Reply To: General thought on old coal mines.

[zapkitty]

Oops… turns out there’s a much more directly equivalent analogue for the power levels we seek… turboprops.

And they’ve built some big ones…

Okay… I think I was a socialist last week so I guess I must be a communist this week… so, Comrade, let our example
be the Soviet People’s Tu-114 passenger liner!

aircraft stats:
length 54 meters
wingspan 51 m
height 15.5 m
wing area 311 m^2
mass empty 91 metric tons
mass maximum 171 t
mass fuel 50.2 t
mass payload 30 t
# of passengers 120 to 220 depending on shoehorn factor…

max level flight speed 870 km/h at 8000 meters (Mach 0.78)
cruise speed: 770 km/h at 9000 m (Mach 0.70)
ceiling 12000 m
range 6200 km at max load

engine stats
# of engines 4 int
type Kuznetsov NK-12MV
thrust per engine 11 MWe … ding!ding!ding!
…. two standard FFs running a little bit hot…

total thrust 44 MWe… a little under 9 FFs… or however you want to allocate caps and ‘trodes amongst the onions…

engine mass 1155 kg
total engine mass 4620 kg
total engine mass *plus fuel mass* 54820 kg…

… call it 54 tons allowed for propulsion…

Gonna be a bit of a pain with the narrow body of the Tu-114… but then it was the fastest propeller-driven passenger
aircraft ever built… 🙂

… maybe have some FFs internal and 4 slightly lesser shielded FF modules out with the propeller mounts on each
wing? Deactivate them for servicing and passenger loading purposes and to taxi… only activate them for takeoff,
flight, and landing?

Working up the big Airbus turboprop cargo lifter with similar results so far… unlike the Tu-114, which was an
ex-bomber, the A400M is designed as a freight hauler so handling the FFs is easier…