19th Century made Gigantic Aircraft, Antonov- An225 Mriya
19th Century made Gigantic Aircraft, Antonov- An225 MriyaFebruary 2, 2017- Kathmandu
-Tamish Giri
Comparing with any of the flying object toady, ,Antonov An-225Mriya is the largest of all. It even dwarfs Airbus A380 and Boeing 747, also outlives U.S. Air Force C-5A Galaxy. It can even load enough foods to end a famine. Yet, bitterly, the original purpose of manufacturing Antonov Mriya 225 was not to support humanitarian causes.
The giant aircraft was rather framed by Soviet Union, currently Ukraine, for carrying the space shuttle from production factory to launch pad.
Soviet Union’s penchant for building the world’s biggest object is the only cause of An-225 existence. The Soviets had planned to build the aircraft with freighter capacity twice as more than of Boeing 747. The aircraft was built during the great cold war of 19th Century which resulted in the collapse of USSR.
The wing span of the aircraft is 88.4 meter and its nose to tail lengths 84 meters. This giant dimension of the An-225 occupies the space of an official football ground measuring it from nose to tail and wing to wing. It also has a maximum takeoff weight of about 1.32 million pounds, which is half times heavier than fully loaded C-5A.
Ukrainian engineers equipped the An-225 with six ZMKB Progress Lotarev D-18T turbofan jets to get the giant aircraft into the sky. The turbo engines each are capable of pumping out 51,590 pounds of thrust.
The engineers only took forty two month of production time launching Mriya. The plane made its first voyage on Dec. 21, 1988 less than a year before the fall of Berlin Wall and dishevelment of Soviet Union.
Mriya 225 is derived from its original aircraft and is the updated version of Antonov An-124 military craft. Mriya is forty feet longer than An-124 and has two additional turbo fan engines. There are total thirty two wheels in the landing gear system of the aircraft twenty of which are steerable enabling the aircraft to turn within a sixty meter wide runway. The whole sum of the aircraft with updated parts weights 390 tones.
Mriya can carry a pay load of 250,000 kg making it the world largest flying object. Mriya made its international debut in style by landing in 1989 on Paris Air Show carrying Buran space shuttle. During the Air Show in Paris, investors had approached the aircraft to make it an air hotel and air mall.
There were many orders made for manufacturing additional Mriya 225 aircraft but coming to the current existence, engineers were not able to produce the aircraft.
General characteristics
Crew: 6
Length: 84 m (275 ft 7 in)
Wingspan: 88.4 m (290 ft 0 in)
Height: 18.1 m (59 ft 5 in)
Wing area: 905 m2 (9,740 sq ft)
Aspect ratio: 8.6
Empty weight: 285,000 kg (628,317 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 640,000 kg (1,410,958 lb)
Fuel capacity: 300,000 kg
Cargo hold – volume 1,300 m3 (46,000 cu ft), 43.35 m (142.2 ft) long × 6.4 m (21 ft) wide × 4.4 m (14 ft) tall
Powerplant: 6 × ZMKB Progress D-18 turbofans, 229.5 kN (51,600 lbf) thrust each
