago as the Boeing Company got to work on its most recent line of commercial airliners the Boeing 787 Dreamliner it's from the Dreamliner that the dreamlifter gets its name the dream lifter is the heavy lifter for parts that will eventually be built into the Dreamliner pretty straightforward stuff there the parts needed for the Dreamliner were too big to fit inside standard shipping containers to travel around the world for assembly not to mention that sea shipping took far too much time and neither Boeing's available heavy lift aircraft nor the Antonov a124 or a225 were big enough to move the required Parts either instead Boeing took matters into their own hands deciding to convert four used 747s into a fleet of heavy lifters that Boeing could have on hand for future projects as well the dreamlifter unpressurized cargo section hits a total width of 27 1/2 ft with an interior tall enough to handle any of the cargo that Boeing intended on shipping around the world the plane boasted a payload capacity of A4 million P 125 tons more than 4 and a half times that of what NASA's super guy is able to lift the main cargo compartment comes with a volume of 65,000 cubic feet and the planes can cruise at a speed of 541 Mi or 871 km hour which is not much slower than the Boeing 78 87 that it was intended to build with a range of 4,800 M 7,800 km the dream lifter was more than able to make transatlantic flights it featured an opening and closing tail compartment and uses the world's biggest cargo loader the DBL 100 to get his Cargo in and out the dream lifter wasn't exactly pretty at least in its early days but it proved to be more than capable of passing all of its flight tests and it began service just a couple of years after its conception in the summer of 2007 by 2010 all four dreamlifters were operational and since then they've been primar used for Boeing's internal operations transporting heavy airplane Parts all over the world the plane distinguished itself although accidentally in 2013 when after mistakenly landing at the wrong airport a dream lifter was able to take off again despite that Airport's Runway being over 3,000 ft or 940 meters shorter than what the plane was supposed to need in order to get into the sky during the co pandemic a dreamlifter stuffed with half a million face masks landed in Salt Lake City as part of State Relief efforts otherwise the dreamlifter career has been thus far quiet and unremarkable which really is exactly what you want from a Dependable heavy lift [Music] aircraft so moving on from us-based Super lifters we come to the Airbus Beluga family of aircraft the absolutely gigantic Beluga super transporter and the somehow even bigger Beluga XL like Bing's dreamlifter the Beluga was a response to need from inside Airbus itself where heavy lift aircraft offered the best option to transport oversized aircraft parts from Airbus manufacturers to assembly lines for a while Airbus had used the aformentioned super copy airlifters to do the job but by the 1990s those aircrafts were well old as bones now the world's existing Alternatives had enough internal space to carry what airb needed and the idea of just strapping airplane parts to the back of another plane was a bit of a non-starter in 1992 construction began on what would be the first of a series of Airbus planes that were designated the super transporter the base for their plane was the fuselage of the Airbus a300 600 a Dependable commercial airliner that at the airframe and lift capacity to expand into a bulus uper fuselage Airbus would eventually build five Super Transporters at a rate of one airframe per year the first entered service in January 1996 and within 2 years time the Airbus Fleet of super Guppies were allowed to gracefully Waltz onward into retirement the Beluga is all things considered a pretty cool aircraft powered by two General Electric turbo fan engines not four engines like the other planes we've discussed thus far and flown by a crew of three the Bluer can hold loads of over £13,000 or 512 tons its internal compartment has a diameter of over 23 ft with a total cargo hold capacity of 53,000 cubic feet the plane flies at a maximum speed of 537 mph or 864 km hour with a range of 1700 mil off nearly 2,800 km when it's carrying heavy payloads if each is a roll on rolloff loading system and while it's not quite big enough to carry the fuselage of the Airbus A380 it's able to carry just about anything else that their bus can stuff into its cargo holes when it entered service the Beluga fleet was charged primarily with varying airbus's own aircraft components across 11 sites in Europe which with the fleet in full operation they accomplish via 60 flights each week the belugas can be chartered for other purposes and they've carried everything from precious artwork to parts of space stations to entire helicopters in their cargo base the planes have been continually upgraded and they've been given a specialized Beluga only loading St station at an airport in Wales where high winds had typically been an impediment to their operations the belera set multiple records for distance and payload volume that's delivered desperately needed relief supplies on several occasions worldwide and it's boasted a fantastic safety record on par with some of the most dependable and accident immune planes in the world but even that whale of a plane couldn't satisfy airbus's appetite for heavy lift capacity and by January of 2020 well it wouldn't have to by then a whole other Beast had taken to the skies on airbus's behalf the Beluga XL an even bigger even B version of the Beluga aircraft with a program that started in 2014 and took its first flight in 2018 the bler XL uses the more advanced fuselage of the twin engine Airbus A330 as its base on top it grafts an even bigger bubble fuselage one that's 23 ft longer and 5 1/2 ft wider than the original Beluga that means a capacity 30% Higher by volume and a payload increase of 6 ttimes which by the way it can load in half the time using more efficient systems it's got a significantly greater range than the original Beluga it's less than 100 miles per hour slower in speed and it's reinforced with a much heavier Duty frame that allows it to carry not one but two full-sized Airbus a350 airliner Wings inside it Airbus would build a fleet of six Beluga XLS with a final plane at the time of writing just wrapping up preparations to begin regular operation after completing its first flight in July of 2023 it's also got a winking beluga whale face painted on it whereas all the others got a regular smiley face as the fleet ramps up its service capacity it'll take over operations for the first line belugas while offering not just additional cargo space but a whole other plane to scale up airbus's manufacturing operations the five first line models will be phased into a new division Airbus beluca transport where they'll likely move into a primary rooll toing contract transport for commercial customers those contracts are in high demand by February of 2023 Airbus had filled nearly half of its contract transport slots for the year all told the Beluga XL is an improvement on the first line belugas in just about every way making them not just the biggest but the most Dependable Fleet of heavy lift aircraft in the entire world still no word though on whether Airbus might adapt some A380 frames into a beluga xxxl someday it's a good idea though a us take [Music] notes and finally we come to it the absolute unit king of the skies dare we say the goat the antov a225 Maria we've already done two separate videos on this aircraft on Mega project so we're not going to belay the point too much but nevertheless we've got to give the Maria a shout out and illustrate just how unbelievably gargantuan it was compared to even the super lifters that we've discussed so far weighing into maximum takeoff weight of 1.4 million or 700 tons of which a full 270 tons or more were made up of pure payload the six crew six engine rear could haul unbelievable volumes across a range of 15,400 KM or 9600 Mi that's over 16 times the payload capacity of the pregnant guppy 10 times the capacity of the super guppy five times that of beluga 4 and a half times that of the Beluga XL and well over double the capacity of the Boeing dreamlifter instead of a blown out up a bubble fuselage the Maria featured a very long cargo halt at 142 ft or 43 1/2 m in the plane's massive belly but it's in looking at the Maria that the advantage of these other lower payload super lifters really becomes evidence because while the a225 could put any one of them to shame in terms of pure tonnage it couldn't beat any of them even the pregnant guppy of the early 1960s when it came to payload size the ceiling of the Maria's cargo halt was just 14 ft high and it's just 21 ft wide what that means is that the super guppy the beluga and the dreamlifter are doing work that truly no other airplane can do not the a225 not the heavy heavy lifters built by illution not the standard Boeing or Airbus Freighters and not any aircraft built or bought by any military in the world if there are different strokes for different folks well there are different cargo holds for different cargo loads and when it comes to the work of the super lifters there are just some areas where those goofy looking bubble bodied planes are simply [Music] untouchable [Music]

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 143,737

Keywords: the largest aircraft, interesting, the most biggest plane, military transport, military aircraft, amazing, transport, transport aircraft, cargo, boeing, lockheed, aviation, us aircraft, plane, engine, aircraft, airplanes

Id: npudkzF7OLY

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2024