Mark Lundstrom: Radia CEO on building the world's largest aircraft for transporting wind turbines

A US company is building the world's largest aircraft without having ever built a plane before.  

The WindRunner is being constructed to transport large wind turbines and will be operating by the end of this decade.

It's eight times as big as the largest military aircraft, with a cockpit as tall as a five storey building. 

Radia CEO Mark Lundstrom told Ryan Bridge it's capable of moving gigantic things to hard to reach places, including for humanitarian missions and defence applications 

He says the goal is to move a more than 100metre long turbine blade and land it on a piece of dirt within confines of a wind farm, which would reduce cost of wind energy by a third.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I you is companies building the world's largest airplane, called
the wind Runner to transport massive wind turbines. The catch well,
that would never actually build an aircraft before, but they
say the demand for green energy makes it worth the risk.
Mark Lundstrom is the aerospace engineer who founded Radio the
company behind this, and is with me this morning. Good morning,

(00:21):
all right, good morning, Mark, Great to have you on
the show. Can you just tell us how big? Give
us an idea of how big this bad boy is.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Sure, it's by far the world's largest aircraft. It's about
twelve times the volume of a seven forty seven. It
has a cockpit that's about as all as a five
story building, and it's about eight times as big as
the largest military aircraft flying today, the C five.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Okay, so massive? Why So?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
It turns out that there's a lot of very large
payloads that need to be moved hard to reach places,
and so we originally started working on the wind Runner
in order to move the world's biggest wind turbines to
onshore Lookeuate.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
So the goal is.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
To be able to move over a one hundred meter
turbine blade and land it on a piece of dirt
within the confines of a wind farm, and if you
can do that, you can reduce the cost wind energy
by about a third. And then it turns out if
you can actually have the capability of moving gigantic things
too hard to reach places, there's some fantastic humanitarian missions
that you can provide, and a lot of defense applications

(01:23):
you can provide, so you can basically put you can
essentially move a six pack of F sixteen fighters or
a six pack of Shinnock helicopters and land on a
piece of dirt as well.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Landing on the dirt sounds interesting. This is obviously going
to be very heavy if you've got one hundred meter
wind turbinal six jets in there.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah. So it's actually the first time that an airplane
has been designed to optimize volume instead of mass. And
so it turns out that even though the airplane is
very big, it's not quite as heavy as you think
as you would think it would be. And it's so
big that we have the ability to put lots of
landing gear on it, and so that enables us to
have not that much poundage per wheel, and so we're

(02:02):
able to land on on just semi prepared dirt strips.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
So it was seven times the volume of a seven
forty seven, did you say, and if that's the case,
how do you keep it flying?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
So twelve times the volume of a seven forty seven,
so it is gigantic, and you keep it flying by
just using standard aerospace techniques. You know, if you have
if you have powerful enough jet engines, you can make
you can make a very large airplane fly. So what
the design team did at Radio is we basically have
designed this airplane around the things that are already in
mass production and already flying. So making sure we reduce

(02:38):
the technology risk by by designing the airplane around the
things that are already flying. And it turns out that
there's some very powerful engines that can move a very
large airplane today. And it's and that's because basically it's
been it's been essentially thirty years since a large cargo
aircraft had been designed, and during those decades, engine technology
has improved massively, and so that enables us to move

(02:59):
an airplane that's much much larger than the industry has
made for a long time.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Why are you doing this or how are you? How
far through are you? Why your business and why aren't
those ones who do large aircraft already attempting something like
this or are they?

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah, So we are the company behind this, but we're
not the company that's exclusively building this. And so Radia
has built a supply chain that includes dozens of companies.
The top aerospace manufacturing companies in the world are working
with us to pull this aircraft together because it's such
a unique vehicle and it's so exciting I think for
the supply chain to actually have an opportunity for the

(03:39):
aerospace industry to participate in helping solve climate change, and
so for an aeronautical solution to help move the needle
and climate change is very exciting for the company and
very exciting for the supply chain. But it is a
bit of a unique vehicle, and it's not something that's
sort of straight down the middle for a company that
usually makes passenger air craft or military aircraft. This is

(04:02):
something there's a market opportunity that is a small company.
We we identified that and then we inspired the supply
chain to work with us to build it.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Give us a date mark, when will we see it
in the skies.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
You'll see in the skies by the end of the decade.
So it's no slow it's no it's no fast process
to design the world and build the world's largest aircraft.
But we've been at this for about eight years. We're
about ready to start manufacturing. The supply chain has all
been built, uh, and so we're we're we intend to
start providing service end of decade.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Based in lock Scie, Flying Mark Lunstrom has the aerospace
Engineer at Radia.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
For more Familily Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live to
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