Airbus A380-800 photos

[chris]

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/742274/L/
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/742273/L/
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/741999/L/


That's the 2nd Airbus A380, with 2 real engines (Rolls Royce Trent 900??), and 2 "placeholders". This is one massive plane. :eek: Its registration is particularly suitable:

F-WXXL

Unfortunately it also looks quite ugly. :( Why can't planes be sleek and elegant, rather than being fat, flying toothpaste tubes. ;)

[VQ]

Function Over Form Chris, you should know that.

[chris]

I also wonder how on earth they will handle such huge planes at airports.

Will it simply unload at parking ramps somewhere away from the terminal, and a bus must be sent to pick up the passengers?

You also hope to god that no terrorists will ever hijack one of these (or for that matter a 777, 747, or A340). Probably a good arguement for having smaller planes.

The economy arguement is a 3 sided one. There is the fuel economy bit, the economy in squeezing maximum people into one plane, and the other, less thought of equation of time meaning money.

Wouldn't it also make more sense just to have either subsonic, one class planes, and supersonic aircraft for those who might normally pay a price premium to travel 1st class, or business class?

At the moment, what real benefit are those 1st class passengers getting for their money? Sure they get nicer seats and surroundings, but they still get to the destination the same time as the poor people sitting in economy or business class. Not really much of a benefit, for a greatly inflated price.

Okay, I'm talking the old arguement of BAC, and Aerospatiale, but it still makes sense, especially today when we have the technology to make a plane go fast in an economical and clean manner.

If we can make an utterly pointless SR71 do Mach 3 point whatever, what is preventing us from putting such resources to more useful civilian aircraft projects.

If the American SST projects had not been so mismanaged and bungled, we'd not be faced with flying in slow, toothpaste tubes of planes. What was wrong with the American approach was the whole, bigger, better, faster approach (2727-300 with swing wings, and near Mach 3 speed), and also the fact that you had McDonnell-Douglas, Boeing (2707, 2727), and Lockheed (L2000) all in competition against one another, rather than working together on a project, that for the time was enormously ambitious, and technically difficult.

The swing-wing idea from Boeing with the 2727-300 was a good one, but perhaps a bad idea for that time, and the technological constraints of the time, and indeed, it did face problems.

Russia and France/Britain didn't try to be so bold, but did get planes into production that worked (albeit perhaps in a dodgy manner with the TU144 - itself the subject of much controversy, and espionage allegations). At Charles de Gaulles recommendation, France/Britain wisely worked together, spreading the development effort among many companies, each working on its small part, producing in the end something that worked very well, and included some incredible advances in flight automation.

The world now has become ever more conservative. We haven't established a colony on the moon, we haven't got fast airliners, and there are many other things we should have been able to achieve, particularly in the fields of medicine and health that either didn't happen through conservatism, or through economics. :rolleyes:

[Venom800tt]

Err, the SR-71 wasn't pointless. It was the best recon plane the US had for many years till it was finnaly retired due to high costs back in the late 1990s. Also NASA got lots of important data using the two SR-71's they had. They were used for testing new heat sheild designs, new engines, and various other high speed and space technology. :rolleyes:
Anyway i kinda like the A380. In looks I perfer the 747-400 though. I find a strange beauty in the 747... :p

[VQ]

Well, money makes the world go around and people don't like taking risks.

[chris]

Err, the SR-71 wasn't pointless. It was the best recon plane the US had for many years till it was finnaly retired due to high costs back in the late 1990s. Also NASA got lots of important data using the two SR-71's they had. They were used for testing new heat sheild designs, new engines, and various other high speed and space technology. :rolleyes:
Anyway i kinda like the A380. In looks I perfer the 747-400 though. I find a strange beauty in the 747... :p

And what do they use this high speed technology for? It hasn't appeared on any civilian aircraft as yet, meaning it hasn't improved the lives of the person stuck on a plane for ten hours or more.

In the great scheme of things, an SR71, although an awesome plane, to many people is quite pointless, because it didn't directly bring any improvement to their lives.

USSR would never really dare to attack the USA, because it understood the consequences, and likewise USA wouldn't attack USSR for the same reasons.

A stalemate, with each side prodding the other, seeing what it could get away with, before the other got cranky. Be it missiles in Cuba, or missiles in Turkey, it's ultimately a stalemate.