World's largest and heaviest airplane, Antonov An-225, check this out:
Payload: 550000 lb
Wingspan: 290 ft
Max takeoff weight: 1322773 lb!
Powerplant: 6x51600 lbf
Takeoff run: 11500 ft with max payload
A friend and his son went to watch the shuttle land this last time in
California, and shot these photos with a telephoto lens.
The distance on the turning and landing shots was a mile or more, not
sure about the distance on the over head shot.
The wheels down shot was about 3 seconds before touch down. '22
Cool pics. I was just about to say that if ya'll havent seen a shuttle in person, those things are HUGE. I can just imagine how big that plane is in person.
Tripper, fiki, ..... how did yall get those shots of the piggyback?
That reminds me ... There is a full-size shuttle (the Enterprise, I think) on display at the National Air & Space Museum in Chantilly, VA (near Dulles Airport) that I still need to go and see....
440shorty
P.S. My grandfather saw the Challenger explode in real time from across the peninsula back then - he was in St. Pete.
That thing is massive,a few yrs back they did a flyby here in prescott, Embry-Riddle Areo Univ. is here. We were working back up a cyn in line with the airport, heard a jet engine like I never heard b4, turned to look and had no idea what the heck was flying over, took a minute to realize that it was the shuttle heading back home. Asked a friend that works 4 NASA and he said must have been somebody important here cause they rarely do a fly over at low altitude 4 any1. Something I'll never forget seeing
I remember watchin airshow on tv, national geographic episode where An-225 was presented after it was rebuild and I think they put like 1500 ppl in a cargo area! You really cant imagine how big that thing is...and there is only one in world.