We Look At The Largest Aircraft in The World

There are a lot of aircraft in the world – commercial planes, military planes, helicopters, and the list goes on and on. Depending on the type of plane you’re looking at, most aircraft look and act very similar. There’s small aircraft, middle-sized aircraft, large aircraft, and then our favorite category: the what-in-the-world-is-that-thing aircraft.

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what the biggest “plane” in the sky was, I have the answer for you. And if you study the makeup of it, it sounds as if its designers (Hybrid Air Vehicles, Ltd.) wanted to find out what would happen when they put a plane, helicopter, and blimp all together in the same prototype. What they got from the mashup happens to be the largest aircraft currently known to man. Have a look for yourself at the behemoth.

Storing That Thing At The Airport

What you see in part in the image above is an unprecedented event in the history of aviation. This monster of an airship measures approximately 300 feet long and can reach a top speed around 100 MPH. Not impressed yet? She can also stay in the air for 3 weeks at a time. This aircraft is being heralded as part of the future of greener/hybrid air vehicles, and its designers hope one day there will be just as many of these in the sky as helicopters today. As these ships use mostly helium to travel, their impact on the environment would be less severe than other aircraft.

These ships will primarily be used to transport people and goods all over the world, though there is also the possibility of using them for surveillance use. Each one could carry up to 50 tons of cargo, and would cost just over $50 million to manufacture.

Could you imagine taking a trip in one of these things? I hope they’ll have a lot of movies on demand and seats with plenty of leg room. What do you think?