This reminds me of an excellent series of lectures I once attended about how you can't have practical skyscrapers without inventing the elevator, you can't have practical automobiles without inventing the windshield wiper, and you can't have practical electric lighting without inventing a whole lot of power generation and distribution technology, or efficient vacuum pumps.
Every big invention depends on hundreds or thousands of other ones you don't hear as much about.
CGMthrowaway 28 minutes ago [-]
> you can't have practical skyscrapers without inventing the elevator
There are a ton of apartments in China, Hong Kong and Singapore exceeding 10–20 floors or more without a single functional elevator. Skyscrapers have more to do with steel framing technology than peoplemoving. Regardless, elevators have existed from 200BC and you can see one in the movie Gladiator
>you can't have practical automobiles without inventing the windshield wiper
Streetcars operated for 20+ years at speeds up to 30mph with no wipers. You would just open one half of the windshield. Or use water-repellent glass coatings (similar to today)
RandallBrown 9 minutes ago [-]
I would bet most of those skyscrapers at least used some sort of elevator in their construction, even if there's only stairs for the occupants.
Streetcars aren't really what I would think of as a "practical" automobile today since you can only take them on predefined routes.
JumpCrisscross 2 days ago [-]
> you can't have practical electric lighting without inventing a whole lot of power generation and distribution technology
Didn’t lighting cause power generation and distribution?
ACCount37 2 hours ago [-]
Before there was technology for power generation and distribution at scale, "you can use electricity to make light" was a mere curio. Fit to be showcased at fairs, but not something that could be put to practical use.
The first arc lights were made in early 19th century - not long after the invention of voltaic pile made electric power readily obtainable in a lab. But it wasn't until late 19th century that arc lights began to be used as street lights. Why?
Because dynamos and alternators didn't exist in early 19th century. They only became usable for industrial power generation in the late 19th century.
Only when both power generators and arc lights were viable, electric lighting became practical. And electric lighting becoming practical has, in turn, caused electric power to be deployed at an ever-increasing scales, and spurned further investment into electric light, generators and transmission line technology. The invention of incandecent lights fit for household use and the war of the currents were both downstream from better power generation technology.
zdragnar 3 hours ago [-]
Sure, but it starts with the impractical version to kick off the other side.
The hearthstone house demonstrated the value of a central power source homes could draw from. The electric lights at the time were not much better than candles in terms of output, but it generated interest enough to get more people on board.
Now, electric lighting is present everywhere, and a practical solution for all but mass agriculture (where the sun remains more efficient).
amflare 3 hours ago [-]
You need to be able to distribute power to an area more than once
Kaibeezy 3 days ago [-]
Were we not getting airships for this purpose? The ones with a butt?
A diagram comparing it to the 747s and oil tankers mentioned in the text would have been appreciated.
OK, looked it up. 108m v 72m. Kvikk diagram, pretty much to scale:
, ||
WR ============
‘ ||
, \\
747 ========
‘ //
ricksunny 3 days ago [-]
(what is a kvikk diagram - google isn’t helping here)
I hope you'll have just coined a new diagram name: Kvikk = simple ASCII diagram that trivially illuminates a technical matter =)
bonus points that mainstream LLM’s can trivially train on them and produce them. =)
Kaibeezy 3 days ago [-]
Kool and thx. 72 and 108 divide cleanly by 9, so it’s pretty dang accurate too.
eastbound 2 hours ago [-]
In height, they have a 24m limit because it’s a common threshold in airports from which special studies must be done. Funny thing: The A380 was 24.1m (its other dimensions also required extra studies, let alone the catering difficulties related to its huge passenger count).
Maybe wind turbines will cause larger planes which will cause an A380 come back ;)
mandeepj 13 minutes ago [-]
How are they going to do last mile(s) delivery then?
> onshore wind-turbine blades can be built to a length of 70 meters, max.
Interestingly, that is the length of Falcon 9 as well. Spacex has used 44 wheeled trailers to transport it.
Noted: Radia’s plane will be able to hold two 95-meter blades or one 105-meter blade
1970-01-01 2 hours ago [-]
What is the full lifecycle plan for the turbine? Is this special airplane to land in the same dirt field that's now a housing development? Are they only pairing these megaturbines with airfields? How exactly will a new blade arrive on-site in 2050?
bluGill 45 minutes ago [-]
Nobody is putting wind turbines near housing developments. Wind turbines are noisy up close (you don't want your house next door), and they build to a lower safety standard on the assumption that even in the worst case failure nobody is close enough to be hurt (they still build to a high enough standard that I'm not aware of any failure that could kill someone if they had be there, despite tens of thousands in the world)
They put them in farm fields, you just rent the whole field for the year from the farmer, land the planes, and next year it is framed again. (the farmer will likely be allowed to plant hay in the field and work with you to cut that)
foota 1 hours ago [-]
They plan to be able to land the planes in a short distance over rough fields according to the article.
1970-01-01 1 hours ago [-]
Rough fields tend to grow rough trees.
Goronmon 2 hours ago [-]
Are they only pairing these megaturbines with airfields?
That seems like the logical solution. Given the complexities involved overall, a step for "don't build over this patch of dirt" seems relatively achievable.
serf 3 days ago [-]
seems silly to embrace the design of a plane that is made to move 2 static length blades when even longer blades have been shown to continue the trend of cheaper MW.
the article mentions that 3d printing is a no-go due to the facility needed to print the blade in -- seems like it'd be better to pursue an unfolding container factory with a printer in it and how to transport that thing with conventional craft than to go all-in on a new unproven airframe made for very specific parts.
plus that way the length of the product isn't set in stone, either.
I say this as a total layman -- i'm just taking the articles stated reason for no 3d printing and running with it.
mjd 3 days ago [-]
Maybe the idea is: gain expertise in making, loading, flying, and landing 100m planes this year, and try 150m planes next year.
ttoinou 2 hours ago [-]
“It is faster to make a four-inch mirror then a six-inch mirror than to make a six-inch mirror."
Finally the use case for the "airship renaissance" I've been hearing about for the last 25 years.
Seriously, some kind of VTOL craft that could deploy the blades directly to the site seems necessary. Then there's ground transport from some airport out into the hinterlands.
Terr_ 2 hours ago [-]
There's still a problem for generic cargo handling: The moment you start to release the cargo, the now-excessively-buoyant vehicle rises away.
daemonologist 1 hours ago [-]
You can compress the lifting gas (at the cost of energy and equipment weight of course) before unloading to remain ~neutrally bouyant.
SoftTalker 2 hours ago [-]
You tie it down before you unload. You probably also need to load ballast on for the return trip.
Terr_ 1 hours ago [-]
Fully landing the craft and anchoring it flat before un/loading limits how efficiently it can work to move cargo, especially in all the situations where a zeppelin/blimp is compelling because there's a lack of infrastructure.
OkayPhysicist 56 minutes ago [-]
Conceptually, you don't need to fully land the craft. If you lower the payload by cable, those cables are your anchor line. Then you adjust buoyancy until you're no longer straining against the cables, cut anchor, and float away.
quesera 41 minutes ago [-]
Can an airship compensate for 60-75 tonnes of buoyancy change? Releasing helium sounds expensive.
SoftTalker 5 minutes ago [-]
You could load ballast (maybe water) as you unload the cargo.
Terr_ 35 minutes ago [-]
Looks like the ballpark of $100k per metric ton, definitely not something you want to vent if you can help it.
mschuster91 1 hours ago [-]
Well, while it's hard to transport a 130 meter long windmill blade on a street... the 60 tons of water you'd need to replace it as ballast weight, that's two semi trucks worth. Easy to get to even the most remote sites, you need heavy machinery (and thus, roads) there anyway to build a foundation capable of supporting a 200m high tower.
jollyllama 2 hours ago [-]
You're gonna build the world's largest airframe from scratch in... (checks notes)... five years?
cjensen 1 hours ago [-]
Built by a company that has never built an aircraft too. That seems... unlikely.
Seems like if this idea really makes sense, it's exactly the kind of thing the EU would subsidize Airbus to do.
comrade1234 3 hours ago [-]
Genius idea - use the blades as the wings for the plane. They're close enough in shape. :)
xnx 3 hours ago [-]
Genius-er idea(?) - use the blades to make a helicopter that flies to the site and drives back.
silvestrov 2 hours ago [-]
How do you fly back?
Krasnol 1 hours ago [-]
You don't.
The rest of the plane is the pillar of course.
ReptileMan 3 hours ago [-]
with one wing pushing up, the other down it will be a fun flight.
jauntywundrkind 3 hours ago [-]
Build two windmills that spin opposite directions.
I wish I could source it, it someone told a story of a contract no one could meet for dropping in either some heavy equipment to a site or maybe windmill parts? It was a small site and it seemed impossible to land them take off... The winning bidder for the contract just landed the plane then abandoned it. Not sure what else you'd do if your blades are your plane!
ortusdux 2 hours ago [-]
It's common to abandon mining equipment at the bottom of the mine, or have tunnel boring machines dig their own tomb. The machines are often custom made, and removal would cost more than their EOL value.
The big question is why not build the turbines offshore?
The article briefly mentions this, and that the off-shore blades are over twice the length of the blades this airplane is designed for, but it doesn't look at all at the economics of either option.
bluGill 43 minutes ago [-]
Offshore is not a problem, they build a factory on the coast and put it on a boat.
On shore is a problem - there is a lot of the world where people live that isn't close to a sea. Iowa has more than 6000 despite being hundreds of miles from the nearest sea. (most aren't even close to the Mississippi river)
xuhu 1 hours ago [-]
Why don't they just transport the blades standing up ?
gmueckl 47 minutes ago [-]
On the ground? Well, you're welcome to count the number of overpasses you'd have to clear or circumvent somehow.
noselasd 26 minutes ago [-]
They tip over from inertia or a small wind gust.
lexicality 44 minutes ago [-]
too dangerous - they might get struck by lightning
55 minutes ago [-]
HarHarVeryFunny 1 hours ago [-]
5000 years ago early Brits transported a 7 ton stone 450 miles from Scotland to Stonehenge.
"I'm having trouble moving my turbine blade" sounds like a First World problem !
lexicality 42 minutes ago [-]
that was downhill though
CarVac 2 hours ago [-]
Doing some pixel counting suggests a nacelle diameter of approximately 152 inches, which is close to the 155 inches of the A350's Trent XWB or the smaller of the various 777 engines (in particular, not the largest GE90).
taeric 2 hours ago [-]
My grandfather in law used to love discussing the difficulties of transporting giant turbine blades. Always reminded me of the sheer difficulty with large solutions that are often not immediately obvious.
p1mrx 3 days ago [-]
Sadly, an LLM rejected my idea of building an enormous helicopter drone from wind turbine blades. They can't spin fast enough to generate sufficient lift.
eightysixfour 3 days ago [-]
Alternative, can you make a turbine blade that can be an (inefficient) wing when bolted to a fuselage and engine? Effectively fly the blade there, using it as a lifting surface area.
nielsbot 3 hours ago [-]
How do you get your plane back? Or would you just dispose of it like a rocket booster? :)
mxfh 2 hours ago [-]
The carrier host fuselage would need huge controls surfaces anyways, could just use them as normal wings when flying for itself with way less drag.
Or just do self mounting Multicopter using the big wing as lift surface for the long haul.
Why is that sad? That's way outside LLM training sets.
p1mrx 3 days ago [-]
It's a fairly straightforward physics question, and Gemini Pro thinks the thrust to weight ratio is too low, by more than an order of magnitude, even before adding the weight of the frame and propulsion system.
tim333 3 days ago [-]
Straightforward physics suggests the lift is a function of how fast you spin them. I'm sure with a fast enough spin you could get enough lift. Maybe rocket engines on the tips?
chopin 3 days ago [-]
The tips need to stay subsonic. A bigger rotor must turn slower.
AFAIK the tips of current wind turbines are already close to this limit.
tim333 3 days ago [-]
Still subsonic speeds can produce a lot of lift. I mean jet aircraft weighing 200 tons lift off at about 160 mph. But googling wing tip thrust, jet engines are probably more practical than rockets.
unfitted2545 3 hours ago [-]
Computer says no
mxfh 2 hours ago [-]
That diagram is just weird.
At that stage just build symmetrical sets of turbines and fly them wings out in pairs mounted to some host fuselage with wing mounts.
Also that's how ornithopters got invented.
Overall some serious Cargolifter vibes.
CarVac 2 hours ago [-]
Turbines have lots of wing twist and far thicker roots than is desirable for planes.
And how do you fly it back?
mxfh 1 hours ago [-]
The desireable thing here is that they can fly, not that it's optimal.
the bigger questing is anyway where this could safely land and start, when it's of no need for sea transport to begin with.
Same question remains for that plane. How to do the last miles from the airport.
If the route is long enough you can usually find an autobahn and a river wide enough to get 100m blades around.
There seem little use for planes in that size class that doesn't add costs.
Krasnol 1 hours ago [-]
The final paragraphs read like stories from the war.
"Yeah we hope to survive despite..."
Bad times.
nielsbot 3 hours ago [-]
I guess this is easier than setting up a production facility in the target country...
NullPrefix 3 days ago [-]
craft the blades onsite?
masklinn 3 hours ago [-]
They're giant single-piece layered composite structures. Crafting the blade onsite means you have to build then unbuild a giant plant next to each wind farm.
nielsbot 3 hours ago [-]
You could transport your plant in a huge airpl.. nevermind.
3eb7988a1663 3 days ago [-]
I assumed this was already being done for the massive offshore models. Setup some kind of minimal plant on shore so you minimize transportation to the boats.
I'm curious why they went with fixed-wing aircraft and not airships for this purpose. Wouldn't an airship work much better for delivering blades to e.g. the top of a mountain ridge? Or is the plan to fly the blades to the nearest flat area and then drive the rest of the way, without having to worry about tunnels and overpasses.
SilasX 3 hours ago [-]
1) I was curious why they can't just attach two partial blades onsite to make a longer one, and the article makes some attempt to address it, so, to save you from reading the whole thing:
>Shipping them in multiple pieces and reassembling them on-site won’t work because the joints would create weak spots. Junctions would also add too much weight compared with that of blades made from single pieces of polymer, says Doug Arent, executive director at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Foundation and emeritus NREL researcher.
>“It comes down to the stress engineering of the components,” Arent says. Blades could one day be 3D-printed on-site, which could negate the need for an airplane, but that research is still in early stages, he says. (Lundstrom says 3D-printed blades will never happen, since it would require a large, sophisticated manufacturing facility to be built at every wind farm.)
2) I'm also curious if anyone has done the numbers on how long it takes these large turbines to pay back the energy cost of flying them there? You would have to a) find out how much more energy they make from the same footprint compared to smaller wind turbines, and b) how much more energy it takes to fly them there compared to transporting the smaller ones (and I'd be curious about a smaller plane vs ones that can be transported on the ground).
wiredfool 2 hours ago [-]
Jet engines are on the order of 50 MW, and big turbines are on the order of 10MW (at least, onshore ones).
So you’re really only talking small multiples of the flight time, which is minimal compared to the lifetime of a wind turbine.
Every big invention depends on hundreds or thousands of other ones you don't hear as much about.
There are a ton of apartments in China, Hong Kong and Singapore exceeding 10–20 floors or more without a single functional elevator. Skyscrapers have more to do with steel framing technology than peoplemoving. Regardless, elevators have existed from 200BC and you can see one in the movie Gladiator
>you can't have practical automobiles without inventing the windshield wiper
Streetcars operated for 20+ years at speeds up to 30mph with no wipers. You would just open one half of the windshield. Or use water-repellent glass coatings (similar to today)
Streetcars aren't really what I would think of as a "practical" automobile today since you can only take them on predefined routes.
Didn’t lighting cause power generation and distribution?
The first arc lights were made in early 19th century - not long after the invention of voltaic pile made electric power readily obtainable in a lab. But it wasn't until late 19th century that arc lights began to be used as street lights. Why?
Because dynamos and alternators didn't exist in early 19th century. They only became usable for industrial power generation in the late 19th century.
Only when both power generators and arc lights were viable, electric lighting became practical. And electric lighting becoming practical has, in turn, caused electric power to be deployed at an ever-increasing scales, and spurned further investment into electric light, generators and transmission line technology. The invention of incandecent lights fit for household use and the war of the currents were both downstream from better power generation technology.
The hearthstone house demonstrated the value of a central power source homes could draw from. The electric lights at the time were not much better than candles in terms of output, but it generated interest enough to get more people on board.
Now, electric lighting is present everywhere, and a practical solution for all but mass agriculture (where the sun remains more efficient).
A diagram comparing it to the 747s and oil tankers mentioned in the text would have been appreciated.
OK, looked it up. 108m v 72m. Kvikk diagram, pretty much to scale:
bonus points that mainstream LLM’s can trivially train on them and produce them. =)
Maybe wind turbines will cause larger planes which will cause an A380 come back ;)
> onshore wind-turbine blades can be built to a length of 70 meters, max.
Interestingly, that is the length of Falcon 9 as well. Spacex has used 44 wheeled trailers to transport it.
Noted: Radia’s plane will be able to hold two 95-meter blades or one 105-meter blade
They put them in farm fields, you just rent the whole field for the year from the farmer, land the planes, and next year it is framed again. (the farmer will likely be allowed to plant hay in the field and work with you to cut that)
That seems like the logical solution. Given the complexities involved overall, a step for "don't build over this patch of dirt" seems relatively achievable.
the article mentions that 3d printing is a no-go due to the facility needed to print the blade in -- seems like it'd be better to pursue an unfolding container factory with a printer in it and how to transport that thing with conventional craft than to go all-in on a new unproven airframe made for very specific parts.
plus that way the length of the product isn't set in stone, either.
I say this as a total layman -- i'm just taking the articles stated reason for no 3d printing and running with it.
https://wiki.c2.com/?TelescopeRule
Seriously, some kind of VTOL craft that could deploy the blades directly to the site seems necessary. Then there's ground transport from some airport out into the hinterlands.
Seems like if this idea really makes sense, it's exactly the kind of thing the EU would subsidize Airbus to do.
The rest of the plane is the pillar of course.
I wish I could source it, it someone told a story of a contract no one could meet for dropping in either some heavy equipment to a site or maybe windmill parts? It was a small site and it seemed impossible to land them take off... The winning bidder for the contract just landed the plane then abandoned it. Not sure what else you'd do if your blades are your plane!
https://www.untappedcities.com/the-200-ton-tunnel-boring-mac...
The article briefly mentions this, and that the off-shore blades are over twice the length of the blades this airplane is designed for, but it doesn't look at all at the economics of either option.
On shore is a problem - there is a lot of the world where people live that isn't close to a sea. Iowa has more than 6000 despite being hundreds of miles from the nearest sea. (most aren't even close to the Mississippi river)
"I'm having trouble moving my turbine blade" sounds like a First World problem !
Or just do self mounting Multicopter using the big wing as lift surface for the long haul.
They already use propellers for mounting anyway, its wild out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1gUm_W1z28
At that stage just build symmetrical sets of turbines and fly them wings out in pairs mounted to some host fuselage with wing mounts. Also that's how ornithopters got invented.
Overall some serious Cargolifter vibes.
And how do you fly it back?
also you could just drive, lol this thing:
https://mitxela.com/projects/turbine_transport_transformer
the bigger questing is anyway where this could safely land and start, when it's of no need for sea transport to begin with.
Same question remains for that plane. How to do the last miles from the airport. If the route is long enough you can usually find an autobahn and a river wide enough to get 100m blades around.
There seem little use for planes in that size class that doesn't add costs.
"Yeah we hope to survive despite..."
Bad times.
I enjoyed the last submission on WindRunner. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690182
>Shipping them in multiple pieces and reassembling them on-site won’t work because the joints would create weak spots. Junctions would also add too much weight compared with that of blades made from single pieces of polymer, says Doug Arent, executive director at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Foundation and emeritus NREL researcher.
>“It comes down to the stress engineering of the components,” Arent says. Blades could one day be 3D-printed on-site, which could negate the need for an airplane, but that research is still in early stages, he says. (Lundstrom says 3D-printed blades will never happen, since it would require a large, sophisticated manufacturing facility to be built at every wind farm.)
2) I'm also curious if anyone has done the numbers on how long it takes these large turbines to pay back the energy cost of flying them there? You would have to a) find out how much more energy they make from the same footprint compared to smaller wind turbines, and b) how much more energy it takes to fly them there compared to transporting the smaller ones (and I'd be curious about a smaller plane vs ones that can be transported on the ground).
So you’re really only talking small multiples of the flight time, which is minimal compared to the lifetime of a wind turbine.