Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Mark Lundstrom: Radia CEO on building the world's largest aircraft for transporting wind turbines

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Mark Lundstrom: Radia CEO on building the world's largest aircraft for transporting wind turbines · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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  Speaker 1: I you is companies building the world's largest airplane, called
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  Speaker 1: the wind Runner to transport massive wind turbines. The catch well,
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  Speaker 1: that would never actually build an aircraft before, but they
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  Speaker 1: say the demand for green energy makes it worth the risk.
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  Speaker 1: Mark Lundstrom is the aerospace engineer who founded Radio the
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  Speaker 1: company behind this, and is with me this morning. Good morning,
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  Speaker 1: all right, good morning, Mark, Great to have you on
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  Speaker 1: the show. Can you just tell us how big? Give
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  Speaker 1: us an idea of how big this bad boy is.
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  Speaker 2: Sure, it's by far the world's largest aircraft. It's about
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  Speaker 2: twelve times the volume of a seven forty seven. It
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  Speaker 2: has a cockpit that's about as all as a five
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  Speaker 2: story building, and it's about eight times as big as
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  Speaker 2: the largest military aircraft flying today, the C five.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so massive? Why So?
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  Speaker 2: It turns out that there's a lot of very large
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  Speaker 2: payloads that need to be moved hard to reach places,
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  Speaker 2: and so we originally started working on the wind Runner
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  Speaker 2: in order to move the world's biggest wind turbines to
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  Speaker 2: onshore Lookeuate.
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  Speaker 1: So the goal is.
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  Speaker 2: To be able to move over a one hundred meter
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  Speaker 2: turbine blade and land it on a piece of dirt
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  Speaker 2: within the confines of a wind farm, and if you
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  Speaker 2: can do that, you can reduce the cost wind energy
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  Speaker 2: by about a third. And then it turns out if
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  Speaker 2: you can actually have the capability of moving gigantic things
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  Speaker 2: too hard to reach places, there's some fantastic humanitarian missions
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  Speaker 2: that you can provide, and a lot of defense applications
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  Speaker 2: you can provide, so you can basically put you can
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  Speaker 2: essentially move a six pack of F sixteen fighters or
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  Speaker 2: a six pack of Shinnock helicopters and land on a
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  Speaker 2: piece of dirt as well.
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  Speaker 1: Landing on the dirt sounds interesting. This is obviously going
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  Speaker 1: to be very heavy if you've got one hundred meter
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  Speaker 1: wind turbinal six jets in there.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's actually the first time that an airplane
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  Speaker 2: has been designed to optimize volume instead of mass. And
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  Speaker 2: so it turns out that even though the airplane is
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  Speaker 2: very big, it's not quite as heavy as you think
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  Speaker 2: as you would think it would be. And it's so
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  Speaker 2: big that we have the ability to put lots of
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  Speaker 2: landing gear on it, and so that enables us to
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  Speaker 2: have not that much poundage per wheel, and so we're
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  Speaker 2: able to land on on just semi prepared dirt strips.
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  Speaker 1: So it was seven times the volume of a seven
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  Speaker 1: forty seven, did you say, and if that's the case,
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  Speaker 1: how do you keep it flying?
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  Speaker 2: So twelve times the volume of a seven forty seven,
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  Speaker 2: so it is gigantic, and you keep it flying by
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  Speaker 2: just using standard aerospace techniques. You know, if you have
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  Speaker 2: if you have powerful enough jet engines, you can make
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  Speaker 2: you can make a very large airplane fly. So what
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  Speaker 2: the design team did at Radio is we basically have
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  Speaker 2: designed this airplane around the things that are already in
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  Speaker 2: mass production and already flying. So making sure we reduce
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  Speaker 2: the technology risk by by designing the airplane around the
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  Speaker 2: things that are already flying. And it turns out that
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  Speaker 2: there's some very powerful engines that can move a very
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  Speaker 2: large airplane today. And it's and that's because basically it's
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  Speaker 2: been it's been essentially thirty years since a large cargo
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  Speaker 2: aircraft had been designed, and during those decades, engine technology
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  Speaker 2: has improved massively, and so that enables us to move
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  Speaker 2: an airplane that's much much larger than the industry has
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  Speaker 2: made for a long time.
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  Speaker 1: Why are you doing this or how are you? How
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  Speaker 1: far through are you? Why your business and why aren't
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  Speaker 1: those ones who do large aircraft already attempting something like
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  Speaker 1: this or are they?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So we are the company behind this, but we're
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  Speaker 2: not the company that's exclusively building this. And so Radia
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  Speaker 2: has built a supply chain that includes dozens of companies.
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  Speaker 2: The top aerospace manufacturing companies in the world are working
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  Speaker 2: with us to pull this aircraft together because it's such
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  Speaker 2: a unique vehicle and it's so exciting I think for
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  Speaker 2: the supply chain to actually have an opportunity for the
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  Speaker 2: aerospace industry to participate in helping solve climate change, and
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  Speaker 2: so for an aeronautical solution to help move the needle
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  Speaker 2: and climate change is very exciting for the company and
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  Speaker 2: very exciting for the supply chain. But it is a
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  Speaker 2: bit of a unique vehicle, and it's not something that's
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  Speaker 2: sort of straight down the middle for a company that
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  Speaker 2: usually makes passenger air craft or military aircraft. This is
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  Speaker 2: something there's a market opportunity that is a small company.
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  Speaker 2: We we identified that and then we inspired the supply
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  Speaker 2: chain to work with us to build it.
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  Speaker 1: Give us a date mark, when will we see it
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  Speaker 1: in the skies.
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  Speaker 2: You'll see in the skies by the end of the decade.
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  Speaker 2: So it's no slow it's no it's no fast process
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  Speaker 2: to design the world and build the world's largest aircraft.
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  Speaker 2: But we've been at this for about eight years. We're
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  Speaker 2: about ready to start manufacturing. The supply chain has all
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  Speaker 2: been built, uh, and so we're we're we intend to
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  Speaker 2: start providing service end of decade.
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  Speaker 1: Based in lock Scie, Flying Mark Lunstrom has the aerospace
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  Speaker 1: Engineer at Radia.
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  Speaker 2: For more Familily Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live to
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: news talks it be from five am weekdays, or follow
• 4:42
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