The upstart company that wants to build the world's largest aircraft

Radia, a new company based in Boulder, Colorado, is working on a very ambitious project: building the world’s largest airplane, called the WindRunner. This plane is not being made by famous companies like Boeing or Airbus, but by a team that has never built an aircraft before. The main goal of the WindRunner is to help move extremely large wind turbine blades to places on land, which is currently very difficult. Most of the biggest wind turbines are built offshore, in the ocean, because the roads and bridges on land are too small for the huge blades. If Radia can solve this problem, it could make wind energy much cheaper and more common on land.

Mark Lundstrom, the founder and CEO of Radia, came up with the idea after realizing that the main thing stopping bigger wind turbines on land is the challenge of moving the parts. He believes that if we can transport longer blades, wind farms could produce much more energy at a lower cost. Radia has already raised more than $150 million to develop the WindRunner. The plane is designed to be 108 meters long with an 80-meter wingspan, making it larger than any other cargo plane ever built. It will be able to land on short, rough runways that can be built near wind farms, which is important because many wind farms are in remote areas without big airports.

The WindRunner is not the first attempt at building a giant cargo plane. The An-225, a huge Ukrainian plane, used to be the world’s largest, but it was destroyed during the war in Ukraine. Now, there are no planes that can carry such oversized cargo. Radia wants to fill this gap. They are working with experienced suppliers from Italy, Spain, and the United States to build the different parts of the plane. However, some experts are skeptical because Radia has never built a plane before and they have not yet announced which engine they will use. Radia says they are using as many existing parts as possible to keep costs down and make the project easier. They plan to build several test planes and hope to have the WindRunner flying by the end of the decade. If successful, the WindRunner could help build more wind farms, carry military cargo, and transport other large items. Some people are still unsure if Radia can really make it happen, but the company is optimistic and working hard to turn their vision into reality.