When it takes to the skies, the Radia WindRunner will be the world’s largest cargo plane. The entrepreneurs behind Radia created it for one reason: to facilitate the shipping of gigantic wind blades to challenging locations.
The plane is a behemoth with a volume ten times greater than that of a 747 and a cargo hold capable of carrying a nearly 350-ft blade. Because wind farms are typically built in remote locations, the plane will also be capable of landing on short, unpaved airstrips.
As fascinating as it is, what’s most interesting about Radia to me isn’t the aircraft itself. Indeed, founder and CEO Mark Lundstrom told me over coffee that he directed the company’s engineers to follow the mantra of “do nothing new.” The plane is built using existing technologies to ease the engineering and subsequent certification process.
The business model, however, is new. Radia will be an energy company, building clean energy projects, says Lundstrom. Its fleet of cargo planes will simply give it a strategic advantage. “Think of us as an energy company, but with a unique way to supersize turbines,” he says.
And those wind projects are only the cornerstone in Lundstorm’s vision of a much bigger energy company. Lundstrom hopes to co-locate the turbines with facilities that produce hydrogen fuel so that Radia’s wind power can power the production of low-cost green hydrogen. “We manage this fascinating ecosystem,” he says. “We’re literally connecting aerospace companies to molecule makers.”
In khbrknews, other competitor airplanes may enter the market, but Radia has a head start. The company operated in stealth mode for seven years, raising venture capital money, getting the engineering right on the plane, and collaborating with launch partners, before revealing the WindRunner in late March. Eventually, Lundstrom says, the company could have hundreds of planes crisscrossing the skies. “We will get a head start and be able to enjoy those initial economics,”…
