New Civilization News: It flies!    
 It flies!6 comments
27 Apr 2005 @ 16:15, by Flemming Funch

Damn, I missed that it was today. The maiden flight of the Airbus A380. It took off from Toulouse Blagnac airport at 10:29 this morning. And apparently landed again. And I was asleep and didn't notice a thing. I could just have walked outside and seen it, I'm sure, as we live not far away and most planes into Blagnac fly over here. Anyway, this one weighed 421 tonnes at takeoff, the biggest and heaviest civilian plane that has ever flown.

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6 comments

27 Apr 2005 @ 18:09 by Ge Zi @24.126.199.23 : maiden flight
Now I'm really disappointed. Why did we sent you put there to live in Toulouse of all places?
We had expected live coverage from this maiden flight!
Work on that - will you.
The next one - A381 - we expect pictures from the cockpit, and maybe a little report how she handled on some steep turns and stalls - OK???  

28 Apr 2005 @ 08:35 by taranga @217.158.116.124 : the future of air travel?
Impressive though it is it still won't address the real problem of the need to develop sustainable transport. for some ideas on this have a look at [link] for some amazingly inventive technology - airships that land anywhere with no ground/water crew needed - potential to be solar powered once flexible PV cells get cheap enough etc, although they are a bit military for my liking as that is where the dosh is initially.  

28 Apr 2005 @ 10:46 by nemue : Damm
Wake up!!!!! You could have given us an eye witness report. Really, this is so exciting. I can't wait for it to arrive in Sydney. They have started work on new landing gates already.  

28 Apr 2005 @ 13:53 by ming : Zzzzzzz
Guess I haven't been paying attention to the news recently. Sleeping through the big events. And everybody's very proud of the A380 in Toulouse, so it should have been hard to miss.

And of course it would be better with some sustainable transportation. Even though this plane is more economical than most other planes. But despite that it still burns jet fuel, it is hard not to marvel at the technological achievement of getting a project like that to happen. A majority of the ex-pats in Toulouse work in one way or another on this project, and a bunch of them seem to have been working overtime recently, getting all the pieces to fit together.  

29 Apr 2005 @ 12:02 by jstarrs : Someone mentioned that...
...the engine of this beast is equivalnt to 30,000 car engines or something (don't quote me on that, huh?)  

30 Apr 2005 @ 12:01 by John Abbe @68.100.164.130 : Biggest?
Biggest planes: [link]

If the Spruce Goose counts as civilian, its wingspan is bigger. Ah well, sorry you missed the maiden flight...  

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