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Building the A380
Gavinsblog writes "The Independent has a report on the construction
of the Airbus A380. Amazingly, a ship is being custom-built to ferry parts
for assembly, a custom fleet of trucks are also to be used - with roads widened
to suit. Oh and the assembly building is the size of two soccer pitches, and the
height of an olympic swimming pool."
Last time I checked, olympic swimming pools weren't very high. In fact, they actually went down into the floor.
We gave you the mobile phone, and now the world's biggest/best passenger plane. So what have the Americans ever done for us?
Planes this big are used to deliver all the printed Slashdot comments to Africa so that people without internet access could still read them.
Ok the plane is big and the people have to herded in. BUT, imagine like how planes are routed along certain times the amount of traffic at customs?
HOLY MOLY! In the mornings (Europe) or afternoons (America) there is going to be a whole slew of people moving through customs. Make the security checks look like a walk in the park....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
... how many poor people could eat a year with $260m.
perosnally, i don't see the benefit of a huge plane like this. somebody convince me.
Increases productivity, increases profits for companies, company expands, company hires new people, poor people get jobs, poor people eat. I trust that they feel they need to build this, that someone wants to buy it, or they would not bother.
Every time I hear how a company is investing millions in a new project, and someone says "think of all the poor people it could feed" I just want to spit up.
HOW the plane is used is irrelevent. How many many people NEED the fastest computer? Since I upgrade every year, it creates jobs. From Dell, to UPS, in China (for parts), on the docks in California. It doesn't matter HOW or WHY I need the new computer, it creates jobs.
Capitolism: Works every time it's tried.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Who measures things in soccer pitches olympic swimming pools? What sort of standards are these? I was just getting used to meters, had a basic understanding of fathoms, and had heard of rods, but what the heck are these new units?
30M ~= 1 olympic size swimming pool?, so is it 60 meters tall? ~190 feet tall?
And just how long exactly is a soccor (soccer!) pitch (field!). My reports show between 100 and 130 yards (Arph! yet another measurement!).
Let's all get together and use either metric or english systems please. Your preference, I don't care because I can translate easily enough between those two.
ADVENTUR>You are in a maze of twisty little passages.
The preceding comment has been reviewed and declared to be compliant with HIPPA Phase II regulations.
Funny how all the comments on /. that question the basic ways in which society works are marked down as flamebait. The mods obviously are happy to question how capitalist society works when it throws up monopoly software houses, but don't go any further than that or else you're a goddam commie. (Yeh, mark me down as flamebait if you like, I got karma to burn and a world still to win)
Anyhow, the real benefit is from the additional efficency - if we can get more people from A to B more cheaply that produces a benefit. The real point, however, as the man with the beard might have said, is who gets that benefit? There is nothing wrong with the plane (apart from maybe the impact of auircraft fuel on the ozone layer and global warming) - what might be wrong are the choices we have made about the distribution of the benefits of advancing technology.
When I first read th title it sounded strange that IBM had to build a new ship to manufacture a new computer.
But now that I've read the article, I see it's about building airplanes. However I thinks it's kind of amusing that the airplane parts get thier own rest stops on the highway.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Hopefully it'll have custom jumbo-size seats to accomodate today's wider, fatter traveller!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
http://www.airbus.com/airbus4u/photo_album.asp
This raises the interesting question of what happens when a large plane is damaged at a smaller airport. Somewhere like Gatwick. As far as I can see, they've only got two options: a) repair the plane with the limited facilities available or b) chop it up and remove it as scrap metal.
Does anyone have stories to tell about planes that landed too hard, and had to be scrapped because repairs couldn't be carried out on the spot?
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> At the peak of production, when Airbus is building four A380s a month, the main roads into Toulouse from the north-west will be clogged 12 nights a month with this slow-moving procession.
I'd bet that Airbus would kill to be able to use a CargoLifter airship. This is exactly what they are designed for. Can quietly transport 160 metric tons of any size and shape, for drop off at any location.
Oh dear. Looks like they are going bankrupt.
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Actually, it's not really so much need but productivity. If everyone went out tomorrow and spent all of their money on some useless thing, like dot-com stocks, and all of that money evaporated and was funneled into more useless things (like Ferraris) the productive uses of capital would diminish and... jobs would ultimately be lost because the economy would, shrink not grow, as we lost our ability to consume "productively". Read your business section for a real life example of this.
A bigger jet supposedly flys more people with less overhead. The trouble is that ultimately will mean less planes flying, less schedule freedom, and more of a pain overall for passengers. How many times have you missed the 8:00pm to London due to weather in Atlanta but you can grab the 9:30 from the same airline and arrive with minimal delay in time to make your meeting and catch the flight that evening to Dublin? It's happened to me a few times.
Put megaplanes in their place and I'm delayed a day getting to London, stuck in Atlanta, and I'm on the phone with airlines for hours trying to rearrange tickets and meetings. Not to mention it will take an hour just to get the passengers on the plane, and all of the lines as passengers simultaneously arrive instead of being spread out across mulitple flights when everything goes the way it should.
Productivity enhancement? Not for the passengers. It's an ego thing for Europe, like a skyscraper or a moon landing.
Now the Eurpoeans are building something so ridiculously big that no Americans want it.
Talk about role-reversal.
Nothing is perfect. Capitalism is like democracy. It's a rotten system, and the only system worse than democracy and capitalism is everything else.
just show me the poor people who get better from the outsourcing of the production of computer parts (or anything, like jeans, furniture, etc). they are being exploited for lower wages than you could imagine, and they are left no other option.
If you live in China, a job for $1 a day is better than no job for $0 a day. They can only pay $1 a day as long as people will work for it, as their economy improves, the universe of persons willing to work for $1 a day shrinks, thus they have to pay $2 a day to get workers (rinse, repeat).
The fact that some can work so cheap means I buy new computers every year, instead of every 3 years. This means everyone in the chain gets 3x the work, from shippers, builders, etc. It also means that I am significanly more productive (my computer speed is very relative to my productivity). It also means that there are jobs for 3 persons in China instead of 1.
free market economy only works within the boundaries of the self-proclaimed "free world". this does not include the countries outside this "free world" where people *are* poor and exploited by the "free world". think of this next time you buy one of your upgrades, levis, or ikea furniture.
I do agree with your general point. I am not for worker exploitation, but I also know that if we do $1billion in trade with China (as an example) then we are more likely to have influence than if we do $1million. If you refuse to do any trade, then not only do they not care what you think, but it reduces China's economy and their average income.
As an example: Over the last 20 years, China has invested greatly in manufacturing of electronics, building a lot of plants (with the help of western companies). As a result, they are better invested for the future, last year China was the only country experiencing double digit growth in their economy, the average citizen, while still poor, is much better off. This is also leading to small improvements in the political system as well. Very small, but at least in the right direction.
In order to make China a "free" place, you have to empower the people there. Opening our markets to them, trading with them, exchanging culture with them, helps do this. As long as we do the OTHER things necessary (push them to reforms, etc) then it the long run, the average Chinese citizen will be better. Even in the short run they are better than 20 years ago.
And now, instead of producing trinkets, China is producing some pretty damn good stuff. Their quality has good up dramatically. Its not a perfect world, but at least its moving in the right direction, thanks to Capitalism.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
so in principle we do not disagree at all...
accept for this conclusion at the end of your post:
"Its not a perfect world, but at least its moving in the right direction, thanks to Capitalism."
How do you know? Perhaps it is 'despite Capitalism, due to the hard work of the Chinese people'.
I'm sorry, I'd love to continue this discussion, but I have to get back to the lab to work...
Take care Pharmboy,
Meneer de Koekepeer
Compare this with the space elevator. The estimated initial cost ($10 bn) is about the same as that of the airbus. Govt. spending on the space elevator: $570,000. Benefit of the space elevator: It would possibly have an enormous impact on the destiny of mankind.
If only governments wouldn't be so shortsighted...
I have done some work in Toulouse for Airbus, and been at both the Central training sites and also Airbus France itself, which is next to the airport. It is incredible walking out of an office across a hanger with two A319s into another office: it is strange to do that when so often at airports the aircraft are always outside, not inside what appears beforehand as an office building! But when I saw the giant hanger that is going to be the assembly area for the A380, it is just astonishing. It was about a month ago, so the roof hadn't been added, but even so it made me realise that the 'little' models in the reception really were not representative of just how big this aircraft is going to be. I've seen the one of the guppy transport craft take off from Toulouse as well, and I didn't really beleive that could get in the air, let alone the A380. It will be really impressive (for someone that really has never been that interested in aeroplanes) to see it fly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some background info from a world trade law student:
One: European governments are subsidizing Airbus development costs, which according to the U.S. violates WTO rules on subsidies. Of course, neither the EU nor the Bush administration can really be considered champions of unrestricted free trade.
[rant] Although economists and common sense agree that free trade results in a net wealth benefit (note that this doesn't imply a "fair" distribution of that wealth), special interest groups that have much to lose from free trade (unproductive industries, unions) find it easier to exert political influence in favor of protectionism than the average person-on-the-street, who stands to lose a few cents a day on account of a specific protectionist measure, of which he is generally not even aware. [/rant]
Two: There is of course no economical or technical reason at all to distribute this kind of megaconstruction project all over Europe. It is estimated that all the silly moving around of pieces increases construction cost by a two-figures percentage. The reason, of course, is a political one: every nation wants a piece of the cake...
While Airbus' new assembly buildings for the A380 superjumbo airliner are impressive, don't forget that Boeing had to do the exact same thing some 37 years ago when the 747 airliner project was launched.
In a way, Boeing's project was more ambitious because they had to do the following:
1. Expand what was then a small regional airfield (Paine Field) to accommodate the production line for the 747, including new longer runways.
2. Expand the parking ramp to enormous size to accommodate 747's in the final completion stage after being rolled out of the assembly line.
3. Build the world's roomiest assembly buildings and a huge paintshop building that could paint a completed 747.
4. Upgrade the ship ports in the nearby city of Everett, WA to accommodate 747 parts, including fuselage sections.
5. Build a special railroad spur line to the assembly plant, with one of the steepest gradients ever attempted for a non-cog line railroad.
And all that construction mentioned above had to be done with the Pacific Northwest's notoriously rainy weather.
What Airbus is doing at Toulouse and Hamburg are pretty much just extensions to their current large assembly plants--nothing akin to what Boeing had to do from scratch to create the 747 assembly line.
This is where the 2000 opening of San Francisco International Airport's (SFO) new International Terminal has proved to be much more visionary than people think.
Because the terminal was built in the late 1990's when what was then the Airbus A3XX project was well-advanced, the architects of the new terminal were able to design gates at the end of Concourses A and G (the two concourses that are the International gates) to conform to the 80 x 80 meter (262 x 262 feet) standard for parking gate space used by the A380. Even the Federal Inspection Service (Customs and Immigration) areas were expanded so they could easily accommodate the influx of 500+ passengers per plane. A recent US General Accounting Office (GAO) report on accommodating larger airliners at US airports notes that SFO only needs to spend about US$70 million to make the airport fully A380-compatible, with the primary cost being runway exit ramp widening to accommodate the wider stance of the A380.
In short, once the A380 starts its flight testing phase don't be surprised that the plane is a fairly frequent visitor to SFO because SFO could be used as a reference standard for A380 airport compatibility.
Custom-built ships to ferry parts. Custom fleet of trucks. Roads widened for the trucks (custom set of roads).
Hate to say it, but sounds like a bunch of dot-com flunkies are on this project.
This report is riddled with holes. For example everyone knows that the standard unit for length in sensationalist reporting is the football field, not the soccer pitch. And the standard unit for height is the Empire State building, not the olympic swimming pool. Also conspicuously absent is any comparison to the width of a human hair, or to how many times we could go to and from the moon of we laid something-or-other end to end. Very disappointing...
Per se, democracy means "people's power", from ancient Greek, and it's de facto meaning in politics is a system in which every citizen has an equal opportunity to affect (or decide not to) the decisions made in the name of the community -essentially, everyone has a vote on everything. The reason democracy has failed so far is that after it's birth, communities grew faster than information transportation technologies, rendering the concept of equal vote useless. Now, as we are approaching the time when the whole world can be reached instantaneously, we might yet again see the real democracy rise. I'm also predicting communism will be successful when the information technologies get advanced enough.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
And for a second there I thought they were talking about building some new sort of Amiga.
--riney
Metric IS English.
You can't argue with me on this one; I am English. Top trumps.
England, part of the United Kingdom, has been metric since the 1970's and before, with the exception of road signs and beer.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Some people have a "zero sum" perspective, which is wrong. If someone gets rich, it doesn't mean it was at the expense of someone else, but so many socialists seem to think this.
If I make a better widget, and sell it and get rich, I am creating jobs for my widget builders, and lower costs for those who buy my widgets. The people who make inferior widgets might have to find new jobs, but those losts jobs are LESS (on average) than the new wealth created by the new improved widgets.
Some people believe that there is a "fixed amount of wealth" so when one person gets more, someone one else must have less. This is utterly incorrect. My success helps others, it doesnt take away from them. Obviously, I could do things detrimental to others by my success, anyone can, but free market capitalism is what prevents me from over charging for my widgets. Free market capitalism prevents me from underpaying my employees, according to what market conditions are in my area. If I treat my employees like crap, they leave and I can't build more widgets.
Zero sum believers simply do not get the fact that wealth is relative, not absolute. A perfect example is "poor Americans". In America, if you work for $7 an hour and you are married with one child, you are considered poor. Odds are, this poor person has heat and air, a roof that doesn't leak, a vcr, a tv, a phone, a car and a decent meal 3x a day.
In many countries, especially countries that do not have free market capitalism (China, N. Korea, etc), this would be considered quite wealthy.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
You're right, and I can see the headline now:
NASA Probe Lost:
Scientists forget to convert football fields to ice hockey rinks
You're right, we should standardize on our field measurements. I suggest we use the current world record for the discus toss, since the Greeks are sort of the father of sports and that's probably the most famous of them all. Now if only I knew how far that was...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
You're being a little short-sighted, aren't you? A fleet of airplanes like the A380 will last at least 30 years, if not 50. The design and construction started many years ago and cost billions of dollars. You think that should all be abandoned because of this little blip, of couple of years of bad economy?
You'll note from your own post -- 747's are being grounded. Why aren't they being sold? For the same reason.
But will the Americans let it land? Remember when the Concorde SST was introduced? Too noisy, oh my poor ears... Funny how America is always the voice of sweet reason and fair play competition - when it's winning. But when it's losing, watch out!
... how many poor people could eat a year with $260m.
So you are suggesting all of the money currently used for capital investment be put into feeding programs for "the poor"?
I really don't see what good that would do other than result in a whole bunch more poor people.
BTW you aren't the customer for the plane, if you happen to be CEO of an airline I'm sure a meeting with an Airbus representative can be arranged. Obviously the airlines that have ordered A380s see some benefit or they wouldn't have bought the plane.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Many fleets of 747s are being grounded and being replaced by the lower-capacity 777... including in Pacific Rim routes. Actually, that is not quite accurate. The airlines are grounding 747 becuase they cost more / passenger than does the 777. The 747 engines and airodynamics are inefficient compared to the 777. It is for this reason, that the 380 will make a huge dent in the market. Southwest will not be buying these, but United, American, etc will buy fleets of these. Or better yet, if Boeing will pull their head out of their ass, they will buy the BWB's. These aircrafts will be super efficient, and fun to fly in.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The P-80 was considered the best Allied fighter at the end of World War II. It arrived too late to see combat, even though 45 aircraft were delivered prior to the end of the war.
As for American casualties in europe I have anotherweb site for you . Soviet Suffered 13.6 million military casualties. Thats about 2.5 times the number of jews killed, and more than 30 times the number of americans troops lost(300,000). The germans lost 3 million. Where do you think Germany lost the bulk of its troops? Thank you Soviet Union, for getting rid of the nazi menace. Had the germans not attacked Stalin, all of europe would probably be speaking german today. Anyone tell you different, and they are victims of (UK and US) allied propaganda.
As for the US, its true that your presense probably have saved us from a communist takeover. So thank you US of A for that. Wether that is a good thing or not is debatable
I've been to Lake Titicaca in Peru and seen the two warships on what is the highest lake in the world. If correctly I recall, the ships were built part by part in the UK, shipped by ships and then train and alpaca over about 5 years across the Andes, and then built on the lakeshore. Still functional (although they had to change the engline to one which works on Alpaca droppings). Recommended visit.
-/elad
This is the first part of an article from Aviation Week last December. This group of retired airplane designers has some interesting ideas on reducing the cost of transporting passengers.
--
Thinking Outside the Box Without Getting Too Far
16-Dec-2002
By James R. Asker
For decades, it seems two types of new civil aircraft have been discussed. Those that actually get developed tend to offer modest, incremental improvements on existing technologies arranged in patterns that are familiar. Then there are those that involve radical departures from the familiar long silver tubes. Typically, these remain "paper airplanes" never getting past a set of interesting drawings and studies.
There's nothing wrong with evolving a product line. Airbus, Boeing and the engine makers have been making commercial aviation safer and more efficient for decades doing that. Nor am I saying that radically different aircraft never go into production and airline service. The supersonic Concorde was certainly a dramatic departure from the state of the art.
But it seems all too rare that an aircraft comes along that shakes up assumptions about what passenger airplanes must be like but that is not so radical that it can't succeed commercially. The Boeing 747 comes to mind. There are so many inefficiencies in other areas of the process of getting people from one place to another by air that seem ripe for improvement. And almost all of them are related to things that take place on the ground. There's a lot more time wasted on the ground than in the air.
That's why I am intrigued by the approach of a group of veteran engineers who call themselves the Reston Elders and have been working for several years on designs to bring a little radical change to air travel. Chas Willits, a member I met more than a decade ago when he was working at NASA's old space station program office in Reston, Va., candidly describes the group as "a bunch of old guys with a lot of experience."
The Reston Elders' design philosophy involves approaching aircraft and ground facilities together as elements of the air transportation system, looking at unexamined assumptions, concentrating on areas in which the biggest savings can be had and then trying to apply existing technologies to lower costs and increase passenger satisfaction--and airline profit margins.
The specific goal they have laid out for themselves is to design a family of passenger-friendly air vehicles and associated ground equipment that could allow a doubling of air transport capacity at one-third less manufacturing cost and half the current average seat-mile operating cost.
How do you cut seat-mile costs? Labor is the biggest single component of costs. Give labor tools that allow workers to be more productive and costs go down. If you can both reduce the number of ground workers and cut the time required to ready an aircraft for its next flight, allowing higher asset utilization, you have attacked the problem from two directions.
So the Elders aimed for a system that allows even a 600-passenger aircraft's turn time to be kept under 30 min. "The idea is not to be a carbon copy of Southwest Airlines," Willits says. "But we need to move in that direction."
To accomplish that, the group would build aircraft that can "crab taxi" so that it is parallel to the loading pier, easily allowing multiple loading ramps (see drawing). More importantly, it would allow a dramatic change in baggage handling. Airports/airlines would provide baggage carts at curbside to all passengers free, as some in Europe now do. There's a type of cart that can go on escalators. After clearing security, passengers would bring all their bags to the gate, where they would place them in containers. The containers could be loaded and unloaded on the aircraft via conveyor belts, eliminating baggage handling labor and vehicles. Fueling would be done by a system that pops up from the pavement, as done now in Stockholm and Singapore.
Getting vehicles off the ramp would reduce air pollution associated with airline activity by 20% and eliminate what the Elders claim is a $5-billion annual bill for airport "fender-benders."
The Reston Elders have ended up with designs for a family of constant cross-section subsonic aircraft having two decks with double-aisle, six-to-a-row seating in 250-, 364- and 528-coach seat variants. The 528-seater would be 208 ft. long and have a wingspan of 200 ft.
No center seats would enhance safety and comfort. Even with the comfortable 34-in. seat pitch planned, the pressure shell would use only 110 cu. ft. per passenger, a more efficient use of the volume than that of the Boeing 777-300, which uses 145 cu. ft. per passenger, according to Willits.
Obviously, to be able to park parallel to existing terminals' piers, the aircraft have to have a high-wing design. Placing the engines over the wing, with other refinements, would achieve about 10-dB. noise reduction on the ground because noise is reflected "up and out" off the wing, allowing 24-hr. operations at all airports. It would also virtually eliminate ground-sourced foreign-object damage. The aircraft would use full-span flaperons and caster landing gear, as on a B-52, which would allow for no rotation at V 1 and wings-level landings.
Interestingly, one of the other shows in the series - Dubai: City of Dreams - is an account of the massive infrastructure project being undertaken in the UAE. The show doesn't mention it, but another part of that project is the expansion of Dubai International Airport which will accomodate multiple A380s at Concourse 2. In fact, according to this article, Concourse 3 was added to the plan specifically to handle the increased passenger throughput from the A380.
Ummm, no. The AWACS is built on a Boeing 707 airframe, which is much older and smaller than the 747.
What you might be referring to is that a predecessor to the 747 was the losing entry (Lockheed won, I think) for the C-5, the US military's Really Big Cargo Plane.
Boeing was paid by the Department of Defense to create a prototype design to meet DOD requirements. They lost. Boeing then used the design as a basis for the 747, but note that Boeing absorbed the huge cost of making the 747 acceptable to the US Federal Aviation Administration, which has a far different set of requirements.
The original development was a "work for hire" at the request of the DOD. Every other Boeing aircraft has been internally funded by Boeing. That is a far cry from "here's 4 billion Euros, go build an airplane that competes with the Yanks" tactic of the European governments. Airbus has been a subsidy child since day one.
The US, I think, holds the upper hand here. If nothing else, the US could slap a tariff on the A380 (say, 100% of selling price), or just not certify it to operate in the States. Either action could be a fatal blow to the program. Of course, the EU would have the same options when the next Boeing aircraft is developed, igniting a major trade war.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Soviet Suffered 13.6 million military casualties ... and more than 30 times the number of americans troops lost(300,000)
I wonder whay that is? The Soviets were fighting tooth and nail against the Germans since 1941 - the Americans did not get involved in ground fighting until North Africa in 1942, and that was a comparatively tiny commitment. The Soviets had plenty of people to spare, so they exchanged blood for more time to prepare their reserves. Soldiers were sometimes sent into combat without traning and without a personal weapon. Penal battalions were used to clear minefields by stepping on mines. Millions of Soviet prisoners that ended up in German hands also perished in labour camps, fighting ("Hiwis") for the Germans or were liquidated by Stalin's regime after the war (becoming an enemy prisoner was a capital offense).
There is no doubt that the Soviets suffered tremendous casualties during the war - by far the most of any nation. However, your implication that 30X the casulaties implies 30X the effort is ridiculous.
Where do you think Germany lost the bulk of its troops? Thank you Soviet Union, for getting rid of the nazi menace.
Germany did indeed lose the bulk of its troops on the Eastern front. However, it isn't like the numbers in the West were minisule - the fall of Tunisia in 1943, France in 1944 and the Ruhr in 1945 were all German defeats at the hands of the Americans and British that were at least as catastrophic as Stalingrad.
And let us not forget there are other contributions to victory besides the killing infantry. Who destroyed the most German aircraft? Ships? U-boats? Industrial capacity and oil refining? It wasn't the Russians. Who knocked Italy out of the war and forced the Germans to expend troops occupying and fighting there? Who had the means to project power and keep first-line German formations deployed in theatres they would never fight in (e.g. the Balkans)? Also not the Russians. How many billions did the US expend in lend-lease aid (food and military equipment) for the USSR?
The point is that it took a combined effort from the Soviets, Americans, British, Canadians, French, Australians, etc. to destroy Nazi Germany. To imply otherwise is assinine.
As for the US, its true that your presense probably have saved us from a communist takeover. So thank you US of A for that. Wether that is a good thing or not is debatable.
This is probably the most ignorant and disgusting comment I have ever seen. I'll tell you what - go read up on Stalin, on how many of his own people he had murdered (hint: millions) or imprisioned (hint: millions more) and get back to me on how "debatable" that is.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.