You have 1000 kilograms of clean, fresh water in a single IBC container in Sydney at the Opera house. You will be paid 1 million dollars if you can deliver it to Los Angeles McArthur Park within 3 weeks, or 21 days, or 504 hours. You can split the water into as many containers as you want, and the IBC doesn’t need to make it to LA, just the water inside. If you deliver 2000 bottles each containing 500ml of undiluted, clean, fresh water, or like, 99% of it to account for evaporation and some spillage, that counts as a win. You can assume that any partial water deliveries that remain in Sydney or arrive in LA won’t be stolen in your absence so you don’t need to hire guards. There are no consequences for failing, but if you do fail or succeed, any money you spend on the project, you don’t get refunded. Normal consequences for breaking laws apply.
How do you do it, or do you even bother trying?
You sure about that? Because a lot of logistics companies will gladly tell you how they do. I’ve shipped liquids by air freight, too. Not a problem as long as the shipper and carrier understand the terms of the contract.
https://commercialfreightservices.com/shipping-bulk-dry-and-liquids-by-air-freight/
https://overseasairfreight.com/our-services/international-courier-service-for-liquid/
https://www.dhl.com/discover/en-hk/logistics-advice/import-export-advice/everything-you-need-to-know-about-shipping-liquids-internationally
Right now, someone somewhere is shipping more than 1000L of something liquid by air freight. Not sure why you think this is some dastardly mystery. You simply weren’t aware of how common it is, is all.
It is interesting to me that they do honestly. Liquids shift weight a lot, which can be very dangerous to planes. I wonder how they handle it. Maybe they only put it on planes so big that the weight shift is negligable?
Liquids shift weight based on empty space in the container. Once an aircraft gets to speed, shifts are negligible anyway.
Also, keep in mind that lavatory water and waste systems in a 747 are more than this silly question in capacity. 4 x 416 liter tanks, filled to 405 liters. So very little slack space to start.
https://www.scribd.com/document/678025063/ATA-38-51-52-et-56
Also, aircraft fuel is a liquid. A 747 holds usually more than 200,000 liters of fuel.
The max cargo capacity of a cargo-oriented 747 is 113,000kg. So 1,000 liters of water in a tank with very little slack is both less than 1% of the total cargo capacity, it’s also less than even the water tanks for the sinks and toilets on the passenger version. And less than 0.5% of how much fuel is sloshing around in the tanks.
https://www.cargolux.com/fleet-equipment/aircraft/747-400f-specifications/
Thanks for the great detailed explanation. So ignoring the original silly question. How do smaller commercial planes manage the shifting of fuel and such. I’ve been on some prop planes that had a bathroom, and in some cases removed passengers because we were overweight.
Fuel is typically stored in the wings, so as it depletes, it doesn’t change the center of gravity of the plane with regard to the lift. Center of gravity is very important in smaller planes.
But there’s really not that much sloshing or shifting of liquids after takeoff. The tanks can be segmented, but just like being able to walk in a plane, there’s not a lot of shifting overall. It’s a constant pull backwards, but that’s about it.
Smaller planes with bathrooms use a more camp toilet kind of system, with less liquid, which is all generally stored and held in the same part of the plane, so no shifting of weight in a large scale. I’ve been in a 6-seater with a lavatory, and we were basically told to hold it because the crew didn’t want to clean the tank. But it was all in a stack in the same part of the body.
Thanks for the education. Learning makes life interesting.
No problem!