Brontosaurus was maybe 20 feet high when lifting its neck straight up. An airplane window is about 2 feet high. Therefore this dinosaur plane would be 10x longer, with 1000x more volume. It would be half a mile long with enough space inside to fill 300 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The airport runways required to accommodate such a plane would have to be absolutely gigantic. Runway length scales with weight, not length of the plane, assuming the plane is still mostly hollow its weight scales as length squares, so 100x longer than what a 747 requires. That means it would require a 250 mile long runway; this runway would be 10x wider than normal too. A runway takes 10,000 tons of asphalt normally, this brontosaurus plane runway would take about 10 million tons, roughly what the entire US produces in a day.
I hear ya. And I think you run into other limitations first. But length of runway probably not one of them. You’d have more engine power, so your thrust would scale up probaly faster than air resistance so you could get up to speed nearly as fast. And the relative air lift effect would go up with increased size because the air physics isn’t changing just because the plane is larger. Of course you’d also have structural problems with something that size and the required weight increases so it doesn’t fall apart would be a problem. But I say we build it anyway!!!
Brontosaurus was maybe 20 feet high when lifting its neck straight up. An airplane window is about 2 feet high. Therefore this dinosaur plane would be 10x longer, with 1000x more volume. It would be half a mile long with enough space inside to fill 300 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
And?
The airport runways required to accommodate such a plane would have to be absolutely gigantic. Runway length scales with weight, not length of the plane, assuming the plane is still mostly hollow its weight scales as length squares, so 100x longer than what a 747 requires. That means it would require a 250 mile long runway; this runway would be 10x wider than normal too. A runway takes 10,000 tons of asphalt normally, this brontosaurus plane runway would take about 10 million tons, roughly what the entire US produces in a day.
Jesus the USA produces a lot of asphalt…
So you’re saying the US could make this runway in just one day seems easy enough
Uh ok
God bless this Brontosaurus Plane, and all who dwell within the Brontosaurus Plane.
I hear ya. And I think you run into other limitations first. But length of runway probably not one of them. You’d have more engine power, so your thrust would scale up probaly faster than air resistance so you could get up to speed nearly as fast. And the relative air lift effect would go up with increased size because the air physics isn’t changing just because the plane is larger. Of course you’d also have structural problems with something that size and the required weight increases so it doesn’t fall apart would be a problem. But I say we build it anyway!!!
Everything but metric.
I mean, they’re dinosaurs…do you expect them to be using a modern unit system?