Boeing 747 News

Avangrid, Inc., a U.S. offshore wind developer and part of the Spanish Iberdrola Group on Wednesday announced the start of the wind turbine installation campaign for Avangrid’s Vineyard Wind 1 project offshore Massachusetts, the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the United States. The installation campaign follows the transportation earlier this week of the first GE Haliade-X Wind Turbine Generator (WTG) from the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal to the wind energy development area more than 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod.“Over the past year…

The massive CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin arrived at the Port of Los Angeles on Saturday, December 26, becoming the largest ship to ever call a North American port. Among the largest in the French shipping line CMA CGM’s fleet, the 1,300-foot-lont and 177-foot-wide containership has a capacity of nearly 18,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) – about a third larger than the biggest containerships that currently call at the San Pedro Bay Port Complex. The vessel is also model for high-energy production.

GE Marine said its LM2500 marine engines will provide power for the U.S. Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), USS Cincinnati (LCS 20). USS Cincinnati’s two engines will be manufactured at GE’s Evendale, Ohio facility. Each LM2500 engine produces more than 29,500 horsepower, propelling the ship to speeds in excess of 40 knots or 46 miles per hour, the engine manufacturer said. “We are excited to learn that the U.S. Navy has adopted GE Aviation’s hometown as the moniker for the LCS 20…

Last week, engineered heavy lifting and transport company Mammoet lifted a new attraction at the NASA Space Center Houston to a greater height. As thousands of onlookers watched, a 250-foot tall Mammoet crane lifted a 122-foot long space shuttle replica three stories high to its resting place atop the original Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) NASA 905, a Boeing 747. The Boeing, with its unique piggyback cargo, ultimately will become a destination for visitors from around the world. The delicate lift to the crown of the 63-foot 747 took about 40 minutes.

Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News Shipbuilding places a record 1,026-metric ton unit —aboard aircraft carrier 'Gerald R. Ford' (CVN 78). The modular unit, — roughly the weight of six Boeing 747 commercial airplanes, is one of the nearly 500 total structural lifts needed to complete the ship, of which 435 have been completed. The lifts are accomplished using the shipyard's 1,050-metric-ton gantry crane, one of the largest in the Western Hemisphere. "This is the heaviest unit to be moved during the ship's construction and the largest lift our crane has ever made…

Hydro Air, a South African company, is mulling the possibility of launching a sea-air service between Europe and Africa in the longer term. Hydro Air, will launch its first-ever cargo service and first Africa-European air service in the first week of November with a Boeing 747-200 freighter. Hydro Air cargo's commercial director Louis van Deventer said the company was considering the possibility of a sea-air service in the future. He said the original idea was prompted because larger vessels could not serve smaller ports in Africa either because of the vessel size or due to the lack of suitable equipment at the ports. Feeder vessels could serve for instance, Angola, Tanzania, Kenya and South African ports. Islands such as Madagascar and Mauritius could also be served in the same way.

Kongsberg Maritime Simulation concluded a $1 million refit of the largest simulated navigation bridge in the world at the end of 2006. The simulator is located at the Center For Marine Simulation (CMS) at Memorial University in St.John's, Newfoundland. The original Kongsberg Maritime simulator was delivered in 1992. The full mission system consists of a full size bridge, weighting 4 tons, mounted on a moving platform (built by CAE for use on the Boeing 747-400 aircraft simulators) actuated in all six degrees of the freedom of motion by hydraulic rams. The platform is surrounded by a 7 meter high projection screen with a 360 degree horizontal view.

John Wooten, a 51-year-old Boston man, who bills himself as the world's strongest man, reportedly moved a 16,000-ton cruise ship by pulling it on a rope from a dock while the ship was in the water. Organizers of the stunt said Wooten pulled on the SeaEscape Cruises Ltd. vessel Island Adventure for about 40 minutes and that he moved it 70 feet. His past feats of strength have included pulling a Boeing 747 jet and a 280-ton train.

The cost of maintaining Navy ships is measured in billions of dollars and millions of man-hours. Requiring sailors to perform excessive, unnecessary, and often counter-productive maintenance does more than waste money. It also wastes that most precious of commodities — sailors' time. This problem is being addressed by the U.S. Navy through the Surface Ship Maintenance Effectiveness Review (SURFMER) program. Since October 1996, SURFMER has reduced sailor performed planned maintenance workload on surface ships and aircraft carriers by more than 35 percent. and more than 2.3 million man-hours annually. At the same time, it has improved sailors' quality of life — a top Navy leadership priority.