Plans revealed for 356ft long world’s largest plane dubbed ‘Skytanic’
It's an absolute whopper - but it's not for commercial flights.
A Colorado-based company has unveiled plans to build the world's largest plane, called the WindRunner.
This enormous plane will be 356 feet long and 79 feet tall, all of that with a surprisingly reasonable wingspan of 261 feet - and its massive bulk was designed specifically to transport the blades of huge wind turbines.
You might have seen these enormous blades being moved by complicated rail and truck arrangements, and it's obvious how difficult it can be to move them around while new wind farms are being built.
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This plane would make that drastically simpler, and has a carrying capacity of 80 tons, enough to potentially carry two blades at once.
The jet is a bit of a marvel, looking like a plane that you might be familiar with but scaled up enormously, and can open up completely at the front to allow the loading and unloading of a massively long rack holding two turbine blades.
The energy company that plans to make the jet, Radia, said that it designed the plane because "today’s largest wind turbines and the even larger ones of the future cannot be transported to prime onshore wind farms via ground infrastructure".
This is largely due to the size, but also in some cases the remote location of these farm sites, and since larger air blades are theorized to make for greater energy yields, turbines might only get bigger down the line.
Of course, since this is a massive plane, it's not like you could just land it anywhere you liked - it needs a 6,000-foot runway in order to touch down safely.
So, any wind farm in the future looking to actually use the WindRunner for its infrastructure needs will have to build some sort of airfield to accommodate it. Surprisingly, this could potentially still be cheaper than the crazy planning process required to transport blades over land.
Right now these are only plans, though - the WindRunner has been designed, but it doesn't exist in physical form yet.
Radia says it could build the first jet in the next four years, though, after years of planning.
Given that it could also carry other cargo, not just turbine blades, it's also possible that Radia will broaden out the WindRunner's appeal to more industries.
For now, though, the renders of the plane's design are pretty stunning, and even though the 'Skytanic' nickname it's been given definitely highlights its size, it does feel a bit on the nose.