Most Insane Cargo Plane Ever - Boeing Resource Carrier One
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
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With a wingspan of 500 feet, 12 engines, 56 wheels and a carrying capacity of 2,3 million pounds - this plane was five times more powerful than an Antonov An-225 and could be listed as the most insane cargo plane ever designed. But it would never be built.
When the US government opened up northern Alaska to the oil industry, there was a question of how to get the resources from the far icy north down the refineries in the south. Boeing realized that air transportation would be the solution for this stranded oil and that earlier engineers had overlooked two very important factors.
Firstly, that the oil wouldn't have to go from Alaska to California, but rather it could go from Alaska to the shipping lanes near the Canadian border, traveling the rest of the way by boat.
Another mistake was basing the sortie times on commercial operations, like the Boeing 747. As the plane wouldn't be transporting passengers, but instead crude oil, it could fly at any time of the day - performing up to 18 sorties in a rolling 24 hour cycle.
To begin, they started with the Boeing 747. Turning one into a oil transport wouldn't be hard, and inital designs showed that it could do it. The plane would turn its wing fuel tanks into oil tanks, as it didn't need the fuel for the short-range. Boeing presented this 747 idea but as the plane made a profit of one dollar per barrel, the companies were not interested.
In 1970, Canada looked into opening up the arctic archipelago as part of the great plains project, for resource mining and extraction. Any railway would need to be built over frozen tundra and a pipeline would be considered extremely expensive.
The team opening up the region became aware of Boeing's recent 747 oil tanker proposal and got in touch to see if they could use the same principle to carry mined ore rather than oil. This one design changed spurred Boeing to create a completely new aircraft, one that was up to the job and would be called the resource carrier. It would have other nicknames, such as the brute Lifter, or the Flying Pipeline!
Oil would be loaded in gigantic pods fitted to the side of the plane's massive 500 foot or 150-meter wingspan. This would allow quick turn arounds, as the pods could be loaded off the plane, installed, and then flown to the destination. On arrival, the pods would be deposited onto existing train cars, and the plane would return with the empty pods.
To spread the heavy load out on the wings, the plane would need eight sets of landing gears. However, this had a problem for when the plane would turn on the ground, limiting a swept wing. This means that the plane would use a straight wing. This means a slower speed of Mach 0.7. But this was a fair compromise, as the flights would be short and the engineers could focus on a low-speed high-lift wing design.
This would mean that the plane would have a short-range, fully loaded of 1,000 miles, 1,610 km respectively. The plane would weigh around 985,000 pounds (447,000 kg), or double the weight of an An-225.
The Canadian plains project also had one more request - that the aircraft use a gas fuel as opposed to jet fuel. It would have a huge fuselage with nothing in it, the heavy cargo was in the pods. These fuel tanks would carry as natural gas, which could also now be transported in the same tanks.
The team believed that a fleet of 50 aircraft would be required for the project, with 15 of the aircraft being used as spares to ensure 24-hour service. At then $72 million, $439 million today, a pop, this was not a cheap operation. For oil, this would mean 86 cents per barrel - a good dollar difference from the previous 747 proposals.
To achieve the required sortie rate needed to make the "flying pipeline" concept work, Boeing designed an airport around the aircraft. This featured three parallel runways that would operate at the same time. Aircraft landed on the two outer runways and then taxied along with large operational aprons at either end of the runways. Here they dropped their cargo pods onto trains and picked up empty ones for the return flight.
A huge advantage of this proposal was that the planes could be reconfigured. From transporting oil, gas, ore, and more, they could be moved at a moment's notices throughout the region and would mean new areas could be exploited.
So why was it never built?
In 1972, Boeing who had already put in 500,000 into the project presented the final design. The Canadians took it to the oil firms, confident they could get the $15 million needed to build a small-scale demonstration model.
Then in 1973, the oil crisis struck. The Boeing resource carrier was no longer profitable, and all design plans for it were totally abandoned - bringing the end to the insane journey of what could have been the world's biggest cargo aircraft.
Check out what I've dubbed: The most hated plane:
ua-cam.com/video/s1xq6pb5DNM/v-deo.html
Yo
Amogsus
just use a bv 238 prefect for the job bruv
you are the best in aviation animation
Wait, that isn't Concordski
Love how at 0:12 when the plane splits, the guy falls and hangs on for dear life. Your animator has a lot of fun with these
I the animator - if you look a little later in the video when the same shot appears... maybe listen very carefully
@@FoundAndExplained awesome! Thank you for making these cool videos, I am a big fan of this presentation style of content
You sir have AMAZING OBSERVATIONAL SKILLS!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I went back and looked thank you that was very funny
@@FoundAndExplained Well done!
Family day at the office and kids get to help design a plane
It totally looks like it was designed in crayon!
hahahahahahahahaahahahahha xD
@@FoundAndExplained and you figured if you made a cgi video about it, enough morons would click. C'mon.
@@firozosman Well bud, welcome to the Morons club then.
CAD crayon aided design =)
I can't tell if an oil spill at 35,000 feet would be better or worse than an oil spill in the middle of the pacific
Yes.
It would be better in some ways and worse in others.
@Zhou Zay that's not how oil works. The evaporation temperature of oil is really high. It would just rain down similar to if it was water, but in bigger drops.
It probably wouldn't even "vaporize" (basically turn to a mist of tiny droplets) due to temperature and viscosity.
Firework fun time!
@@elmikeomysterio5496 Sounds far worse. 0_o
It would be like an oil spill in the sea, but instantly spread across several miles
This has to be the most American thing I've ever heard of
It would transport natural gas, and use the natural gas as a fuel source
I bet it eats liquidised burgers instead of avgas when its fuel is low.
@@FoundAndExplained that would make the oil embargo and high jet fuel prices irrelevant
No... it *would* be the Most American Thing EVAR if Boeing had designed a gunship variant. Fill one of the pods with a bank of GAU-8A 30mm Gatling guns and a few 5-inch naval guns and install a few hundred Maverick missiles int he other pods... and now it sounds like a party.
@@fred6319 my guess is the irrelevent thing referenced is the ore transport mission out of northern cananda. that is more sensitive to oil-prices.
Of course a napkin, all great ideas are thought about on the go.
I mean, the rough draft for Harry Potter was written on toilet paper in a coffee shop so...
Trickledown economics would like to have a word...
Not all ideas written on napkins turn out well (my now wife's phone number)
Napkins are the worst though.
On the back of coasters is where the real shit happens
This brings a whole new meaning to THICC
This is one of the most amazing conceps i've ever seen,this plane could be' comparable to the CL-1201
Yet it was far more real! I wish they just made a prototype.
Boeing's just like that I guess
Just googled that... Jesus Christ 😂
This 100% looks like one of the Wunderwaffe designs that would’ve come out of Germany in 1944
SO OUR WUNDERWAFFEN NEED A LOT OF FUEL AND WE DONT HAVE FUEL SO WHAT IF WE MADE A WUNDERLUFTWAFFE THATS 100 TIMES BIGGER THAN ANY OF OUR CURRENT PLANES SO THEN WE HAVE UNLIMITED FUEL
Yeah sounds like desperate Hitler near the end of the war
Normal Viewers: *See this prototype plane...* Nah...I just browsing...
Kerbal Space Program Players: Challenge accepted
Hahaha, True. I'm already made it tho. 😂
airbus: *makes planes while putting thought into it*
boeing: "make it THICC, I'll give you half a million, oh it doesn't work, MAKE IT THICKER"
Airbus: make it expensive.
Nobody buys them.
Airbus: make it expensiveer.
Yay, the Spanlifter! I'm looking forward to that one!
At 6:22 , there's a great fun thing. When you just the plane in half, the 1 crew member out of 2 right behind the cockpit started hanging 😂. Great attention to detail 👌
You caught it!
@@FoundAndExplained 😉 I am quite interested in aircrafts design and information about them. Love your channel ❤️
I read the wikipedia page on this a while back, and LOVED IT. Glad it finally has a video on it !
Never heard of this plane before. It’s always fascinating to learn about never built airplanes of the past
Love the animated man swinging at 6.23 when the aircraft is shown in cut-away view!
It looks like everyone's attempt to build their first giant plane in a sandbox game. More Wing, more engine, more plane.
Haha
This has to be one of the weirdest videos I've ever seen. But leave it to you @found and explained, to make an amazing video on an amazing concept. Keep them up.
This comment made me feel warm and fuzzy
I'd love to see an episode on the Span Loader you mentioned...and/or the Boeing Pelican ground effect cargo plane proposal.
Imagine an accident involving a fully-loaded one. That would be as spectacular as it would be catastrophic!
You should make a video about Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 in the future
RC-1 .... so this is theri first remote controled plane huh? Quite late to the game. I crashed my first on years ago...
Boeing is a late bloomer, trying to catch up to its younger brother Airbus.
I just flew my first RC plane today, I also bought my first bit of styrofoam glue today...
randomly found this video on recommended, the quality of the video and the explanation you given enlightened me. you deserved more recognition by this kind of effort you put into.
Thank you! I hope I deserve your subscription
Ever since I found this channel, I have loved coming back and watching more and more, but my favourite ones are the, planes that were never built. Keep up the good work
RC-1 with that name people will gonna think that plane is Radio Controlled toy.
Underrated comment
Imagine your plane is running out of fuel and this thing saved the day
Hey "found and explained". I just came across your channel today. Very well done, my friends! I'm subscribed. Keep it up.
I don't get why the oil price spike rendered the concept unprofitable. It was fuelled with natural gas from the fields it serviced and the oil it would transport back would suddenly be vastly more profitable. It seems to me that the price spike should have aided the concept rather than hindered it.
Hippie: We have done it we haved blocked pipeline.
Beoing: Brrrrr
This is the literal meaning or “getting high on your own supply”
I don’t understand how jet fuel costs stopped the last jet if it was planned to be fueled by natural gas not jet fuel???
Thank you for pointing this out. It also would have negated the dependence on oil from those arab nations during the fuel crisis, and mitigated it's effects.
You have to keep in mind of the time no planes were flying with natural gas. Plus this plan was also designed for the mining operations not just the oil industry. So in terms of transporting I know this was possibly the least efficient way to do it
Oil is used interchangeably with both crude oil, and natural gas (both are Petrochemicals)
@@FoundAndExplained In the context of jet engines though, if it provides the correct nymber of joules when burnt it really doesn't matrer WHAT is injected into the combustion chamber; ignoring issues like solid combustion products
"So how many engines do you want sir?"
"Yes"
Yep. A huge flying machine full of flammable oil. What could ever go wrong?
Now what could possibly go wrong with a flying oil tanker. =)
The fact that these grandiose idea are a thing of the past HURTS
Holy crap! The Boeing RC-1 would have been INSANELY big!
Yooo this is like a second Mustard channel
Dad designs super cargo transport kid: accidentally draws on blue print so the kid re draws it from his memory
natural resources are generally non perishable and therefore fast transport ie. aircraft for such is unreasonable considering faster transportation using considerably more energy
This is the most Kerbal plane ever :)
It's interesting that an oil shortage stopped development of a plane that was meant to transport oil. I would think that this would have made transport costs more tolerable.
The guy hanging of the edge 💀 6:24
I love this channel
Structural integrity of the Airframe over a few flights of this aircraft without any loads would have to be investigated but under a so called normal load would be very bad day.
It is not just a cargo plane, it is basically a flying napalm bomb. Imagine a plane full of crude oil crash into a town.
You and mustard should collab
Modern jet engines are much more fuel efficient than those used in the RC1 study, so a current version would probably have much longer range.
How do the pods detatch from the wing? The pod has a fairing around it I'm guessing?
I was trying to figure out the same thing. I’m not sure, I imagine it’s actually two halves that come off. As the wing is not hollow
Excellent video, never heard about this plane! I can't wait for the supper flying wing! Thank you so much for making all this awesome videos!
You are very welcome
06:30 so one might say this plane "Can get high on it's own supply."
Great video. Just found your channel. Looks like ive got some binging to do
0:00 -> Pause -> Like -> Share, 'cause this is Found and Explained.
Dude that is the best thing you could do!
Very mustard like episode.
I like it.
Fascinating, thanks for sharing:)
At 1:32 The guy on the right with the brimmed hat, has he ever put earplugs in before?
I didn't get any earplugs! They just gave me some gum...
Imagine a passenger config where you get in a pod at a train station, picking up other passengers along a rail route, and then arriving at the airport, still in the pod, attaching to the plane and then taking off. Seamless ground to air transition, no airport parking to deal with.
Found And Explained: Something I don't understand or might have misunderstood from the video - wasn't the engines on the RC-1 supposed to be powered by natural gas? If so, the 1973 OPEC embargo should have accelerated the project, not cancel it.
Yes I totally understand this logic. I’ll have to look into it to find the exact reason, but you have to remember at the time this was still just an idea on the plane wasn’t really in existence. No plane at the time was powered by natural gas and I assume that any plane was construct it would have to use petrol first.
@@FoundAndExplained And if the 1973 oil crisis was driving UP the price of oil, then that should have made it more profitable to sell oil from Alaska, etc. But I suppose the up-front costs and time delay to develop the RC-1 would have been a cash flow challenge......
Great content my friend!
Thanks for the visit Hope you would like to subscribe :)
@@FoundAndExplained already did!
The design is a lot better than people give it credit for. The thing is that the major cost of a aircraft is fuel cost. Natural gas is a lot cheaper than airplane fuel. LPG only cost about 50cent per liter, compare that to Jet-A that cost about $1:50/liter. Of cause LPG have slightly lower energy density, so per liter equivalent to jet-A the LPG cost about 70 cent. That is almost half cost .
LNG as well as CNG also have more energy per mass, about 25% more, making the plane have a bit longer range for the same mass of fuel.
There is one more benefit to this design, and its the biggest one yet. LNG/CNG can be refined with fairly basic machinery, and there gas can be refined in the field. Oil cant. That is the aircraft could be fuel from gas from the field. This would make the fuel virtually free. We talking closer to 50 cent/liter in steed of 5cent per liter. This would make the fuel cost a non issue, at least as long as there was sufficient fuel left in the tank to make return journey on the same fuel. Other vice the return journey would be significantly more expensive.
The cost of the crew would not be to bad either. Because they could return to there home in the civilization every evening they would not need expensive contracts. And most maintenance could be done at the southern base. Also when two or three pilots is carrying that enromus amount of cargo, and can do several trips in one shift. The per ton cost of the pilot will be fairly low.
No, i would say what probably killed this concept was most likely spare part cost and logistics. 12 engines is just to many.
2-4 engines is optimal. 6 engines is a bit risky, 8 engines is really reaching, and anything beyond 8 is pretty much a failure. The aircraft was simply to big for its time. But shrinking it down to half the size would probobly effect the economics of it. Having it with modern day GE9x engine it would have made it with 5 engines. Could probobly made it a 6 engine aircraft and put a bit more natural gas onboard.
So the question that remains is probobly why not all aircraft used LNG/CNG if its that brilliant. Well it have drawbacks. Mostly that its very volume intensive, int also have to be stored in cylindrical tanks. Wing storage is out of the question.. and there would hardly fit any regardless. Also there would need to be two fuel system. Emergency fuel would still need to be Jet-A so there would still be two tanks needed. LNG need insulated pressure tanks or high pressure tanks. While CNG need 200 bar pressure tanks. Those tanks is fairly heavy and don´t quite compensate for the lighter fuel. More over those tanks would need to be enormous. For a short range aircraft it would take up a decent part of the cargo hold. And for long range aircraft a bit of the interior would need to be removed and replaced with fuel tanks.
The only real option would be to have large wingtanks, and they spoil the aerodynamics.
Would the rise in oil price make the plane even more worthwhile since its cargo would worth a lot more?
An absolute fortune to develop, a very small market, twelve! engines....I think this video is as close as that aircraft will ever get to reality. Cool concept though.
Amazing video!
Glad you think so!
The Rustys with a built this in a heartbeat
When I go on Jeep trips in the mountains of CO, I see many abandoned mines. Transporting raw ore out in donkey carts wasn't economic, so much of the ore-processing was done on site. Transporting more refined resources is much more economic
I'd love it if you could do a video on the Boeing Pelican Ultra. This one really reminded me of it.
It’s highly recommended
Just imagine the amount of chemtrails such a plane could deliver to the atmosphere!
*health fumes
Or Bombs
@@sadiqahmed4143 imagine a barrage of missiles
Some of this stuff that wasnt built should be worth getting rethinking.
Ryanair would love this, you could put hexagonal dividers in there and add lie flat hexagonal pods! Slide them in from the back like a cargo plane!
how does the rest of the wing stay on if the pods get fully removed?
can we take a moment to appreciate the helmet at 1:31
If the pods get disconnected, how does the outer wing stay up??
Can you do a video on the Sukhoi KR-860? I don't know much about it at all but I find the design very interesting and I would like to know more.
Kerbal Space Program Player: Ferb! I know what we are going to do today!
You've got to burn oil to burn oil
Even Japan in WW2 studied for a flying tanker.
The fuel delivered was less than the fuel consumed
How many turbofans can you install?
Boeing: Yes.
Please do a video on Boeing Pelican! or Aerocon Dash 1.6 wingship, which might be the biggest plane/ground effect vehicle ever designed :)
5:01
Newton called
He wants his physics back
another one to go along with the airborne aircraft carrier.
which might need one of these for refueling.....lol.
I know this idea would be incredibly "pie in the sky", but speaking of how the fuselage would be completely empty, this would be a project tailor made for nuclear propulsion (not that anyone is ever likely to support that, lol). I have no idea if you could ever fit enough of a reactor to support that many engines, *but* even if you needed longer runways and it had a slower overall speed, if you could keep enough of them in the air at any one time, it really wouldn't matter.
I thought the plane used natural gas to fly, not jet fuel, so how would the oil embargo make the plane not profitable?
1:00 "quick calculation on the back of a napkin"
LMAO!!
Now, that could be turned into the military-strategic aircraft refuelling tanker to beat all refuelling tankers!
This aircraft could have been a perfect air-to-air refueling tanker for the US Airforce...
Also probably very easy to spot and shoot down...
why do people have to thumbs down i smashed the like button
Can you please do a video about the TU-160 ?
Found and explain I have a question and I regularly watch your channel, and half as interesting’s channel. Big nerd on aviation and get lost on UA-cam all the time. Great videos by the way! They answer a lot of questions I’ve had and sometimes you put out a video explain the extract thought I had almost like magic.
My question is with in the world of regional jets, why haven’t companies like Gulf Stream created a commercial jet out of their 650 or 700 series? What would a commercial configuration look like and would it be practical?
These private business jets brag about being fuel efficient and can travel 7,000 nautical miles as they are referred to being global jets. Often they are as tall as regional jets and span the same dimensions. Companies have designed their own business jets out of their commercial counterparts but some specifications don’t make sense. How can a crj700 for example have less range than the global 7500? I would think that business jets being more elaborate with their interiors can be pretty heavy as well. So what if that was all taken out and set up for passengers? Would this be a valuable options for airlines, especially serving smaller airports?
this reminds me of something I would make in Kerbal Space Program
World'd largest Molotov Cocktail: You can dispose of old planes in your nearest warzone.
on a smaller scale a version of this plane might be a great fire fighter & cargo plane for short trips
Gettin high on its own supply thou shalt not break the 10 crack commandments haha
Honestly, if I ever had the money or the resources, I would start up an aircraft manufacturing company to build concept aircraft that the larger manufacturers scrapped. I would probably only build one of each model, but one is enough to show what these planes would be like in our modern world. I would build a specialised aerodrome which would double as a museum. For the passenger aircraft, (like the SST 2707) I would sell tickets on demonstration flights to give modern aviation enthusiasts the experience of that style of travel.
That plane needs a large taxiway
Yay new vid
747:exists
the US entire military: is for me
New idea: use a SpaceX rocket to move crude oil from northern Canada to the refineries in Texas.
Awesome vid! Thanks for that. Now that fuel is a lot cheaper than the spike in the 70's i have to think stuff like this will make a come back. I mean we are working on several variants of the SST so there is hope. In addition to the lower fuel prices we are working on bio fuels so thats a plus.
its like a mustard video
We not gonna talk about the cowboy construction hat at 1:33
This thing looks like it could be a boss in the ace combat games