
Airbus Beluga XL - Tomte
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Beluga_XL
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ArmandGrillet
We can see one landing from the office I work in once in a while, it really
looks like a flying whale over Hamburg.

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anpat
Always loved to watch it flying over the city. My old office in emporio
offered some of the best views of beautiful HH.

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nabla9
If I had extra money, I would buy one of those and make it into a 'vomit
comet' and sell tickets.

All that empty space inside to move in zero G would be fun. Just add some
padding and nets to avoid injuries.

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benhurmarcel
It's not pressurized

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t0mas88
That's fine upto 15,000 ft for a maximum of 30 minutes according to aviation
regulations. So depending on how you do your vomiting it may work :-)

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greglindahl
The top of a Vomit Comet parabola is a lot higher than 15,000 feet. Having
that as a ceiling is going to shorten the zero-g time a lot.

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imglorp
Not a problem, just issue each person a little O2 pony bottle and nasal
cannula. At 2 lpm should be plenty for a 30m fun ride.

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FireBeyond
Tangential: one of the problems with Wikipedia - either help people write so
that time isn't an issue, or have people who look for things and edit.

So much of this article refers to 2017 as being in the future.

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perl4ever
Seems fine to me - what is annoying is an old article where you can't pin down
when it was written. This way at least people can see that updating is needed.

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mrtksn
Why these planes remain specialists equipment and not widely adopted by the
logistics industry? Are they very inefficient?

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mechhacker
I took a brief look and these planes are unpressurized.

This is opposite of the typical cargo planes, which often are older passenger
planes or derived types that still have cabin pressurization.

It depends on what you're delivering. For the large airplane parts they are
designed for, pressurization isn't needed.

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nuccy
Beluga XL has cargo space volume 2209 m^3, while An-225 Mriya has 1300 m^3
(pressurized), cargo weight is 53 and 189 tonnes, respectively. So you need a
big, "light" and non-pressure requiring cargo to justify the use of Beluga XL,
which is exactly what Airbus is using it for, by transporting fuselages of
other planes.

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masklinn
Mriya is a 30 years old one-off, a better comparison would be An-124 or
747-8F.

Though Mriya's cargo weight capacity is 250t, 190t is the heaviest _single
item_ it's lifted (a power station gas generator, from Poland to Armenia).

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gumby
I love the beluga paint job.

Given its use for transporting large plane parts I’d think an airship would
more cost effective. For wind turbine places and the like too, as in both
cases size is a bigger barrier than weight.

I know there have been some airship projects in the past few years: why have
they not succeeded?

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alkonaut
Consider the software predicaments caused by the changed aerodynamics at some
angles of the 737-MAX, and consider the shape of this thing compared to the
A330. I wonder how much of the control of A330 had to be updated for this -
and how much that will cost for each sold individual of the transporter
version.

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masklinn
The problem of the 737 was trying to keep to the type rating so crew didn't
need re-training and re-certification, especially for airlines which refuse to
fly anything but 737s.

This was not a concern here, it's not going to be sold to operators (let alone
operators who don't want to retrain crew).

There are only 5 Beluga XL (likewise its predecessor) and it exists solely and
exclusively for Airbus to move parts around due to the distributed nature of
its production.

Before Airbus built their own cargo aircraft, they used Super Guppies, which
is why there is one on display near or in two of Airbus' facilities (Toulouse
and Hamburg), despite the Guppy being on a Boeing base. Airbus actually bought
the right to build Guppies at the time.

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thrillgore
I think the addition of the Beluga smile is just adorable.

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golergka
How much do you have to spend on logistics so you end up paying $1 billion for
a special plane program? Is transportation of parts is so speed-sensitive in
plane manufacturing industry that you couldn't possibly use some other kind of
transport?

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samatman
This is actually a good question.

The answer is that Airbus is a consortium, a prestige project of the European
Union.

One consequence of this, is that parts are manufactured in multiple countries,
at a considerable distance from one another, as opposed to the more
consolidated approach taken by Boeing.

Therefore, they have a unique need to ship very large and somewhat delicate
parts from place to place. The Beluga is a consequence of this.

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masklinn
> One consequence of this, is that parts are manufactured in multiple
> countries, at a considerable distance from one another, as opposed to the
> more consolidated approach taken by Boeing.

FWIW Boeing built a similar plane (the 747-400 LCF / 747 Dreamlifter) to move
787 parts from suppliers, as they were considered too large for marine
shipping and existing cargo planes. The biggest difference is LCF is a
conversion from regular 747s (though according to wikipedia the program cost
the same $1bn, being built from a much heavier plane the Dreamlifter has much
higher capacity but somewhat lower volume in its similarly unpressurised
hold).

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baud147258
The beluga (both the previous version and the XL one) are both derived from
other Airbus planes (A300 & A330)

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masklinn
The belugas are derived from exiting frames but Airbus programs of their own.

The Dreamlifter is a straight up conversion of second-hand 747-400s by a
contracted third-party (Evergreen Aviation Technologies Corporation).

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knolax
> The aircraft's lower fuselage will be assembled on the A330 final assembly
> line, and then be moved to another facility for the year-long process of
> assembling the upper fuselage and the lowered nose fuselage.

They do use Beluga XLs to these parts around too?

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major505
Well the name is fitting. It really looks like a beluga when looked from the
side.

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buboard
it wasn't even named as such, until they noticed the similarity

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mikepurvis
Anyone know anything about the routes that it's running? I'm surprised these
kinds of large parts aren't moved around by barge.

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txcwpalpha
Moving the parts by plane works better because the place where the parts are
needed (aka the factory where they are put together) is at an airport, which
is where this thing can land and directly offload right into the factory.
Barges are tougher because unless there is a waterway directly next to the
factory/airport (which isn't the case for Airbus's main factories AFAIK), it
can be hard transporting such large pieces via streets between the waterway
and the factory.

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lispm
Various parts of the Airbus planes are moved with ships between factories.

Airbus ship at the Hamburg Finkenwerder factory:

[https://shipsnmoreships.smugmug.com/ShipsinEuropeanWaters/Ha...](https://shipsnmoreships.smugmug.com/ShipsinEuropeanWaters/Hamburg-
Cuxhaven-Elbe/CITY-OF-HAMBURG-Finkenwerder/)

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txcwpalpha
That's a cool lookin boat. Airbus's factory in Hamburg is right on the Elbe,
so it makes sense that they would use barges for transport to/from it. The
factories in Toulouse and Seville are a bit farther from any waterways afaik.

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masklinn
While not on the Garonne itself, Airbus Toulouse is pretty close (3km),
however it's _way_ farther inland from the sea, on a smaller river, and IIRC
there are pretty low lying bridges on the way, so they have to move the parts
to river barges.

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txcwpalpha
I also think even that 3km can be challenging when you're talking about having
to move objects that are the length of a small skyscraper through narrow,
twisty streets. I found this picture of such a move [1]. I wonder how often
they have to do this!

1:
[https://airbus-h.assetsadobe2.com/is/image/content/dam/chann...](https://airbus-h.assetsadobe2.com/is/image/content/dam/channel-
specific/website-/company/history_milestones/A380_road_transport.jpg)

edit: I found this page [2] where it talks about moving A380 parts to
Toulouse. It sounds like it does happen via the Garonne, but not anywhere even
remotely close to Toulouse!

> Here, the components are transferred to specially-designed barges, which
> carry them on the penultimate part of their 95 km. voyage up Garonne River
> from Pauillac to Langon. ... In Langon, aircraft sections are transferred to
> outsized-load trucks to complete their journey to Toulouse by road.

That means the wings and other components have to travel more than 200km from
Langon to Toulouse by road, which is wild. Good thing a lot of that is
relatively empty countryside rather than packed city streets.

2: [https://www.airbus.com/aircraft/how-is-an-aircraft-
built/tra...](https://www.airbus.com/aircraft/how-is-an-aircraft-
built/transport-of-major-aircraft-sections.html)

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masklinn
FWIW there's a video of A380 parts moving through the streets, they had to be
scheduled at night and the tolerances (to buildings!) are really low, it's
really cool.

A much larger version of the A-12 trips between Burbank and Area-51, which was
also super cool.

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faitswulff
Is this a case of biomimicry? Is the peculiar design functional?

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nuccy
The shape is just a result of the engineering decisions to reach Airbus's
goal: transport fuselages to Toulouse. Those are relatively light, but big, so
building a tube-like structure above the main "chassis" of the plane yields to
this kind of shape, which we then recognize as a similarity to beluga.

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faitswulff
Ah, so it was all after-the-fact. Thank you.

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enjoyyourlife
It is actually smaller than the Airbus Beluga

Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_aircraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_aircraft)

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authoritarian
Those lists are alphabetical, not by size...

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barkingcat
The parent is pretty much the worse kind of hn posting - not only did they not
read the original article, they didn't read the wikipedia article they linked
to as proof of their statement.

