Notas
Antonov An-990 Upd -
Today, with the real An-225 destroyed in the 2022 conflict, the ghost of the An-990 serves as a poignant, almost tragic symbol. It reminds us that sometimes the most incredible aircraft are not the ones that fly, but the ones that exist just on the other side of reason, waiting in the blueprint—a beautiful, impossible answer to a question no one should have asked.
In the pantheon of aviation engineering, the Antonov Design Bureau is synonymous with "big." The An-225 Mriya —a six-engine, 32-wheel leviathan that carried the Soviet Buran space shuttle—remains the heaviest aircraft ever built. But in the dusty archives of unbuilt concepts, whispered about in the hangars of Hostomel Airport, lies a legend that makes the An-225 look like a crop duster: the Antonov An-990 .
The solution was a grotesque masterpiece of radial symmetry.
The landing gear, a nightmare of hydraulics, contained 64 wheels arranged in four independent bogie trains. Turning required a specialized tow-tractor and a five-kilometer turning radius. The only operational anecdote comes from a purported "leak" by a former Antonov test engineer in a 2012 forum post, since deleted. He claimed that a single prototype—registration CCCP-990100—was rolled out of a modified hangar in Kyiv in December 1991, just weeks before the fall of the Soviet Union.
The taxi test was a disaster. The weight of the central fuselage caused the asphalt of the taxiway to liquefy. The first and only "hop"—a 20-foot rise off the runway at 180 knots—reportedly shattered every window in the control tower and stripped the roof off a nearby maintenance shed due to the exhaust wake of the 14 engines. The aircraft landed immediately, its rear triple-fuselage joint cracked.
Where the An-225 had one fuselage, the . Two pressurized cargo holds ran parallel to a central passenger/crew module, all joined by a delta wing so vast its trailing edge was measured in hectares, not meters. To lift a projected payload of 990 metric tons (nearly triple the An-225's capacity), Antonov engineers reportedly opted for 14 engines —a mix of Progress D-18T turbofans on the wings and four reinforced Kuznetsov NK-32 afterburning turbofans (from the Tu-160 bomber) mounted on a revised tail fin for "assisted climb-out."
Today, with the real An-225 destroyed in the 2022 conflict, the ghost of the An-990 serves as a poignant, almost tragic symbol. It reminds us that sometimes the most incredible aircraft are not the ones that fly, but the ones that exist just on the other side of reason, waiting in the blueprint—a beautiful, impossible answer to a question no one should have asked.
In the pantheon of aviation engineering, the Antonov Design Bureau is synonymous with "big." The An-225 Mriya —a six-engine, 32-wheel leviathan that carried the Soviet Buran space shuttle—remains the heaviest aircraft ever built. But in the dusty archives of unbuilt concepts, whispered about in the hangars of Hostomel Airport, lies a legend that makes the An-225 look like a crop duster: the Antonov An-990 . antonov an-990
The solution was a grotesque masterpiece of radial symmetry. Today, with the real An-225 destroyed in the
The landing gear, a nightmare of hydraulics, contained 64 wheels arranged in four independent bogie trains. Turning required a specialized tow-tractor and a five-kilometer turning radius. The only operational anecdote comes from a purported "leak" by a former Antonov test engineer in a 2012 forum post, since deleted. He claimed that a single prototype—registration CCCP-990100—was rolled out of a modified hangar in Kyiv in December 1991, just weeks before the fall of the Soviet Union. But in the dusty archives of unbuilt concepts,
The taxi test was a disaster. The weight of the central fuselage caused the asphalt of the taxiway to liquefy. The first and only "hop"—a 20-foot rise off the runway at 180 knots—reportedly shattered every window in the control tower and stripped the roof off a nearby maintenance shed due to the exhaust wake of the 14 engines. The aircraft landed immediately, its rear triple-fuselage joint cracked.
Where the An-225 had one fuselage, the . Two pressurized cargo holds ran parallel to a central passenger/crew module, all joined by a delta wing so vast its trailing edge was measured in hectares, not meters. To lift a projected payload of 990 metric tons (nearly triple the An-225's capacity), Antonov engineers reportedly opted for 14 engines —a mix of Progress D-18T turbofans on the wings and four reinforced Kuznetsov NK-32 afterburning turbofans (from the Tu-160 bomber) mounted on a revised tail fin for "assisted climb-out."
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