Posted on 06/01/2013 7:52:41 PM PDT by lbryce
I won't look at Soviet, Russian inspired anything no matter how spectacular simply out of spite but this Russian flying garbage can, by no mean beautiful is worth a peek taking off in a manner you might call Antonov Anachronisitic
looks like it would be easy to hit.
Big target.
Wasn’t it ‘unveiled’ in late 1980s?
That is a big plane
I believe the US has on occasion hired the Antonov for military and space payloads we lack the capacity to airlift. The gigantic cockpit is really something.
I think that cameraman had too much vodka at the rollout party. I counted 32 tires on that thing.
Like it or not, you have to admit that the Russkies know how to do big.
They had some very talented engineers and designers.
I saw a show about this plane on cable and it is an amazing aircraft.
This is the Mriya, not just any ol’ AN-225!
Canada hired one of them for relief flights a few years back, can’t recall whether it was for Haiti or the Boxing Day Tsunami. It’s an impressive beast- it even carries an inventory of spare parts and a machine shop for repairs away from base.
Oh, this is new- the ones I’ve seen were the AN-124.
Howard Hughes would love it.
AN-225
They completed one of those and it went into service in 1988. A second was not completed at that time, but apparently the Russians saw a need for additional capacity, so work began to complete the 2nd bird around 2006. Work stopped again because of a lack of funds in 2008.
I’m wondering if they finally got the $300 million they supposedly needed to finish what was, in 2008, about a 70-80% complete plane.... And this is footage of that bird.
As far as the other post - about seeing regular trips by this plane to the US - that would be rather surprising - with only 1 (maybe 2) working models. The Antinov 125 looks similar, but is somewhat smaller. Those are relatively common to see in major air-cargo work here in the US. But then again - I could be wrong.
Those wings must really flex...
Impressive. Maybe if we didn’t task NASA with making Mohammedans feel better about themselves we wouldn’t have to rely on another country’s technology.
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