The new Boeing 747-8F is one majestic aircraft. Along with all the majesticness (yes I just made that a word) comes a lot of weight. The 747-8F can take off weighing nearly one million pounds and for the flight tests, Boeing needs to make sure the aircraft can successfully complete an aborted take off, fully loaded.
The Ultimate Rejected Takeoff (yes that is official terminology) is not made easy. First they loaded up the aircraft to about 975,000 pounds. Then they made sure the brakes were as worn as possible — not something that would happen during normal maintenance.
Once the aircraft got above 200mph, the Boeing test pilot, Captain Kirk Vining, slammed on the brakes. During a normal aborted take off, the pilot would also use thrust reversers, but not for this test. All that energy (and it is a lot) went directly to the brakes.
The 747-8F was able to stop about 700 feet sooner than Boeing was expecting. However, stopping is just half the battle. As you can see in the video, once the aircraft is stopped, the brakes were glowing red. Even though a fire crew was on the scene, they let the brakes sit for five minutes to see how the 747-8F would react.
This video shows a worst case scenario. Even if you have experienced a rejected take off as a passenger, it most likely wasn’t this violent. This just goes to show that aircraft can handle a lot and are extremely safe.
For more information and a second video, check out Boeing’s website.
Try “Majesty.”
I dunno. I am kind of attached to majesticness now 🙂
WOW, this is just amazing. More smoke than a large backyard BBQ, anyone bring the Beer Brats N Dogs?
I am always spell bound by watching something this big fly……..
Thanks Dave, you are the best.
As noted before, reasonably proper use of the English language seperates the men from the boys. If the blog/website is to reach its full potential, high quality language skills, editing and proff reading will become more common. Using majesticness (a non-word)in place of the proper majestic, simply becasue it did not come to mind, is an issue that CAN be overcome with some good editing tools. Ahem… The ‘professionals’ are no brighter, smarter or better educated than the mid-level bloggers. The real difference is that the use the various tools and publish only properly clean and conforming work. Commenters in this space do not enjoy those tools, but the blog owner sure does. I hope that he will learn to use them. By any measure of reasonably proper language use, “majestiness” is a non-starter and “Majesty” conveys the intended meaning. This stuff can be learned and it is not terribly difficult. There is so much potential here, limited only by… Enough said. Please?
Thanks for your insight. I hope it comes across as humorous and humor is something I try to have in my blog.
David
While I do agree with the proper usage of the English language, this is another example of how the Internet is a harsh landscape where NO one can escape criticism. Negativity and scrutiny flow like molten lava from the angry magma core that is the collective online consciousness. The uneducated, opinionated, and verbose all collide in a nuclear fireball of argumentative absurdity.
Sorry to burst the bubble…
Ma`jes´tic`ness
n.1.The quality or state of being majestic.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913
Too funny: “seperates” is not a word nor is “proff”.
“proff”reading before posting is always good advice to give and take.
I’m hurt, where is the Seattle Sounders plane? Did Alaska Airlines forget it is based in Seattle?
Boeing Baby!!!!!!
So cool… so cool… and why am I not going to school to be a test pilot?