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Today on "Impossible engineering," the Airbus A380,

the largest passenger plane on the planet.

It took cutting-edge aerospace engineering...

A massive fly-by-wire system like this is an incredible tool

of safety for the aircraft itself.

...And a revolutionary design...

Without those design features,

this aircraft wouldn't exist today.

...To make the impossible possible.

Captions by vitac www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by Discovery communications

since the birth of aviation over a century ago,

air travel has been growing exponentially across the globe.

Over 3 billion people fly each year.

That's half the world's population.

The challenge for today's aerospace engineers

is to find a way to keep up with the constantly growing demand

and design aircraft that can accommodate

as many passengers as possible.

In order to reduce

the 100,000 flights that take place each day,

aircraft designers would need to think big.

What they came up with smashed aviation records...

...the Airbus A380, an ultra-high-capacity airliner,

the largest passenger plane on the planet...

...an aircraft so big

that a giant building had to be constructed

just to accommodate it.

This revolutionary double-decker plane

has an almost 265-foot wingspan,

the largest of any commercial aircraft.

It has almost 6,000 square feet of usable floor space.

That's 40% more than the next-largest airliner.

It can carry up to 850 passengers.

And with its state-of-the-art jet engines

and cutting-edge design,

it can fly nonstop almost halfway around the world.

At a custom-built hangar in Paris, this Airbus A380

is being stripped down

as part of its scheduled four-year service,

revealing the secrets

behind this incredible feat of engineering.

For maintenance manager sylvain Fagot,

this incredible machine never fails to impress.

The A380 is a colossal machine

that's the result of centuries of innovation.

Man has been trying to fly like a bird for quite some time.

But flight isn't as easy as it looks.

11th-century benedictine monk eilmer

reportedly strapped wings to his back

and launched himself off malmesbury Abbey...

Geronimo!

...but he glided out of control, coming to a painful landing.

And in 18th-century Paris, the montgolfier brothers

discovered that hot air could make a paper bag rise.

This led them to build a hot-air balloon,

making history with the first-ever

lighter-than-air manned flight...

Ah, très bien. Magnifique!

Ugh!

But their design had a few drawbacks.

To build a flying machine heavier than air

that can take off and remain airborne,

engineers would need to figure out a way

to harness the forces of nature.

And in 1804, British scientist sir George Cayley

finally unlocks the mystery of flight,

earning him the title the father of aeronautics.

Cayley discovered that while in flight,

a bird's wing has a curved shape.

This is now known as an aerofoil.

Air passing over the curved surface

speeds up, losing pressure.

The pressure of the undisturbed air below remains high.

This creates upward force.

By turning the aerofoil upside down,

aerospace engineer Dr. Ben Evans can demonstrate

how Cayley's shape successfully conquered the forces of gravity.

Now, in this experiment, on one side, we've got weights

representing gravity, the force that needs to be overcome.

And on the other end, an aerofoil.

And as this spins, the arm goes level.

The air passes over the aerofoil

and pulls it down to counteract gravity,

which is what lift is trying to do in an aircraft.

In 1853, at the age of 79,

Cayley put these ideas into practice

when he launched the world's first

heavier-than-air manned glider.

Sir George Cayley had made the impossible possible.

Cayley's achievements inspired

generations of aerospace engineers

to reach for the skies.

Without George Cayley's innovative wing design,

the gargantuan Airbus A380 wouldn't make it off the ground.

The A380's wings apply the same principles that Cayley exploited

but on an enormous scale.

With an almost-265-foot span

and a surface area of 9,095 square feet,

they're big enough to park 20 of Cayley's gliders on top.

But engineers needed some serious power

in order to get

the world's largest passenger plane airborne.

So they looked to a revolutionary design

from the past...

What an incredible sensation.

I can feel the acceleration pushing me back into my seat.

...To produce more impossible engineering.

In a supersized hangar in Paris,

an Airbus A380 is being serviced.

Technician Charlie Jackson is getting up close and personal

with this engineering masterpiece.

As this aircraft is taking off down the runway

and generating speed,

the tips of the wings actually will raise up,

which is a sign that the wing is generating the lift

it's going to need to carry such a large aircraft into flight.

Creating a wing big enough to generate lift

but small enough to minimize drag

is an engineering conundrum.

On the A380, special high-lift devices,

slats on the front and flaps on the back,

allow the wings to increase in size and curve

depending on how much lift is needed.

But the wings also keep the A380 airborne

in a more surprising way.

Inside of these wings is the fuel,

which you need to complete your flight.

The plane has 11 fuel tanks,

five in each wing and one in the tail.

Fuel is stored in the inner tanks

to reduce weight at the wing tips, but after takeoff,

it's pumped to tanks across the whole wing.

Throughout the flight,

the system constantly adjusts the fuel

to maintain the center of gravity.

This wing is the product of good design.

If it hadn't been that way,

it just wouldn't be practical to make an aircraft that size.

Well-designed wings aren't enough

to keep this massive plane in the air.

Creating engines powerful enough to lift a 369-ton aircraft,

along with 200 tons of passengers,

fuel and cargo almost 2½ miles into the sky is a daunting task.

The engines are one of the most important components

on this plane.

It's like the heart --

it doesn't beat, the body doesn't live.

Powering the A380 would be impossible

without the brilliant work of past engineers.

By the late 1800s, aerospace engineers recognized

that power and thrust were needed to fly.

Gah!

In 1874, frenchman Félix du Temple

attached a steam engine to a monoplane.

Et voilà!

But the engine was too heavy.

Sacrebleu!

And in 1903, American professor Samuel Langley

tried using a giant catapult,

but the takeoff didn't quite go as planned.

Aw, shoot!

Luckily, two siblings from Dayton, Ohio,

were about to make

one of aviation's most significant breakthroughs.

In December 1903, wilbur and Orville Wright

launched the maiden flight of the Wright flyer.

Two propellers driven by a piston engine

gave the plane enough thrust to take to the air.

Even though the flight only lasted 12 seconds,

covering just over 100 feet,

it was the first controlled powered flight

and is recognized as the birth of modern aviation.

But getting a plane more than 1,500 times heavier

than the Wright flyer airborne

would take an incredible engineering breakthrough.

Through the late 1930s,

piston-engine, propeller planes were the aviation standard.

They were limited in range, speed and altitude.

However, a radical engineering innovation was on the horizon.

Dr. Ben Evans is experiencing firsthand

the power of britain's first fighter jet,

the gloster meteor.

It's powered by the first-ever jet engine...

...which was invented by British engineer frank whittle.

Whittle's engines were powerful enough

to lift the gloster meteor over 7 miles into the sky

at a speed of over 600 miles per hour.

As groundbreaking as the jet engine was,

the engineering behind it is surprisingly simple.

In essence, the way the jet engine works is

you have suck, squeeze, bang, blow.

You suck air in at the front here,

and that passes through a spinning compressor.

And that compressor squeezes the air down,

increases the pressure and the temperature of the air

before it passes into the combustion chamber.

And this is the point where the fuel is added and ignited.

This increases the temperature

and pressure of the gas even further,

and then all of those hot exhaust gases

have to expand, speed up through the back of the engine,

and they pass through this turbine.

And the turbine is connected by a shaft

down the center of the engine to the compressor at the front,

making that SPiN.

But what pushes the engine forward,

what generates the thrust, is the expansion

and the acceleration of the exhaust gases

out of the nozzle at the back of the engine.

Whittle's jet engine allowed aircraft to fly faster,

higher and farther than ever before...

...changing the face of aviation forever.

To power the Airbus A380, engineers would need to take

whittle's jet-engine design and supersize it.

While this A380 is being serviced

in a giant, custom-built hangar,

technician Charlie Jackson is getting the chance

to examine the jet engines that power this massive plane.

The A380 has 4 huge engines,

70,000 pounds of thrust each.

Full of new technologies, it's one of the most advanced engines

that's available on the market today.

The A380's four specially designed

GP7200 turbofan jet engines

are among the most powerful ever built.

They're nearly 50 times more powerful

than whittle's jet engines...

...and draw in enough air

to inflate a hot air balloon in three seconds.

But for the engineering team behind this colossal plane,

it wasn't just about power.

Thanks to its state-of-the-art design,

the A380 burns 22% less fuel per seat than the average 747 jumbo.

These fan blades have been designed specially

for this aircraft.

They have a very revolutionary new shape

to increase the airflow through the engine.

70% of the thrust from the engine

actually comes from these blades and not from the motor itself,

which is burning the fuel and -- and turning these blades.

The 24 hollow titanium blades are boomerang-shaped

with a reverse sweep at the tip.

This shape slows the air from supersonic to subsonic speeds,

making the A380 more fuel efficient per passenger

than a car and also much quieter.

This aircraft is well below the limits of noise

for the size of the aircraft, really setting the standard.

The Airbus A380

is the biggest passenger plane ever built.

Capable of flying nonstop for almost 10,000 miles,

it's a triumph of aerospace engineering.

Getting an aircraft of this size off the ground

to fly practically halfway around the world

is an engineering feat.

The aircraft's huge traveling range

is mind-boggling.

It also presents designers with a unique challenge.

The A380 is capable of flying from Dallas to Sydney nonstop.

These lengthy flights require extra provisions

for passenger comfort.

Its two passenger decks

provide almost 6,000 square feet of floor space.

That's about three tennis courts.

At a custom-built hangar in Paris, this Airbus A380

is being stripped down as part of its scheduled service,

revealing its engineering secrets.

But designing an airplane for comfort isn't a new idea.

One of aviation's earliest and most successful innovators

set the bar.

Early aviators who took to the skies had little choice

but to bundle up and brave the elements.

But one man had a different idea.

In 1913, Russian engineer Igor sikorsky

built the ilya muromets,

a plane designed specifically for luxury travel.

It was the world's first airliner.

He used a wind-driven generator for electricity

and ran pipes of hot air

from the engine through the cabin for heat.

There was also a bedroom, toilet and comfy seats.

16 passengers could travel up to 370 miles in style.

The ilya was redesigned as a bomber

to fight in the first world war,

but its luxurious legacy lives on

and has led the way to a new world of aviation possibilities.

Just like the ilya muromets over a century ago,

the Airbus A380 has redefined air travel

with its ability to carry hundreds of passengers

in supreme comfort for over 10,000 miles.

But for a plane as immense as the A380,

traditional building materials won't cut it.

If the whole airplane

had been made from the traditional aluminum,

it would have been catastrophic to the design.

So engineers

had to revolutionize this approach, too.

The Airbus A380

is one of the most technologically advanced

commercial airliners in the world.

But for its design team,

redefining the limits of modern aviation meant overcoming

some seemingly impossible engineering challenges.

And one of their biggest challenges relates

to the plane's record-breaking size.

The forces that an airplane are subjected to on --

on any flight are severe because it's having to expand.

It's having to contract.

It's having to deal with extreme temperatures.

Even, the aircraft is actually getting

torsional effects on itself

while it's flying through turbulent situations.

Since the 1920s,

aluminum has been the material of choice

for aircraft skins -- it's flexible, strong and light.

But when you're building the largest commercial airliner

in the world, every ounce counts.

Just the paint alone weighs half a ton.

If the whole airplane

had been made from the traditional aluminum,

it would have been catastrophic to the design as --

as it would be way too heavy.

They would have had to have bigger engines.

They would had to have bigger wings.

It would have burned a heck of a lot more fuel,

and it wouldn't fly very far.

Decreasing the weight by reducing the thickness

of the aluminum skin wasn't an option.

Engineer Ben Evans demonstrates why

in his lab at Swansea university.

This gun is gonna fire these baseballs at high speed

at our target in the stand,

and we'll find out how much damage they do.

This aluminum sheet is approximately half the thickness

of a traditional aircraft skin.

Ooh.

Oh. Wow.

Let's have a look, see what's happened.

And there is the damage.

It's deformed this by a good 5 centimeters or so.

It's really quite a lot of damage

with that impact on the aluminum sample.

The designers of the A380 needed a material

that was as strong as traditional aluminum

but lighter.

They needed to find materials

that could create such a large aircraft

that wouldn't weigh like a tank.

Solving this engineering conundrum

would have been impossible

without the trailblazing work of a great engineer from the past.

In the 1930s, American engineer virginius e. Clark

created an alternative to aluminum.

He infused birch board with phenolic resin

and laminated it under extreme heat.

He called this new material duramold.

Used in Howard Hughes' enormous Spruce Goose seaplane,

duramold was one of the earliest and most successful examples

of an aviation composite.

Composites are made up of more than one material

and take advantage of the best of both worlds.

What we're going to do to prove this is the case

is impact-test a composite.

This composite is a woven carbon fiber

infused with epoxy resin,

the same thickness as the aluminum Ben tested earlier.

Whoo! Literally nothing.

So that impacted right here, bang in the middle.

In fact, there's absolutely no sign

that any damage has been done.

So these are the results.

This is the composite. This is the aluminum.

The same impact force, but look at the damage on the aluminum.

So that is a result for the composite --

a lighter material and a stronger material.

And that is why this stuff is being used

by aerospace engineers today.

To build the world's largest passenger plane,

engineers took virginius Clark's innovations with composites

to the next level.

They developed a brand-new material

for the Airbus A380 -- glare.

Reinforced with glass fiber, it's thinner than aluminum.

The composite materials that make up this aircraft,

they're as strong as the traditional materials,

and they're as flexible as the traditional materials as well.

To give an example of how sturdy they are,

there's more than 1 ton of air pushed inside this aircraft

when it's flying, when it's pressurized.

The use of glare reduced the overall weight of the A380

by 15 tons,

allowing this massive plane to be light enough to fly.

If they hadn't used glare or a similar composite,

the aircraft that we have today probably wouldn't exist.

The A380 may be able to fly,

but its ideal wingspan is too large for the world's airports,

so designers had to take a classic engineering solution...

Often in engineering,

the simple solutions are the best solutions.

...And give it a 21st-century twist.

The Airbus A380 is a triumph

of 21st-century aerospace engineering.

It's the largest commercial airliner in operation today.

At a state-of-the-art, custom-built hangar in Paris,

this A380 is undergoing its scheduled four-year service...

...giving technicians a chance to get intimate

with this colossal machine.

It's not just the materials on the A380

that make it stand out from the crowd.

Even the method of construction is groundbreaking.

Sections of the A380

are built in France, Germany, the u.K. And Spain,

then transported to Toulouse for assembly.

Moving these parts requires custom-built ships

and the use of Airbus' a300-600st beluga

super transporter plane.

Each A380 contains 4 million individual parts,

which, once assembled, create an airliner

of record-breaking proportions.

The ideal, most efficient wingspan

for this massive aircraft is 270 feet,

but aviation regulations state

that all planes must be able to fit into a 262-foot box.

If engineers didn't come up with a way

to shrink the A380's wings,

it would be too large for the world's airports.

Their solution was found

in a great aircraft innovation from the 1970s.

In 1973, the world was in an oil crisis.

An embargo on sales to the west saw prices quadruple over night.

The aviation industry was paying the price.

A solution was desperately needed

to improve airplane fuel efficiency,

and aeronautical engineer Richard whitcomb found one

while working on NASA's aircraft energy efficiency program.

Aerodynamicists are always trying to improve

the efficiency of wings, which really means

trying to improve the ratio of the lift

to the drag of the wing.

One of the things that was causing a lot of drag

and dropping the lift on the wing

was what's called a wingtip vortex.

This wind tunnel

is simulating an ordinary wing traveling

through the air at a typical cruising speed.

In the central section of the wing,

you can see that the smoke is very smooth

until it reaches the tip of the wing.

And once we're at the tip of the wing,

you can see this vortex pattern forming.

A wingtip vortex occurs

when high-pressure air under the wing

spills upwards at the tip to meet low-pressure air above.

This leads to turbulence and drag,

forcing the engine to work harder.

Richard whitcomb's idea was to change the design

of an aircraft's wingtips into vertical winglets.

The winglets create less drag and burn less fuel.

As I move the smoke trace

towards the end of the wing this time,

instead of having a single strong vortex

that we saw in the case without the winglets,

what's happening now is that the flow is smearing out,

almost into a sheet, making the wind more efficient.

Adding a winglet

prevents the mixing of the two airflows

above and below the wing, reducing the vortex.

The A380 has specially designed aero-shaped winglets

called wingtip fences.

These allow the wings to be shortened

to just under the maximum allowed 262 feet

without compromising the aircraft's efficiency.

Without those design features,

this aircraft would be way too big.

It wouldn't be practical, and it wouldn't exist today.

The Airbus A380

is the largest passenger airplane in the world.

It's equipped with some of the world's

most powerful jet engines and has a skin

made out of a cutting-edge lightweight composite.

Specially designed winglets make it fuel efficient enough

to travel almost 10,000 miles nonstop,

but how is it possible that a human can steer a plane

this large and powerful?

By the 1960s, the age of the jumbo jet was in full swing.

Transcontinental travel had never been easier or faster.

But a group of audacious engineers

believed it was possible to take a jet supersonic.

There were a lot of engineers who said,

"well, this isn't possible.

What you're proposing here is just too ambitious."

The result of the work of those pioneering engineers is this --

concorde.

Launched in 1969,

the concorde could reach speeds of over 1,200 miles per hour.

That's more than twice the speed of sound.

Flight times between New York and London were cut in half.

But flying a supersonic jet would be impossible

using traditional aircraft controls.

Concorde needed an innovative new system,

a system now known as fly-by-wire.

Former chief concorde pilot Mike bannister explains

using a simulator at brooklands air museum.

You could fly at 1,350 miles an hour,

faster than a rifle bullet.

Concorde wouldn't have been possible without fly-by-wire,

because some of the control forces

at certain flight conditions --

really would have been huge.

What exactly is fly-by-wire?

Fly-by-wire is computers telling systems

what I want to do.

On a conventional airplane,

when I want to turn left, I do that,

and some pulleys and wheels and cables move the controls.

On this aeroplane, when I want to turn, I do that.

It tells a computer that tells the controls what to do.

That means the aeroplane's far more responsive.

It can be far more efficient,

and it's capable of being flown

by ordinary human beings.

Concorde was the first commercial jet

to use fly-by-wire technology.

What did it feel like to fly the real concorde?

The airplane's a delight to fly.

It's like a thoroughbred racehorse

rather than a riding-school hack

or a sports car rather than a truck.

It is so responsive.

You can fly it with your fingertips.

Why don't you have a go?

Very nice.

Keep it coming. That's perfect.

Right through the bridge,

London assembly building to the left,

the shard to the left.

Fabulous.

Well, concorde clearly is a remarkable aircraft.

Not only is its exterior breathtakingly beautiful,

but underneath the skin, there is some technology

that really revolutionized the aviation landscape

and has made what we can do

with modern aircraft today possible.

Since its first application on the concorde,

fly-by-wire systems have become industry standard.

And on the Airbus A380,

a highly sophisticated digital system

makes flying the world's largest passenger plane possible.

For an aircraft this size,

this aircraft is relatively a simple aircraft to operate.

For flying the aircraft is here,

and it is completely electronic.

I mean, there's no cables.

It's all generating electrical inputs,

which are sent to a computer,

which then sends the signal on

to the flight control surfaces to move.

The design and development of the Airbus A380

ranks as one of the aviation industry's

greatest achievements.

Today, A380s are operated by airlines all over the world.

One takes off and lands every four minutes.

By drawing on the innovations of the past...

...adapting...

Improving them...

And making groundbreaking innovations of their own...

...aerospace engineers overcame extraordinary challenges...

...and succeeded in making the impossible...Possible.

It was quite difficult to imagine 20 years ago,

that kind of machine you have here was gonna exist.

But it's now reality.

So, what about the future? Who knows.

Maybe going to the space with an aircraft.

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