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When it comes to aircraft design, there are three main considerations. Capacity, range and speed.
The other two considerations, range, and capacity, are a bigger can of worms.
Both of them are intertwined and are the result of aircraft size. A bigger aircraft can logically carry more passengers and cargo, but in turn costs more in fuel to operate. To get around it, the bigger plane has large fuel tanks, increasing its size and creating a balance trade-off between carrying capacity and fuel.
This can lead to some awkard issues where a plane can be so large and have an impressive range, but actually carry less than its internal volume - the exact major flaw of the Airbus A380 cargo varient.
Thus the twin fuslage concept was born.
While there have been many different double fuslage concepts in history ,such as the Nazi BF 109Z and He-111Z Zwilling,
The latter aircraft, the zwilling, would have extra engines in the mid wing between the two fuslages, to give it extra power to pull huge nazi gliders like the me321. But with few gliders built, there wasn’t much need for the tug.
we wouldn't see the real production roll out of this design until the end of world war two with the North American P-82 Twing Mustang.
This suited the plane well, as its actualy role was to be a very long range escort fighter for the Boeing B-29 superfortress, for missions with a range fver 3,200 km or 2,000 miles. And later, bomber interceptor agaisnt those pesky Soviets.
The aircraft did its first test flight in June 1945, and the US airforce officers were so impressed that they ordered its full production right away. it set several records, such as Hawaii to New York in only 14 hours and 32 minutes nonstop,
The Air Force accepted a total of 272 F-82s (including 22 prototype, test and early production aircraft) and it would serve proudly in the korean war, until its role was succeeded by the Republic F-84E Thunderjet in the early 1950s.
This aircraft is not only notable for its double fuslage design, with a cockpit on each side, but also that it was the last piston enginered fighterjet ordered by the US before switching exclusively to jet fighters.
Boeing and Lockheed were both selected to come up with designs for the concept under a nasa NASA. It was to save money on developing a new aircraft from scratch, by making it out of existing aircraft parts.
Boeing would propose the Boeing 747 as its shuttle launcher, and Lockheed with its C-5 design.
If you have been around aviation for a while however, then you know that the russians had their own insane twin-fuslage concept. The twin An-225. However, this project, along with even crazier concept - Molniya 1000 Heracles probably deserve their own videos, so stay tuned for them in the future.
While the original AN-225 was designed to not only carry the russian equivelent of the space shuttle and launch it into orbit off its back, the fuel requirements ment that this little shuttle would only be suitable for short range passenger trips - not real cargo space flights.
To fix this flaw, the Tupolev Design Bureo proposed a massive double sized An-225 - built out of two fuslages. it would have Eighteen D-18T turbofans with a combined thrust of 421,740 kgf, and be able to carry up to 1650 tons, or 3.6 million pounds. Its wingspan would be 153 meters, or 500 feet long, twice that of the boeing 777x we have today.
Ironically it would not even be the most insane aircraft developed by the soviets during that era, such as the Molnyia-1000 Heracles which does deserve its own video.
At the end fo the day, these designs ended up being way more money to build than just launching a rocket - especially consdiering they would have needed runways longer than most countylines.
In the middle of the mojave desert in 2019, the Scaled Composites Model 351 Stratolaunch took to the skies. With twin fuselages 73 meters long, 28 wheels and a wingspan of 385 feet, its the widest plane flying today. On its right, there is a crew deck for three, and the other fuslage allows up o 2500 pounds of cargo for specific rocket launch missions.
This aircraft joins other scaled composites such as the white knight two that operates for virgin galactic on a simular mission, although at a much more insane level.
19 дек 2021
