Lockheed VLST Very Large Subsonic Transports aircraft

hesham

hesham

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Hi,

here is some aircraft and one airship fpr the Lockheed-Martin as VLST Very
Large Subsonic Transports aircraft,notice the Lockheed-Dornier one.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19960023624_1996039479.pdf
 

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Cool! ;D I was beginning to think that the Lockheed VLST was a fictitious project because I had only seen a drawing of it in Popular Mechanics magazine. Thank you hesham.
 
Wow !

Those really are flights of fancy...

Is that a cargo pod slung beneath the 'catamaran' Heracles ??
 

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I find it interesting that the drawing depicts the VLST carrying 16 40-foot ISO intermodal freight containers. Do I understand correctly that air freight is not currently shipped in 40-foot ISO intermodal freight containers and needs to be repackaged into smaller containers for transport by air?
 
Triton said:
I find it interesting that the drawing depicts the VLST carrying 16 40-foot ISO intermodal freight containers. Do I understand correctly that air freight is not currently shipped in 40-foot ISO intermodal freight containers and needs to be repackaged into smaller containers for transport by air?
Click to expand...

The point they may be trying to make is that it is no longer necessary to repack.
 
...The more of these HUMONGOUS HONKER AIR TRANSPORTS we come across, the more I get convinced there's a point where the time taken to load/offload the damn things takes far more time than it takes to transverse the distance to the destination *and* back. I wonder if during all these paper studies if anyone actually sat down and did the numbers in this regard? ???
 
You mean those Intermodal Freight Containers like railroads carry? Don't those things weigh several tons apeice? How much would you save by not repacking and carrying these things by air? Maybe we should think outside the box (as it were). Why not pack the airfreight containers, then put them in the intermodal containers for the surface part of the journey?
 
There has been a lot of work done on robotic logistical systems, quite a bit of it in the past decade alone, including aircraft loading/unloading systems, that might make these designs more practical from an operations/costs viewpoint.
 
There's been quite a few topics on different design studies for outsize cargo/passenger carriers but the one thing that puzzles me is what kind of infrastructure would be needed to support these behemoths.
I am an aviation enthusiast and ex-member of the RAF but my technical knowledge is nowhere near many of you fine people on this site but it does puzzle me. Having seen the An-225 ground manouevring (if you can call it that) how would these giants be accommodated?
Normal runway and taxiways could surely not support them and so if remote cargo specific sites were to be used wouldn't the cost of providing transport links to them and the necessary loading and unloading technologies negate any savings on quantity carried at one time?
I apologise if it is an inane or obvious question but, whilst I would love to see the sky blotted out by machines like these, I'm having difficulty in seeing the practicalities...
... plus the UK doesn't have enough spare space to build an airfield that size ;D
Thanks in advance.
 
Many thanks to you my dear Rolf,

and again,four died links in the topic ?!.
 
So I’m going to summarize the information available on the Lockheed VLST, to give us (the community) a brief specification sheet.

General characteristics
  • Crew: 7 (Aircraft Commander, First Pilot, 2 Flight Engineers, 3 Loadmasters) maybe up to 5 Loadmasters
  • Capacity: 950 passengers in multiple deck configurations
  • Cargo Maximum payload: 180 tons, up to 16 ISO sea containers
  • Length: 80 m
  • Wingspan: 86 m with wings unfolded, 65 m with wings folded
  • Width: 12.3 m (estimate)
  • Height: 16.6 m (estimate)
  • Max takeoff weight: 635 tons
  • Powerplant: 4 × General Electric GE90 or Pratt & Whitney PW4000
  • Range: 6000 km with Maximum payload
  • Program cost (estimate): 8-15B$ (1996)
  • Unit cost (estimate): 200-3000M$ (1996)
 

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