Legacy of the An-225 - The future we never got...

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The An-225 was just the beginning.

The engineers had big plans for the aircraft, and by big, we mean huge.

Meet the An-325 and its bigger brother, the Antonov AKS.

They were templates for a new soviet space-faring future.

From shuttle transport

To Shuttle launches,

To even future designs that were somewhat wacky and out of this world.

But with the unconfirmed news of the destruction of the one and only An-225 in Ukraine, it comes the end of an era - perhaps even the end of the last soviet union mega projects.

In today’s video, we won’t just be looking back at perhaps one of the most magical aircraft to ever fly, but appreciate the good that it did during its life and what could have been.

The future we never got.
AN-225 story

The An-225 began its life as a heavy lift aircraft - designed to carry the 2400 ton super-heavy lift launch vehicle - the Energia and the soviet shuttle Buran. Its configuration was much like the Nasa shuttle transport 747 used by the United States, to bring the shuttle back from its landing site to its launch pad.

With 6 engines, and a horizontal stabiliser wing that was bigger than most jets actual wingspan, it was a striking image of raw power and, some would say, arrogant defiance of gravity.

The An-225 had the ability to transport not only space craft on its back, but also massive internal loads.

Specifically it could carry ultra-heavy and oversized freight weighing up to 250,000 kg (550,000 lb) internally or 200,000 kg (440,000 lb) on the upper fuselage. Items like engines or generators - or perhaps military tanks, that can’t easily be disassembled.

And if you are wondering just how many passengers it could carry - ive actually already done all the maths right here
(link to the passenger An-225 video)

But the real advantage of having such a large aircraft was that it could be used not only for transport - but launching rockets as well…

AN-325


In the 1990s, the British approached Antonov to produce an updated version of the AN-225, one called the AN-325 - super creative name, that would have an additional engine on each side to a total of 8, with 4 of them positioned as pairs on the same pylons, similar solution to the one used on B-52.

It was called Horizontal Take Off and Landing Spacecraft (HOTOL) single-stage-to-orbit aerospace vehicle, and expect us to cover it on our new channel linked below.

The Soviets did extensive wind tunnel testing and concluded that the project would be possible, but by the next year, USSR didn’t even exist anymore and the project was scrapped.

This wasn’t the end of the An-325 project however. In 2005 it was Ukrainians who started thinking about future use of this platform. Yuzhnoye design bureau and Antonov started working on a new spacecraft called Svityaz which would be launched from An-325 or An-225.

And if you didn’t know, there is actually another An-225 fuselage sitting in Ukraine, albeit never completed, but we’ll get to it in a minute.

Because first, this piggyback ride to space is going to get even crazier.


AKS

During the 80s and the “one stage spacecraft” race, Tupolev design bureau was working on a completely new project called Tupolev OOS, where OOS stands for, well..one stage orbital craft.

So, we’re talking here about the possible nuclear powered, double the size of Buran craft and this again deserves a video on it’s own and we’ll get there, but how does this all play into the An-225 story.

Well, you see, one of the launch options was from mid air, or to be more precise from an airborne launch platform such as the An-225. However, due to the massive size and weight of this new spacecraft, Tupolev and Antonov started work on a new project called Antonov AKS.

Why is this so crazy you may ask. This thing was proposed to be a massive double sized An-225 - built out of two fuslages. it would have Eighteen D-18T turbofans with a combined thrust of 421,740 kgf, and be able to carry up to 1650 tons, or 3.6 million pounds. Its wingspan would be 153 meters, or 500 feet long, twice that of the boeing 777x we have today.

Ironically it would not even be the most insane aircraft planned by the soviets during that era, such as the Molnyia-1000 Heracles which does deserve its own video.

For the AN-225, the future was bright and the dreams were big… but sometimes, dreams dont happen.