How Did They Build These Three Engineering Marvels? | Super Structures Compilation | Progress

in a sheltered Cove off the eastern coast of Canada a modern superstructure takes shape the heaviest oil platform ever constructed designed to survive one of the harshest environments in the world the foot waves Sub-Zero temperatures and multi-million ton icebergs guard a 3 billion Barrel oil field many men have died seeking to claim this treasure state-of-the-art oil platform will take to these treacherous Waters hoping to conquer an ocean never before defeated and become the first superstructure to survive the grand banks in a deadly quest for oil [Music] [Music] [Music] autumn 1991. near St John's Newfoundland a massive superstructure sprawls out along the edge of the North Atlantic today 3 000 workers Brave 30 degree temperatures and Arctic winds to complete a Monumental task the construction of the Hibernia GBS when it's finished powerful tugs will tow this huge oil rig 200 miles out to sea there it will become a city above the waves the home of 280 workers attempting to extract 615 million barrels of oil from the bottom of the North Atlantic if those workers are to succeed and survive Engineers must build an oil platform unlike any other most oil rigs float on the surface of the sea but a GBS is a fundamentally different design GBS stands for gravity-based structure a colossal concrete Tower cemented to the ocean floor from this concrete base rise four 360 foot concrete and steel shafts strong enough to hold a 37 000 ton platform 100 feet above the sea when finished this modern technological wonder will stand 735 feet tall and weigh over 1.2 million tons nearly as tall as the Golden Gate Bridge and three times heavier it will take seven years to build the Hibernia GBS at a cost of four and a half billion dollars four times the amount spent on building the world's tallest skyscraper the Patronus Towers in Malaysia is being designed and built by Canada's Hibernia Corporation one of the world's largest oil consortiums the project is so huge that no one Construction Company can do all the work in seven years building the Hibernia GVS must be a worldwide effort while Hibernia builds the oil rigs massive concrete base in Newfoundland construction firms in Italy and South Korea will build the platform's upper structures giant steel modules where the oil workers will work and live e-going barges will tow the 8 000 ton modules across the oceans for final assembly with the base in Newfoundland [Music] the first challenge facing the Builders of the GBS was finding a place to build it a GBS must be built at the water's edge because moving such a huge structure over land would be impossible Hibernia Corporation chose a coastal Inlet called bull arm 80 miles Northwest of St John's as the best place to build their giant rig bull arm's channel was deep enough to allow the finished GBS to be towed out to sea while its tall Cliffs and sheltered Cove would protect the construction site from newfoundland's harsh weather [Music] for weeks Crews worked Around the Clock transforming bull arm into a state-of-the-art construction site Earth movers had to excavate nine miles of roads just to reach the bull arm area huge cranes dredged a dry dock construction site at the water's edge bulldozers dumped over 850 000 cubic yards of rock into the ocean to form the protective barriers surrounding the dry dock site now 400 Acres of what was once Forest have become a small city of 3 000 people as they begin their task these engineers and construction workers know that the oil rig they are building at Bull arm will have to do more than just pump oil to extract that oil the Hibernia GBF will have to survive the most dangerous stretch of ocean in the world over the years many sailors have perished battling the fury of the grand Banks located 200 miles Southeast of Newfoundland this legendary body of water is one of the world's most abundant fishing grounds it's also the final resting spot for more sunken ships than anywhere else in the world Waters produce what described as The Perfect Storm 100 foot waves buffeted by 80 mile per hour winds destroyed two ships and killed seven semen in just one night it's a very harsh environment the wave and the weather are about the same as the northern North Sea in addition to that we have icebergs million ton icebergs and thousands of them they're feared by Mariners who call the Grand Banks Iceberg alley where the tallest Iceberg ever recorded a 550-foot mountain of ice nearly as tall as the Washington Monument once floated when it's finished the Hibernia GBS will be towed 200 miles out to sea and anchored to the ocean floor in the heart of the grand Banks just 150 miles south of where the Hibernia GBS will someday stand lies the grand bank's most famous victim nearly two miles below the surface beautifully preserved in the sub-freezing waters lies the Titanic this superstructure was once thought to be indestructible it's an eerie reminder of what can go wrong when confidence in our engineering prowess goes too far in his 30 years at Sea Captain Mark Turner has seen all too often the consequences of underestimating the north Atlantic's power there's nothing Unsinkable does nothing infallible man or machine so it's uh and we have to accept that fact and you know the Titanic is a good example but it's reality we're a man and we uh we're very weak in many ways we can build whatever we uh choose to build however against Mother Nature it's uh it's it's a meritupic now 79 years later the hibernius designers know that they must do better than the Builders of the Titanic the GBS must be able to survive the grand banks for at least 25 years hundreds of lives and billions of dollars are at stake for beneath these treacherous Waters lies a petroleum Bonanza during the early 1970s Marine seismic data and satellite imaging hinted that the grand Banks might be rich in oil geologists suspected that 150 million years ago the sea bed beneath the grand Banks was a fertile river system teeming with life as the sea covered the land layers of sediment buried dead plants and animals downward pressure from these layers of rock turned the decaying remains into oil for 10 years oil companies drilled hundreds of wells and discovered nothing prospecting for oil in this region is like searching for a needle in a haystack then in 1979 the Hibernia Corporation discovered an immense oil field 200 miles off the coast and 12 000 feet below the ocean floor it would prove to be the seventh largest recoverable petroleum deposit in the world worth 11 billion dollars to whomever could extract it for Hibernia it was the strike of a lifetime the Hibernia field is is a giant we have over 3 billion barrels of oil in place that's three billion barrels in the ground now the trick for us as a reservoir team is how do we get that oil out of the ground in 1982 Hibernia began exploring the new oil field but before the drilling could begin tragedy struck one of the first exploratory rigs to arrive over the Hibernia field was an enormous platform called the ocean Ranger it stood 340 feet tall with an upper deck the size of two football fields and a crew of 84 veteran Oil Workers unlike a GBS the ocean Ranger was not cemented to the ocean floor it was designed to float above an undersea oil field buoyed by eight huge water tanks called ballasts floating rigs had operated safely in some of the world's harshest environments ocean Ranger was reputed to be the safest oil rig in the world designed to survive 110-foot waves and 100 mile per hour winds in Heavy Seas or high winds water in the ballast tanks could be transferred from one tank to another to stabilize the platform teen months the ocean Ranger successfully withstood the grand bank's onslaught of wind ice and wave February 15 1982 the unthinkable suddenly became a reality it was cold it was freezing spray conditions extreme weather conditions sea conditions were between 50 and 60 feet anybody was trying to work as best they could but the weather conditions was so extreme it was it made things close to Impossible 80 mile an hour winds and 55-foot waves pounded the 25 000 ton ocean Ranger crew radioed for help controllers worked frantically to stabilize the rig as the platform began to list heavily to one side emergency crews desperately tried to correct the problem but the pounding waves made it impossible Captain issued the order to abandon the rig 20 minutes passed before the first rescue vessels arrived The Rescuers discovered the platform of the ocean Ranger floating upside down storms massive waves had flipped the giant rig seven days search teams looked for survivors they found none only 22 bodies were recovered all 84 men aboard the ocean Ranger had frozen to death in the icy North Atlantic we'll never forget about ocean manager here in Northland catastrophe such as those I think will stay etched in all of our minds as they build the Hibernia GBS the workers are haunted by the terrible fate of the capsized rig almost everybody working at Bull arm lost a friend or relative on the ocean Ranger but the disaster has also inspired the designers of the Hibernia GBS to construct the safest platform possible they know the rig will have to survive 100 foot waves hurricane strength winds and a collision with a million ton Iceberg the largest iceberg ever recorded 200 feet taller and five times heavier than the Statue of Liberty scientists must learn more about the true strength of their icy enemy they must embark on an unusual Journey an experiment never before attempted quest of theft the power of the ice [Music] the construction of the Hibernia GBS has United American and Canadian oil companies in an historic Alliance together with the Canadian government they're investing over 4 billion dollars in a search to understand the power of icebergs and construct the world's safest oil rig the world's first oil platform capable of withstanding a collision with a massive iceberg February to June any ship navigating the grand Banks must steer clear of icebergs something easier said than done 85 percent of an iceberg's Mass lies hidden beneath the waves between 10 and 20 000 form in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic each year carried by a strong Southern current almost 1 000 icebergs drift through the North Atlantic the icebergs begin to melt as they reach the warmer Waters of the grand Banks but a million ton bird the biggest ever seen could take up to two months to Disappear Completely ships can steer clear of icebergs but the Hibernia GBS can't its massive underwater Bays the gravity-based structure is permanently cemented to the ocean's floor the enormous weight of the GBS will ensure that the Hibernia will never capsize like the ocean Ranger but this stability has a price by making Hibernia immovable the GBS design virtually assures that the giant rig will someday be rammed by a drifting iceberg my fare really is the just the unknown of the ice there are so many unknown variables about it with regards to frequencies with regards to movement determined to Fathom an iceberg's destructive force scientists from the center for cold ocean resource engineering or c-core devise a unique experiment never before has the impact of an iceberg been measured in a real environment only small samples have been crushed in laboratory experiments to test the power of moving ICE core scientists decide to Ram icebergs into an island in the grand scheme of things certainly not a hundred thousand ton Iceberg we were talking pieces of maybe 1 000 tons maybe up to two thousand tons something like that which is still a fair sized chunk of ice nobody knows for certain how size speed and buoyancy will affect the force exerted by an iceberg when it collides with a stationary structure to measure this c-core scientist Greg Crocker and a team of engineers build a 21 by 21 foot panel and attach it to the side of a remote island in Northern Newfoundland half under water and half above this metal panel uses electronic sensors to record the force in iceberg exerts as it strikes the clip only one problem remains capturing and towing an iceberg into the panel Crocker and his ice Wranglers search for a likely candidate their plan is to attach an anchor to a bird and tow it to shore using a strong Tugboat but this proves difficult the anchors tunnel didn't hold um the towing vessel had about a 10 ton pole and it was enough to essentially pull the anchors out of the out of the ice c-core scientists reevaluate their approach and decide to lasso the iceberg instead by encircling the Berg with a rope connected to the back of a tug they tow Mammoth chunks of ice to their Island laboratory and send them crashing into the electronic panel at first the results seemed baffling sensors in the electronic panel recorded less force from the impacts of giant icebergs than from Far smaller ice samples tested in labs core scientists think there's a simple explanation in the wild icebergs are constantly melting as they melt they weaken although it looks rock hard a 100 000 ton Iceberg has many weak points within its seemingly solid Mass when a Berg of this size collides with a stationary object its weak points diminish the force of the impact since previous laboratory tests had used only small compacted eye samples researchers had remained unaware of these critical weaknesses of larger Birds the c-core experiments proved for the first time that internal weaknesses significantly diminishes the force of an iceberg's impact no one had ever directly measured the forces and pressures that an iceberg exerts on a structure when they interact and you can calculate on paper what they might be till the cows come home but there's a lot of confidence built up when you actually have some data which tells you in the real world what those forces are going to be the Revolutionary results of c-core's Iceberg impact tests reassured Hibernia GBS designers that their platform could survive a collision with a 6 million ton iceberg but Crocker warns people of becoming overconfident after all six million tons of ice could crush an entire city block you need to design for a certain nice load in some acceptable level of risk because you can never reduce risk to zero we don't try and deny that those risks are there we try and design structures that are safe within that environment over 30 GBS platforms operate in the North Sea off Scotland and Norway where icebergs never come these rigs have tall slender base frames designed to offer minimal resistance to powerful waves an iceberg's force would crush them to extract oil from the Hibernia field a rig must sit directly in the iceberg's path [Music] the hibernius designers must invent a new defense against this deadly threat they decide to build a huge ice wall surrounding the underwater base of the platform at first the ice wall appears to be a disorganized mesh of Steel rebar and concrete but it's actually an intricate plan inspired by designs which strengthen the foundations of skyscrapers to withstand a magnitude 8.0 earthquake following a detailed map workers Place each steel beam in an exact location these beams will help to reinforce the strength of the concrete after 69 000 tons of these beams are set in place workers pour high strength concrete around them it's essential that the pouring of the 400 000 tons of concrete be precise if it dries unevenly a weak spot can develop leading to the complete collapse of the Hibernia GBS at sea a process known as slip forming ensures A Perfect Pour slip forming calls for building a wooden platform around the Inside Edge of the GBS workers pour concrete through holes in the platform and use metal shoots to distribute it evenly around the steel bars as the concrete dries a computer raises the wooden platform creating an even pour three months this process continues outer walls rise nearly three feet per day slowly the Revolutionary design of the Hibernia GBS takes Shake four and a half foot thick wall soar 280 feet high Jagged outer wall is actually 16 reinforced concrete teeth designed to break apart an iceberg if it collides with the rig inside the massive concrete shell Engineers install a 50-foot thick ice belt this gap between the outer and inner walls of the base will someday be filled with over 550 000 tons of iron ore When the GPS is in its final position at Sea Engineers will pour the iron ore mixed with sea water into the ice belt it's a protection for the entire facility I mean it's it's the people it's it's the drilling it's everything is protected by that ice wall everybody always says when you look at that ice wall against an iceberg we think we'll win if an iceberg strikes the Hibernia GVS the outer teeth will chew away the ice while the inner ice belt will absorb the iceberg's impact Distributing the force throughout the base but before the GBS faces icebergs on the Open Sea its five upper modules must be completed in these steel homes the 280 men and women aboard the Hibernia rig will eat sleep and work for three weeks at a time they'll face dangers oil riggers never encounter on land they'll be isolated in the middle of the North Atlantic 200 miles from the nearest rescue station anyone who would dare to live and work in this deadly environment must first undergo a grueling frightening ordeal a rite of passage that could make the difference between life and death four hundred thousand tons of concrete poured around 90 000 tons of steel the Hibernia GBS stands ready for battle its Builders have designed its Jagged edged ice wall to defeat the most powerful icebergs in the grand Banks the GBS is so enormous it seems indestructible but even superstructures are only as good as the people who operate them not even Cutting Edge technology can guarantee the lives of workers aboard a platform in the middle of the grand Banks start a an environment in which we are designed to operate as as animals ourselves so the ocean is a an unforgiving place to be if if you don't take account of what dangers it can present in 1982 the ocean Ranger disaster taught newfoundland's Oil Workers the deadly consequences of being unprepared for an emergency when they're rig capsized the ocean Rangers crew panicked terrified workers scrambled to lifeboats and jumped into the freezing water for all death came quickly the temperatures off the grand Banks canvari to Sub-Zero to just above zero if you are in the water forget it you have maybe a menace 84 men died on Ocean Ranger because they had no idea how to save themselves in an emergency as a result of that tragedy all Canadian offshore oil workers must now complete an intensive survival training course before they begin working at sea the Hibernia Corporation takes the dangers of working in the grand Banks very seriously it spans over two million dollars each year on survival training employees who will operate the Hibernia GBS must undergo a one-week program the most grueling in the industry it's an exhausting often frightening ordeal those who fail lose their jobs offshore survival training course Begins by introducing each student to the survival suit designed to keep water out and warmth in these suits will keep a person afloat in the worst sea conditions in the North Atlantic an unprotected swimmer will succumb to hypothermia within 15 minutes swimmer wearing a survival suit can survive in 20 degree water for six hours but knowing how to use a survival suit is only a start unlike any other survival training in the world the Hibernia program requires that each student leave the safety of the training pool and experience the cold brutal reality of the North Atlantic firsthand out here students get a frigid wake-up call at Sea you have a different attitude you you realize that gee this is the real thing I have to perform I have to now my training is actually going to surface and I've got to use that training at Sea each student must demonstrate his or her ability to swim in the ocean jettison life rafts and board rescue boats they're taught to work as a team in the middle of the grand Banks teamwork is essential one person panics many may die it's better to have a cool mind I appreciate that you work as a team and that you're as one integral unit that way you will survive you had to think positively situations occur but if you're well trained you can deal with those situations and you can save that on your own life but those of the of your friends next to you to save lives the Hibernia GBS is equipped with eight state-of-the-art lifeboats each Lifeboat is self-contained motorized and impossible to capsize they're designed to survive a storm as powerful as the one that destroyed the ocean Ranger but mustering everybody to a Lifeboat station and launching the crap takes time offshore oil workers may not have so the oil platform is equipped with three satlantic skyscapes located in each Lifeboat station these nylon shoots Propel a person 100 feet down to the ocean's surface to a waiting life raft using the satlantic skyscapes and the lifeboats the entire crew can quickly abandon the platform unfortunately a fast evacuation may be necessary sitting on top of combustible oil and gas any oil rig must be prepared for the possibility of a devastating explosion [Music] tragically it's happened before in the early hours of July 6 1988 the piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea exploded a gasly ignited an enormous fire which burned for 15 hours 167 men died most of them asleep in their beds the rig was completely destroyed an inquiry into the piper Alpha disaster concluded that if its workers had been trained in basic firefighting techniques they might have survived working in the middle of the world's angriest ocean 200 miles from the nearest fire station oil riggers aboard the Hibernia GBS will have to fight their own fires to have any chance against a deadly fire they must be trained in firefighting hibernia's workers are not expected to become expert firefighters their training will help them prevent a fire from spreading until professional support arrives if it arrives in time the journey to hibernia's isolated home takes 16 hours by boat an hour and 30 minutes by helicopter platform's most vital link to the mainland is also one of the most dangerous means of air travel more than once Choppers carrying workers to their oil rigs have crashed into the sea for this reason any person who will someday fly to the Hibernia GBS must first pass the most frightening test of all the helicopter dunk tank the helicopter dog is that is the brnl this is I think that is the Clincher for people just the fact of doing several Trials of being dipped in a prototype of a helicopter and trying to get out through the window on this final day of their safety training students experience what everyone hopes will never happen when a helicopter crashes into the sea there's very little time to react to survive passengers must keep calm and know exactly what to do immediately they have to knock the emergency windows out if the helicopter sinks the water pressure will make it impossible to open anything then they must suppress their overpowering urge to flee and wait because most helicopters will quickly flip upside down only then is it safe to escape it's amazing how disoriented you are initially because I mean everything's turning and all of a sudden you're hanging there upside down and again it's the training that helps you and because what you find is they said as we do this hold on to the window frame and so when you're upside down all of a sudden you realize hey there's my window frame I'm oriented you pull yourself out the window and you're up to the surface over 3 000 men and women push themselves through the offshore survival training program each year most make it but when some are faced with a sobering reality of what might go wrong they walk away one percent of those who begin the survival training program never make it to the end with all the training and all the safety precautions the risks seem too great as the final assembly of the Hibernia GBS nears the Specter of the ocean Ranger tragedy Rises once again if the design of this platform isn't perfect over three times as many lives could be lost lots of things can go wrong and we work hard to make sure things don't go wrong safety is really number one for us and I mean if you don't get that right all these other things don't matter because we've got now 270 people that call that that little platform out in the middle of the North Atlantic home difference in distribution of the Waves trying to understand how powerful waves can capsize oil rigs industry investigators decide to recreate the ocean Ranger disaster to accomplish this they turn to the National research Council of Canada's Institute of Marine Dynamics or IMD and its indoor ocean nearly as large as a football field this huge Basin holds up to 1.5 million gallons of water it can accurately recreate the stormiest ocean environment we'll put a structure or a ship in the Basin and we can have waves coming from one or more directions much like the real ocean and in addition to that we can superimpose a current on top of that working at a scale of 40 to 1 Institute engineers build a model of the ocean Ranger rig and place it in the center of the indoor ocean using large metal flaps along the edge of the Basin they create a one and a half foot wave the indoor oceans equivalent of a 60-foot swell to everyone's surprise the ocean Ranger stays afloat [Music] puzzled by this mystery investigators look for another possible cause they listen again to the final Communications from the crew of the doomed rig and make a crucial Discovery during the Fatal storm an open porthole in the ballast control room allowed water in short-circuiting the computers without computers workers couldn't operate the ballast tanks which could stabilize the rig has it lost balance its bow dipped down perilously close to the ocean's surface at IMD scientists recreate this dangerous imbalance using their model of the ocean Ranger then they send a succession of 60-foot waves hurling towards the model hit Pay Dirt the ocean Ranger flips [Music] I think most of the problems with the ocean Ranger were sort of a combination of incredible bad luck and and lack of training in fact the rig was quite stable it wanted to stay afloat it was just a combination of extremely large wave that ultimately flipped the rig over or an exceptionally poor ballast condition the sobering Revelations from imd's investigation strengthen hibernia's resolve to build the safest oil platform in the world a rig capable of surviving 100 foot waves in the Open Seas the platform must pass one more crucial test or risk being battered to Pieces by the fury of the North Atlantic from Italy and South Korea enormous barges arrive off the coast of Newfoundland transporting the modules that make up the upper platform of the Hibernia oil rig each of these 8 000 ton steel compartments weighs one thousand tons more than the Eiffel Tower carefully workers offload the five modules onto a pier and spend seven months welding and bolting them together United the entire top side platform weighs 37 000 tons standing 370 feet tall once mated to the GBS the Hibernia rig will become a 1.2 million ton superstructure towering 735 feet from top to bottom but even an oil rig of this size is destined to receive a battery from the huge swells of the grand Banks over time repeated blows of powerful waves May fatally damage the rig to avoid waves constantly crashing into its Underside the platform will hover 100 feet above the ocean's surface the lives of 300 workers and the success of a four billion dollar project rest upon this design strategy before they made the platform to the GBS Engineers need proof that their design will be wave resistant once again they turn to the indoor ocean in St John's Newfoundland here they will test whether the distance from the bottom of the upper platform to the Sea's surface is high enough to prevent waves from battering the platform's underbelly it's much better to fail here on or find out the events that are going to cause a failure here than it is in real life of course I mean model tests are not cheap but they're certainly cheaper than the real real thing the full Fury of the grand Banks is Unleashed in miniature the unique design of the Hibernia GBS sends waves crashing higher than any other oil platform ever has Engineers are worried they send 75-foot waves the largest swells generated by most Atlantic storms barreling towards the platform when they strike the enormous base the Wade's Cascade upward but the underside of the top side platform remains untouched the Hibernia GBS defeats the indoor ocean reassured the platform's design Will Survive the force of even massive waves in the grand Banks Engineers prepare to connect the top side platform to the sunken base The Mating procedure begins with the flooding of the dry dock construction site and the toe out of the GBF to deeper water one mile from Shore there workers add water to the ballast tanks lowering the GBS until only 18 feet of the four 364 foot shafts are above water they position the platform over the sunken GBS with two huge barges lining up the two structures perfectly they slowly raise the base to meet the top side platform the GBS is already in position at the deep water site only the positioning of the platform over the base remains for 48 hours five Tugboat captains positioned two gigantic barges Under the Pier holding the five modules they must evenly distribute the weight of the top side platforms across both barges to ensure a safe trip to the sunken GBS it will take 12 hours to position the top side platform over the base Precision is essential we had to float at something like two kilometers 1.6 or 1.7 kilometers and then uh position it within a thumbnail over another structure that's equally as massive but weighs something like 550 000 tons the barges creeped towards the sunken base at barely one and a half miles an hour they must float to within 20 inches of the connection point as the top sides reach the GBS a winch system takes over connecting the barges to the sunken base moving the five modules into exact position Engineers carefully check the placement they believe it's right on the nose and give the order to raise the GBS workers pump water out of the GBS ballast tanks slowly the base Rises up to meet the top side platform five years after its construction began the Hibernia GBS oil platform stands as a completed structure [Music] as more water leaves the ballast tanks the Hibernia platform Rises further above the sea a new Giant in the region The Mating procedures were fantastic it was a unbelievable feat uh I I sincerely believe that yes it can certainly last to 15 years or 20 years towering over the coastal Cliffs of Eastern Newfoundland the Hibernia GBS seems indestructible this superstructure of concrete and steel now weighs over six hundred thousand tons and stands 735 feet four times taller and 10 times heavier than the Titanic such weight and height it would seem that here finally is a man-made structure capable of defeating the grand Banks but one more challenge Remains the Hibernia GBS must leave the calm protected Waters where it was built for the first time the platform will be exposed to the extreme conditions of the north Atlantic's Open Sea only then will its Builders know whether they have succeeded or failed against the rugged Coastline of Newfoundland the Hibernia GBS stands triumphant a modern superstructure ready to tackle the harshest ocean in the world but before the GBS can pump a single barrel of oil Engineers must install it in the middle of the grand Banks a 400 mile Journey straight through the heart of Iceberg alley before the toe out can take place weather conditions must be exactly right the Hibernia GBS isn't designed to move easily through the water like a ship moving it to the Grand banks will be like towing a 75-story skyscraper out to sea if strong winds strike on Route the 370 foot tall topside platform will act like a giant sail and could capsize the entire structure as Hibernia officials monitor the weather nine of the most powerful tides in the world arrive in Bull arm they'll guide the platform out of its home of six years and into the North Atlantic although the Hibernia oil field is only 200 miles from bull arm the GBS must travel twice that far to get there it will follow the coastline to avoid rough seas and icebergs forecasters must predict at least 10 days of clear weather before the toe out can begin but day after day the Seas remain too rough for travel along the shores of Newfoundland locals gathered a bit of due to their giant neighbor only to find it's still a bull arm [Music] Hibernia officials can afford to wait they've budgeted for just such a delay finally after three months the weather clears and the tugs are ready to go the GBS embarks upon its perilous Journey six tugs position themselves in front of the platform they'll provide the power to pull it Forward meanwhile three tugs take up positions behind the Hibernia to provide steering much like a Rudder in a small boat good weather calm seas and a well-mapped course the Hibernia GBS has no problem navigating out of her protective Cove traveling at two miles per hour she's able to cover nearly 60 miles per day but as the platform reaches its final destination a storm kicks up high seas Tugboat captains halt the toe out we arrived at the Grand banks in very good time but then we had to wait seven days before we towed it into position because it was very shallow water although there are more than 200 miles offshore the grand banks are not very deep beneath them lies North America's continental shelf depth in the grand Banks can be as shallow as 180 feet Engineers plan to Anchor the Hibernia GBS to an underwater Peak just 260 feet below the surface but the oil rigs concrete base extends over 250 feet deep as the tugboat captains maneuver it into position there will be only 10 feet of clearance between the GBS and the ocean floor this will be the most dangerous time of all large waves or Gusty winds could make the rig Bob violently in the water and send it crashing into the seabed the storm rages for almost a week the tugs can only wait finally the weather clears the tugs begin the final phase of the toe out for 70 tenths hours Tugboat captains carefully maneuver the Hibernia toward a Target Zone just 33 feet long no bigger than a semi-trailer truck remarkably they touch down within five feet of the center mark but before celebrating workers must first lower the Hibernia GBS to the ocean floor and add the solid ballast to the interior ice belt this had never been done before we planned a little over a month to do this and it took us too close to two months to to do this above water barge is carrying 550 000 tons of iron ore begin to transfer the solid ballast to the GBS gently the tower sinks toward the sea floor as it hits the soft mud below 120 concrete skirts encircling the underbelly of the GBS penetrates seven feet into the sand the skirt is like a bunch of almost like a cookie cutter that is pushed into the bottom and the top of the cook the structure is sitting on the top of the cookie cutter and then once they're in place they they take out the mud that is surrounded by the cookie cutter and then fill it up with Samantha and that is the thing that sort of glues the structure to the to the bottom barges extract 29 000 cubic yards of water and mud from underneath the GBS while workers insert one hundred thousand tons of concrete between the skirts as the cement dries it glues the base to the bottom of the ocean and the Hibernia GBS is ready to extract the first oil from the grand Banks the hibernius crew will drill over 80 Wells 12 000 feet below the ocean floor some of those Wells Will extract oil others will pump water and gas back into the reservoir to help maintain its geological stability finding the oil however isn't as easy as it sounds but what a puzzle you have here you're trying to figure out what's happening three miles down with with very little information in all reality using state-of-the-art computer technology the Hibernia Reservoir team can work at record speeds as they drill into the oil field scientists on Shore can watch in real time exactly what's happening analyzing the data as a team they're able to make immediate adjustments which allow for a more productive well this revolutionary process pays off quickly in just six months the Hibernia GBS delivers its first tanker full of oil one month ahead of schedule to the hard work of over 8 000 men and women all over the world who built the Hibernia GBS it's also a victory for modern engineering over a hostile environment tempered by an awareness of the ocean's never-ending threat it's a spec we're all specs it's a very small piece of equipment out there on the North Atlantic but for now the Builders of the Hibernia GBS can Savor their accomplishment the platform's success has already sparked a search for other lucrative oil reservoirs in the grand Banks geologists now speak of drilling an even more remote regions like the Arctic long thought to be too dangerous for oil platforms the future of the offshore oil industry rests upon this million ton superstructure anchored in one of the deadliest oceans in the world as it Towers above the waves the Hibernia GBS is a proud symbol of human ingenuities triumph over Nature's challenge on a stone age Island at the ends of the Earth is an astonishing superstructure whose very existence defies imagination to build it men climbed mountains and no one could climb gave their lives building roads no one could build Drive the world's biggest trucks and shovels where they could not go thousands of feet into the sky into a deadly realm of blinding fogs and perilous Quests for staggering ridges they did it all to mine a hidden Fortune a mountain made of gold [Music] oh [Music] in our age of satellites cell phones and cyberspace there are still a few hidden places left on Earth [Music] one of them is irian Jaya [Music] a land born fire crowned by Ice where pathless jungles swelter an equatorial Heat where freezing Mists envelop soaring mountains and men still live Untouched by time some 75 miles from its jungle Shores a wall of mountains soars to 16 000 feet the highest peaks between the Andes and the Himalayas atop them gleams a natural wonder magnificent glaciers spawned by the Ice Age some fifteen thousand years ago only five degrees south of the Equator thank you just below these glaciers lies a Wonder of man two gigantic mines called grossberg and ernstberg less than two miles apart and nearly 14 000 feet high [Applause] before it's exhausted this Megamind May yield more gold than the entire California Gold Rush many call it the most spectacular mineral deposit ever found it's a mountain of ore but it's not just that it's also a root of ore so like if you had a tooth you know and you can see the part that sticks above the gum that that's what most people mind but if you extracted that tooth and it's got that long root on it we've got that as well and it's also full of ore so you're looking at a vertical mile of of gold ore body it's just incredible grossberg and erzberg lie some 700 miles north of Australia and 2 000 miles east of Indonesia's Capital Jakarta in the western half of New Guinea second largest island in the world once a Dutch Colony irian Jaya is now an Indonesian Province and home of some of the world's richest deposits of copper and gold but irian Jaya is not surrendering its Treasures without a fight foreign Burg mining complex took 20 years to build cost more than three billion dollars and took its toll in human life at its dizzying altitudes men must work 24 hours a day seven days a week to make Mining Profitable in one of the most remote locations on Earth the tough part about this was is that mother nature implanted this wonderful or body of Thirteen thousand feet when she said come get it and we had to go get it when you go up there to try to explain it to somebody the best way is that you're going to walk away with your mouth open you're going to be a Gog people are going to say how in the world did you do that this incredible Story begins with one man a Dutch geologist named Jean-Jacques dozi [Music] in 1993 aged 84 he returned to visit the mine his courage made possible in 1936 27 year old Dosey vowed to be the first man to reach irian jaya's tropical glaciers it seemed a reckless boast Europeans had been launching expeditions to Aryan jaya's Hinterland for 300 years none had broken through the deadly Labyrinth of jungle between the mountains and the sea the only way to make your way Inland is by river the problem with the rivers is that you don't know where the rivers are leading this was a problem with the very first Expeditions that came to this area that tried to reach the glaciers they took the wrong river they spent a year and a half trying to get to the glacier just because it took the wrong river it seemed unlikely that Dosey would succeed where so many others had failed but those he possessed a recent 20th century invention which lifted him over the jungle and showed him the way to go those he had the advantage of knowing what the terrain looked like from the air once you knew the terrain once you know which river to take once you knew what the lay of the land fairly well you could move a lot faster on October 29 1936 dozie two friends and eight Porters started up the aqua River they paddle to where the mountains began started walking we just walked up as far as we could start cutting followed a trail made a trail and the higher we came the more tougher it became after a while they didn't know where they were anymore because they had aerial photographs up to a point but then the jungle gets pretty steep and you're not quite sure how far you have to go exhausted as he was the geologist dozie took time to sketch a peculiar rock formation you had a blackish black rock wall a Black Mountain with a green and blue large specks on it and well being a geologist I of course recognize that there should be some copper into this into that rock but at that moment I had to go on dozie had no way of knowing how right he was in fact he had stumbled upon one of the greatest geological discoveries of all time thank you three million years ago a series of volcanic eruptions injected riches into the mountains of Iran Jaya the erupting volcanoes opened up cracks deep within the Earth propelled by hot gases molten magma from the Earth's core flowed into these fissures carrying with it unusually high concentrations of copper and gold one of them was Jean-Jacques dosey's strange Black Mountain the biggest copper deposit ever discovered above the surface of the Earth dozie collected a few ore samples from the Curious Copper Mountain on his field maps he named it Herzberg Dutch for mountain of ore back in Holland he wrote a report describing his discovery but his timing could not have been worse dozi published his report in the summer of 1939. on September 3rd World War II began [Music] while Holland suffered under Nazi occupation the erzberg report gathered dust twenty years later a Dutch geologist gave it to Forbes Wilson was Chief mining engineer for Freeport an American Mining Company [Music] Forbes was a man who had to be the best or the biggest or the fastest or the smartest with anything and everything and indeed he was in many areas that's part of the reason I think that we today are mining in the Richmond complex Wilson was looking for nickel deposits but when he read Josie's description of the artsberg he forgot all about nickel after Forbes Wilson read the Dosey report and it became part of his being we can almost say that it became a holy grail for him he was a man 50 years old at the time and a heavy smoker he gave up smoking got himself in shape and organized this Expedition he had to find for and see for himself erzberg on May 30th 1960 Forbes Wilson plunged into the jungle determined to reach the earthberg he asked his friend and fellow geologist Flint to come along Flint jumped at the chance to take part in the adventure of a lifetime despite the Perils of trekking through irian Jaya the worst thing there were the leeches and if you looked at a bush the elite should be there trying to find something warm that he could attach to we'd always get a few and one time I found one on the roof of my mouth but if I hadn't been busy talking I guess I wouldn't have had it happen but leeches weren't the only unfriendly locals one year after the Forbes Wilson Expedition the Explorer Michael Rockefeller vanished in Harry and Jaya [Music] some believe the son of Governor Nelson Rockefeller drowned or was killed by sharks but others are convinced he was eaten by cannibals when Dale flint and Forbes Wilson first encountered aryan's indigenous peoples they felt threatened but for a different reason even though you've seen pictures of them with their gourds covering their privates the first time you see it it's a real shock you feel very uh well unequipped that's why I would put it they came in with all their finery and charged like they were being a raid in war which said it gave you you know but uh he they turned it into a dance and everybody was happy on June 16 1960 after 18 days of hard travel Dell flint and Forbes Wilson found the hertzburg [Music] a service inspection convinced them that it was indeed a mineralogical Marvel thickly laced with enormous chunks of a yellow copper ore known as calcopyrite would be blobs that up to four feet across or perhaps even longer that were solid calcophary and when you saw that I it was just you boggled your mind when I first got there and got up on the thing I just screamed like tires and then Yoo-hoo God I'm mine all mine American geology that hertzburg was really a mount but Georgie had called it a mountain of War on the moon build a mod most inaccessible places on Earth in the 1960s irian jaya's mountain of copper and gold appeared as spectacular as Forbes Wilson believed it would be [Music] Rock samples from erzberg had one of the highest copper contents ever found yet no matter how rich it was erdsburg was virtually impossible to reach but on April 5th 19 6 with authorization from the Indonesian government Freeport decided to try to build it's mine the port hired Bechtel a California engineering firm with a reputation for building things in places no one else could but even bechtel's Engineers were stunned by irian Jaya to even reach erzberg Engineers would have to build a 75-mile road through some of the toughest terrain on Earth first through the Labyrinth of mangrove swamps hugging the coast then through the seemingly impenetrable jungles of the lowlands and finally over mountains that Rose like walls up to 16 000 feet high they had no airport no Seaport and no place for helicopters to land well the first thing was for to build a dock area and to put in a road well both the dock area and the mangroves and the and the beginning of the road you had to drop everything down from helicopters you had to drop people down from helicopters to saw off trees to make platforms where the Choppers could land to bring in supplies they would get their people into Choppers put them in a horse with a chainsaw people would come down from the chopper with their chainsaw going now remember they're dropping down on a solid canvas of Treetops so they would have to cut their way down to the floor of the jungle as the helicopter tries to hover and the master who's inside the helicopter is watching to make sure that this guy doesn't start bouncing around back and forth you can be slammed against the tree people have been killed this way as Crews cleared helicopter landing sites Road building began workers came from all over the world to take on the incredible challenge among them was a young Indonesian from Sumatra named Ilyas Hamid [Music] when I was selected to come here I was a little bit afraid because I heard there were almost no people in this place also some rumors that people in this area ate other human beings however when I shared my concern with my family they gave me their support and told me to leave my faith to God Engineers dredged tons of gravel from riverbeds trying to create the foundation of a road in the worst places it took as much as 50 cubic yards of gravel to build one foot of Road overnight while the road builders slept the road they had built the day before often sank into the swamp in places Bechtel built two miles of road for every mile that survived working in this place was very difficult I thought that after digging mud for three to six feet I would get to hard soil but in fact we were still finding mud after we had dug more than 30 feet in one day we could make only 15 to 20 feet of Road as the road inched forward landslides buried tractors trucks fell into rivers helicopters sank into swamps that was the easy part 50 miles from the coast the sheer wall of irian's backbone rose up as steep as 70 degrees the mountain tops were razor sharp ridges places only two feet wide with vertical drops on either side yet 25 miles of Road had to be built over those mountains if Herzberg was to be reached if you're willing to put enough s-curves into the road you can put a road up almost any slope then the problem is to put the road along the Ridgecrest now what Bechtel did is from helicopters it dropped down very small bulldozers bulldozers that are the size of small lawn mowers they would drop these down and these bulldozers would cut off the top part of the Ridgeback and then slightly larger bulldozers would come in Bechtel went through six size bulldozers between these very small lawnmower Thai bulldozers until they got to the big boys the size of a house which eventually did build the road so you started getting a flat Ridge line and then you started going down in s-curves going down to the bottom tremendously difficult bulldozers would fall over the edge who knows where they ended up the bulldozers pushed forward drivers kept one eye on the dizzying drops below them and the other on the crumbling Cliffs above no one knew if he would live or die my bulldozer broke down and the helicopter could not bring a spare part the next morning my friend an American whose bulldozer was working replaced me as the leader of the work after only half an hour the land he was working on collapsed and his bulldozer slid down into a canyon as he fell a tree branch speared him right through the chest and killed him by 1971 after nearly four years Victory seemed in sight but seven miles short of Herzberg the road builders ran into a towering two thousand foot cliff [Music] bechtel's Engineers had an ingenious solution a helicopter carried a 9 000 foot long nylon rope to a platform at the future mine with this bolted in place workers hoisted up ever thicker ropes until the line was strong enough to hold steel cables as thick as a man's arm this web of Steel became the longest aerial Tramway of its day and one of the steepest cars Rose two thousand feet in less than a mile but no one anticipated the mysterious vibrations That Shook its cables vibrations would be so strong they had to stop everything because the aura cars the vibrate right off the cable they call in a Swiss mathematician he said these cables are like the strings and a very fine violin if they're a bit Out Of Tune the violin sounds lousy he recalculated speeds and stressors since then everything has gone very smooth [Music] with the tram in Place Freeport could lift men and Equipment all the way to the mine entrance at the tramway's base Bechtel built mine offices and an ore processing Mill after five years of battling Aryan Jaya the erdsburg mine was ready for operation at a cost of over a billion dollars but Engineers had to solve another problem how were they going to get thousands of tons of ore down the mountain [Music] by 1972 Engineers had met the challenge of building a road through irian Jaya miners could begin digging the huge deposits of copper and gold discovered there soon they were mining thousands of tons of ore per day but they also faced a new challenge how to ship that ore from Erie enjoy as far away mountains to the rest of the world [Music] trucks and trams couldn't carry enough ore per day to make earthsberg profitable Engineers came up with a simple solution to moving the ore let it fall newly mined ore begins its Journey to the world through a series of ore passes these giant shoots send it plummeting 2 000 feet to the base of the tram as the ore hits the ground it breaks into smaller pieces making it easier to move conveyor belts Rush the fallenure to a mill inside the mill it pours into the world's largest ore Crushers some nearly 40 feet in diameter whirling inside these enormous drums thousands of Steel balls attack the ore grinding it into smaller rocks and finally into a powder at the Mill workers mix powdered ore with water to create a concentrated liquid slurry of copper and gold but this concentrate is still ten thousand feet high and 70 miles from the sea gravity gets it there Mill workers pump the concentrate into a pipeline running beside the road after 20 miles The Descent becomes so steep that gravity alone carries the concentrate another 50 miles to the Sea piled in Barns by the ocean awaiting shipment to smelters around the world the product of hundreds of millions of dollars in years of hazardous work looks like nothing but a huge pile of dirt but in fact it's Pay Dirt when it's smelted each ton yields nearly 700 pounds of copper 30 grams of gold and another 30 grams of silver we Mine The Ore at 14 000 feet and we sell it at sea level and that's a 75 mile distance between those two nobody else does that in December 1972 the first ship loaded with ore from the earthberg mine sailed from Harry and Jaya foreign by the 1980s hertzberg was a huge open pit mine ancient glacial Meadow sketched by Jean-Jacques dozi echoed with the sounds of one of the world's most ambitious mining operations but Freeport knew that big as it was hertzburg wouldn't last forever the company sent geologists deep into the surrounding mountains to search for an even bigger body of War a motherload that would make mining in Erie and Jaya profitable long after earthsberg had played out it was a dirty dangerous thrilling job for a few exceptional men and one exceptional woman we spent many times really running for the helicopter it'd be just exhausted new just get in and almost collapse but it was either that or spend the night and it was very cold up there at night in the early 1970s Frank Nelson was one of the first geologists to explore the Wilds of Aryan Jaya working with him was his wife Eleanor also a geologist our first chore really was developing a map uh first topographic and at the same time geologic we had one camera that we mounted below the helicopter that Frank would work on a remote control and I took handheld pictures out the door of the helicopter just opened the door and point the camera out and sort of surprised our Drillers sometimes they'd say who in the hell is that up there in L.A be sitting there on the edge of the seat with the feet over the edge and shooting straight down and trying to get a montage a mosaic of the area and even these big rough tough Maori Drillers they were impressed by that so that this one cool woman people were not familiar with the natives and we were lucky enough to have more direct day by day contact with them and you got to really like them a lot of people feared them they look pretty uh dramatic I mean with painted faces and you know bones in the nose and bows and arrows and they were ominous looking but actually when you got to know them they had a great sense of humor we used to ask him for the fun of it and they always would say well not us but over in the other Canyon those fellas yeah they eat people and they go over there and say oh not us but those those fellas had by the 1980s the erzberg opened pit mine was no longer profitable and was shut down but by then Frank and Eleanor Nelson and other geologists had discovered huge underground copper deposits nearby it was a rich find but it wasn't the motherload Freeport had been searching for in fact in the mid-1980s Freeport almost quit mining an area in Jaya as a new technology threatened to destroy the world demand for copper fiber optic cable was revolutionizing World telephone systems many believed it would soon make copper telephone wire obsolete but in 1984 a new chief executive took over at Freeport James Robert Moffett was a field geologist who'd spent years exploring for oil and minerals he wasn't ready to give up on Aryan Jaya he believed in the mother lode I looked at New Guinea and saw Papua New Guinea with hundreds of Minds that had been explored over the last 150 years and here in Jaya with basically the small archbird mine and it's what we call State Line geology it happens all the time just because this terrain was so horrible in terms of trying to explore it and people quit at the Papua New Guinea border and they began to to to to tell themselves that this state line really was some sort of a geologic boundary well that's ridiculous geology doesn't know political boundaries and it never has and it never will Moffett was convinced there was more gold in irian jaya's primeval Hills he told his geologists to find it as it happened a Freeport geologist in Aryan Jaya had been thinking about gold and staring at a mountain called grossberg less than two miles from the ertzburg mine every morning I'd look up and I'd see the outcrop I'd see that mountain sitting up there and I think to myself gee there really should be something up there it literally drove me nuts to stand down at the bottom of that mountain and look up at it and know that there was a rock up there that I hadn't been on and that was an itch that I just had to scratch and after about two years we finally got a chance to do it [Music] the Rocks Dave Potter collected on grossberg assayed at one to two grams of gold per ton it was enough to justify further investigation Potter set up Diamond drills and took core samples first one came back which was an angle hole it went directly under the outcrop and not only did it have gold in it it also had copper values and for the first time I started thinking to myself there's something more here than just a gold deposit the one that really drove it home was the third the last hole that we drilled it went over about 1500 feet deep and out of that 1500 feet all of it but about 90 to 100 feet came back with copper values that were or grade in other words they were on the order of one to two percent copper on the order of one to as high as 5 grams per ton gold that hole was when I suddenly felt my God this is big big was an understatement grossberg made mining history Dave Potter's hunch LED Freeport to a billion tons of ore the biggest gold deposit and the third biggest copper deposit ever found give Mr moffatt the credit for maintaining the property when he could have taken probably 75 million dollars for it in in the early 80s and walked away clean you know now grassburg itself in the ground is worth over 40 billion dollars 75 million 40 billion good choice but as the first Euphoria faded a sobering realization took over a wall of cliffs blocked the earthberg road from reaching the grossberg to mine its Bonanza Freeport would have to haul the world's biggest trucks and shovels up Aryan jaya's nearly vertical Cliffs to a mountain even more remote than Herzberg at hertzburg Engineers had achieved the incredibly difficult now at grossberg they faced The Impossible [Music] grossberg is the world's richest gold mine it's also one of the most productive and cost efficient working 24 hours a day seven days a week its miners dig six hundred thousand tons of ore in a single day to dig this staggering amount of ore they must use the world's biggest mining equipment gigantic Bucyrus electric shovels picking up 80 tons of ore in a single scoop and the Komatsu 930 the Leviathan of War trucks carrying over 300 tons in a single load other Minds use this colossal equipment but none has faced the task of transporting it up sheer cliffs in a remote and primitive land to a mountain peak nearly 14 000 feet high in the 1980s this seemed impossible the erzberg Tramway can carry only 15 Tons a single Komatsu or truck weighs over 200 tons towering Cliffs blocked the artsburg road from reaching the grossberg site in the late 1980s the grossberg miners faced this daunting challenge one this is the heat Road stands for heavy equipment access Trail the heat road is unlike any other Highway ever built [Music] hero begins at elevation about 8 000 feet and traverses up the Mountainside for about seven miles and comes out at about 13 500 feet some of the grades are in excess of 22 to 30 percent branching off from the main road just below the grossberg the heat Road zigzag straight uphill into the clouds until it reaches the mine freeport's Stairway to Heaven the largest single contributing factor to this mine is the heat rope if we didn't have the heat Road grassburg mine would not today be moving six hundred thousand tons a day over this nightmare of a road colossal trucks and shovels must be brought up piece by piece like this ore truck chassis weighing 40 tons in places the road seems to defy the laws of physics as its grades approach the maximum angle of fully loaded vehicle can climb the hero shouldn't exist if you look at the heat from down below you don't even know what it is when I bring people up for their first visit they look and they just say what is that what's going on up there many said this crucial Road could not be built or if it could its cost would be astronomical they hadn't counted on freeport's veteran Road Builder Ilyas Hamid Freeport asked several independent contractors from Australia to give them an estimate as to what it would cost to build a road and the estimates came in and dozens and dozens of millions of dollars he heard about these incredible estimates and he thought to himself this is crazy I can do this for a lot less money than what these people are asking so his expat supervisor agreed to let him try Siam my boss said okay I give you everything you need so the guy just drove his bulldozer from the top to the bottom it took him a while he didn't do it overnight but he just zigzagged back and forth it was the hardest work I have ever done the bulldozer was always in danger of falling because the ground was very slippery and had very little soil on top so the challenge was very big when you drive a bulldozer on a slope as steep as the slope going up to grassburg you can go over any time he almost did several times his nerve endings are so much better than ours in sensing that fine line between toppling over in your bulldozer and dying and being able to make that cut on which other people can follow behind you that road was built for under two million dollars incredible just because of one guy who had whatever he took brave enough to go and drive his bulldozer from the top to the bottom he's kind of a mellow guy but inside I think he's he's a tiger and he loves the challenge and he made something amazing happen he maybe doesn't know much about the world of physics maybe he just says you on a road from A to B and I'll get you there the hebrewed conquered irian Giant's mountains but steepness is not the only obstacle to be overcome at nearly 14 000 feet operating one of the world's biggest Minds is a daily dangerous challenge most mornings begin in brilliant sunshine but by midday clouds sweep in from the sea within seconds visibility at grossberg can drop from nearly perfect to nearly zero most days the grossberg miners must operate their Leviathan machinery and fog so dense they can barely see the 200 ton Komatsu ore trucks with their tires as tall as a house could squash a smaller vehicle flat without stopping now they've got various strict rules about what to do once a fog comes in having your lights on being X number of meters away from any other truck who has priority and these safety measures are followed extremely closely otherwise people would be dying all over the place or truck drivers like Alexander chromsion have been trained to handle dangerous weather if the fog is closer than 50 feet I park my truck and wait until it disappears I'm never frightened although I worry a bit because the road is very narrow and slippery like many grossberg employees Alexander crumpsion is an indigenous area knees his truck driving skills are even more impressive than they seem that is I had never operated a vehicle before the company tested me when I came on the first day of training I was a little confused but I did not find it difficult after that twenty percent of my people are local Aryan people local people who have never seen a Toyota before or a car and they come up and they're driving 300 ton Haul trucks that that's a challenge in itself and we're pretty proud of our Workforce and I've I've worked at numerous mines and I put my people up against any other mines in the world sberg's miners won't be stopping work anytime soon geologists believe the deposit is even bigger than originally estimated and may still contain billions of tons of ore but Freeport has not given up its quest for new bonanzas of copper and gold the search has sent geologists on death-defying explorations today the grossberg mine Remains the biggest gold deposit ever found Freeport geologists continue their search for an even bigger one today's scientists have tools unimagined by the explorers of the past they pour over magnetic imagery and high-resolution satellite photography zeroing in on potential ore bodies they call hot spots without leaving the comfort and safety of their lab but someone's got to evaluate those hot spots and the only way to do that is the old-fashioned way [Music] Jay Pennington's morning commute is a little different from most we just popped out of the helicopter basically two at a time with a sampling pack and a in a survival pack and then we're one at a time down the hoists say from 100 120 feet so like a 12-story building the first time I was lowered out of a helicopter it was it was a extremely invigorating and it was scary and it was fun all at the same time you gotta have ultimate faith in your pilot the Hoist Master who's gonna have your life on the line there for about 90 seconds and then the people that maintain the equipment both the Hoist and the helicopter so you get through that and let's face it you can't do the work without that confidence as soon as you have that the rest of it can be as fun as you want [Music] exploration geologists like Jay Pennington on the front line of Freeport search for the next grossberg that's good stuff despite all the high-tech science that leads him to a hot spot Jay works with tools any California 49er would recognize eight hours a day he pans for gold like an old west prospector in some of the last true Wilderness on Earth a lot of the times when you hit the ground you gotta feel that no western or no non-native has has ever been where you are at that moment right there so it you have the potential to stumble over a 50-ounce nugget of gold and just as easily as you can step on a a rare poisonous snake when Jay finishes sampling one hot spot he radios for the helicopter to pick him up and take him to another one but when a helicopter leaves Jay in the jungle there's no guarantee it can return can't fly if you can't see I don't play uh Mountain tag with a helicopter it's not advisable there have been times when you wind up in a in a sandwich of clouds okay either one can get you from the top down or from the bottom up and if you get a helicopter stuck in that sandwich you're asking for real trouble and then I'm there for the night and that's happened a lot when you're stuck out there it's it's miserable beyond all the Adventure lies the ultimate dream and or body even bigger than grossberg in 1994 a Canadian exploration company claimed to have found it breaxx announced it had Unearthed an enormous gold deposit on the neighboring island of Borneo how enormous 200 million ounces of gold worth 70 billion dollars as briex stock skyrocketed the Indonesian government asked Freeport to develop the Borneo Bonanza but when freeport's geologists finally got a chance to test brex or samples they made a shocking discovery what they were finding was particles of gold in that rock powder that were 10 20 50 times the size of the rest of the powder so they were obviously salted the goal that we found in our samples that we had drilled and processed a few grains of gold we did find were very small miniscule compared to what they what they found and they just told us that somebody had falsified the information by adding gold to the samples the brex Gold Strike was a hoax Freeport Executives asked Michael De Guzman Brie X's Chief geologist to meet with them and explain the falsified ore samples it was D-Day right there that was when Steve was going to make the first confrontation and say hey guys you know what gives here we we don't think here on the level and he never turned up for the meeting and never turned up after that anywhere we had a had a message from Jakarta coming in where they had heard that the Guzman had disappeared out of a helicopter and was the only person in the back seat of the helicopter and supposedly opened the door and jumped out Indonesian authorities claim to have found the Guzman's body and ruled his death a suicide but some believe the case is not closed the whole thing about his remains and how they were identified it's all very questionable I kind of feel like he's probably hanging out in the Philippines somewhere enjoying his money despite the brex hoax Freeport continues looking for another grossberg a geological Holy Grail hidden in the mountains of irian Jaya [Music] thank you [Music] like true Grail Seekers those who have braved the quest have been transformed country itself is so spectacularly beautiful that you well I always said he was a religious experience to go to work in the morning because the sun was just hitting the tops of the Peaks and it was uh it was just a wonderful place some of the things that I'm going to remember for the rest of my life and things that I have a hard time talking to other people about are things like being in a helicopter at 18 000 feet at six o'clock in the morning and watching the sun rise over that mountain It's Magic it's just it's unbelievable when we were finally leaving for the last nine million and I were in the helicopter and you can hear this from the whole mob of natives came running down the wall trotting that all dressed up in the refinery saying well you'll be back boys huh you'll be back I thought we couldn't look at each other we both choked up on the way down yeah knowing that was one of the best parts of your life is finished then I think The Men Who Built This mine I think are really an unusual Bunch from the standpoint that not only were their hard work is you can find hard workers almost anywhere in the world I think it was a vision a vision that they had which I think was inspired by the kind of terrain they were working in no place has a physical toughness and Splendor that Ariane has it was really a challenge men against nature but nature at her most unforgiving nature at the toughest I don't think you can find any place on earth when Nature is any Tougher Than This grossberg and erzberg will forever remain monuments to those who discovered them built them and made them work a tribute to the human courage and determination that against stupendous odds erected a superstructure Above the Clouds at the ends of the Earth rising from beneath the waves a silent Predator suddenly strikes for almost a century submarines have patrolled the world's oceans [Applause] their missions even their Construction cloaked in secrecy now we'll take you where cameras have never been allowed before to witness the incredible birth of a modern nuclear submarine about to embark on a potentially Dangerous Mission this is the story of the most complex military machine of the 20th century a superstructure called Sea Wolf [Music] foreign [Music] it's a ritual like no other a centuries-old tradition of Pomp and pageantry welcoming a new ship to the fleet but while the christening of this vessel follows a time-honored custom that's where tradition ends this is a ship for the next Century an entirely new class of Submarine meeting the water for the first time 400 feet 800 feet a showpiece of revolutionary design and construction techniques the nuclear-powered USS Seawolf takes its place in the ocean as the most advanced and lethal submarine ever created foreign it's taken over three thousand workers more than a decade to build what the Navy calls the most complicated machine on Earth [Applause] [Music] the crew of Seawolf has endured years of training to earn a place aboard this mechanical Marvel she is a prototype for the Navy's undersea future thank you but before they can claim the title of sovereign of the ocean man and machine must pass a complex and dangerous series of tests known as the sea trials [Music] to a submerged contact plantations are to engage his contact and stay course one two zero the stakes could not be higher in the post-cold War era budget cutbacks the Navy is relying on Sea Wolf to prove it can do more with less if this ship fails her sea trials the entire future of the Navy submarine program will be affected firing Point procedures the 14 officers and 124 enlisted men of Seawolf are well aware that they and the submarine's Builder are under intense scrutiny shoot on generated bearing the number of Sea Wolves approved for construction has already been slashed from 30 to 3. workers at the Electric Boat Company who built sea wolf have seen their numbers drop from 25 000 to 7 000. to them a successful sea trial could mean the difference between economic life and death very well City course zero five zero so you can watch stand down for battle station but as the world's most sophisticated weapon slowly descends beneath the waves the ultimate test will come from the ocean itself at bone crushing pressures deep below the surface there's no margin for error there are few places in the world large enough and sophisticated enough to build a nuclear submarine this is one of them the electric boat company's machine shop in Quonset Point Rhode Island for the first time ever the company has allowed cameras inside to witness the birth of a nuclear submarine here giant pipes are twisted into intricate shapes while massive grinding machines polish tons of special metal alloys into parts that will become the body of sea wolf there's about eight million Parts on a submarine those parts have to fit together electronically mechanically the tolerances are extraordinarily close Boat Company were co-founded by submarine Pioneer John Holland in 1899 while the construction of Seawolf marks a new chapter in the history of underwater Vehicles like all subs its life began on the design table from the 19th century through the Cold War submarine construction has always required enormous amounts of precise planning for instance on Friday There Were Ten Thousand drawings that defined that ship there are probably five or six revisions of the ten thousand drawings said sixty thousand pieces of paper it's been about 30 years we've designed a new class of submarines in those days we designed a submarine used to use slide rules there's a lot of hand calculations so when they designed Sea Wolf it was computer-aided it was the first time we did that when Sea Wolf was designed in the 1980s the computer Revolution was just beginning with the Advent of computer-assisted design or CAD technology her creators could drastically reduce the Staggering amount of hand calculations required now basic design measurements such as length and diameter could be visualized in ways the early Pioneers couldn't imagine but the design process was still full of challenges [Music] main problems facing modern Navy designers today were also faced by their forefathers first how to create a vehicle that could stay underwater for extended periods of time [Music] then how to install enough Weaponry to make it a viable threat finally how to remain undetected in the past submarines were constructed by welding together steel plates to form the Halls then the Machinery or guts of the sub would be lowered inside through openings in the top this was the primary method of Submarine construction from World War one through the Cold War the Cold War was one of the most volatile and dangerous times in American history as the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated the government turned to its undersea Force for defense the Navy developed two kinds of Submarine classes the ballistic missile submarine and a smaller class of Subs the attack class the ballistic Subs often called Boomers because of their enormous Firepower were essentially Large mobile platforms for launching nuclear weapons deployed on secret missions throughout the world's oceans the ballistic missile submarines served as a threatening deterrent to an enemy First Strike weapons gone you have permission to fire the Note One their companion class the attack Subs were smaller and faster than the Boomers these Subs were designed to do exactly what their name implied attack quickly silently and with deadly force shoot following the Cold War the threat of a superpower conflict decreased while the likelihood of smaller Regional conflicts increased in response a new kind of Submarine was needed a submarine like Sea Wolf the Gulf War with Saddam Hussein actually started the attack started with a couple of missiles out of a submarine hundreds of miles away keeps your personnel safe and has the ability to be used in every conceivable situation for this new class of Submarine a new building approach was employed the Navy created Sea Wolf using a modular construction method for the first time a submarine would be billed as a series of modules with the piping machinery and fittings installed at the same time this whole cylinder about 40 feet in diameter is about to become part of a larger complete module using this new method of construction the hull will not only be much stronger but maintenance on the sub will also be easier past Engineers would have to cut holes in the pressure Hull to add or remove machinery this time-consuming labor-intensive process required extensive recertification tests now Machinery can fit through special openings that are covered by a water-tied hatch increasing the efficiency of the construction process and the strength of the Hub [Music] even a pencil-sized puncture in the ship's Hall would bring in water with the velocity of a bullet fired from a rifle to learn how to survive against such impossible odds the crew must now face their own certification process that training begins here at the naval submarine School in Groton Connecticut [Music] these trainee submariners know that someday they may face a situation of life and death an emergency in which their response will either save the ship or send it to the bottom of the scene [Music] back alive during World War II submarine crews in the Pacific faced impossible odds with terrifying regularity under constant attack from Japanese depth charges submarines became the final resting place for thousands of American servicemen coming up despite the losses American submarines inflicted major damage on the Japanese Navy and Merchant Fleet one after the other these steel sharks rolled out of shipyards as fast as they could be built in response the Japanese tried every possible method to turn back the U.S subfleet including propaganda we know very well that Americans submariners are wise you will turn back certain debt the weight chew over here but neither depth charges nor propaganda could silence these Warriors of the deep and the American submarine Fleet dramatically affected the war's outcome [Applause] the submarine Force represented just a mere two percent of a very very large Navy the submarine force with that two percent of the Navy sank just about 55 of all the Japanese shipping that were sunk in the entire Pacific War ultimately the end of World War II was brought on by a catastrophic new weapon an apocalyptic device using an energy source of unimaginable power after the wars end one man began experimenting with a way to safely harness this awesome power under the sea envisioned a new kind of Submarine powered by an energy source that would give an incomparable speed and stealth his vision would lead to the awesome creation called Sea Wolf [Music] thank you somewhere off the Atlantic coast the world's most advanced submarine has begun its most crucial test this is the first of three C trials which will determine whether USS Seawolf is ready to join the fleet officer deck maker death 750 feet 45 down they might have seven five zero feet two five degree down analyzer as it cuts silently through the water its nuclear reactor provides an almost Limitless supply of energy four pounds of enriched uranium will provide the same amount of energy as 10 million gallons of fuel oil used by early diesel-powered Subs the Advent of nuclear power was the most important development in the history of Submarine construction and as the most sophisticated submarine ever built continues its top secret mission it does so because of the dream of one man Navy Admiral Hyman rickover a qualified Submariner an engineer with a strong faith in both the practicality and necessity of atomic propulsion it was a Visionary of this business before we had the word division his convictions and determination soon made him a dedicated and efficient spokesman for a Nuclear Navy Admiral rickover was the first person to realize that nuclear power could turn the submarine into the most feared weapon on the planet with this new power source rickover reasoned he could counteract the submarine's Achilles heel the need for frequent resurfacing which made them vulnerable to attack with no precedent and no technology available for such an undertaking he had to start from scratch prior to nuclear propulsion particularly during World War II submarines were essentially surface ships that were capable of submerging once in a while but with nuclear propulsion or now you had a ship that was truly submersible but translating nuclear fuel into a practical energy source presented rickover with a paradox on one hand harnessing the power of the atom on a submarine would be extraordinarily complex but once accomplished using that power to propel the sub would be relatively simple utilizing the same Principle as a steamboat the process begins with a nuclear reaction as control rods carefully reveal uranium in a sealed container extraordinary heat is produced liquid is then pumped through the system it carries that heat away from the reactor core and circulates cooler temperatures back to the nuclear fuel the liquid then flows through a heat exchanger where the high temperatures are transferred to water coursing through thick pipes this assures there can be no release of radioactive materials during the energy exchange process this tremendous heat turns water into saturated steam the Steam Powers a turbine which drives a generator supplying all the electrical energy needed to operate the ship Excess power is diverted to energy reserves stored in massive bags of batteries on board Admiral rickover understood that nuclear engines could not only generate more power they could give submarines virtually unlimited range underway on nuclear power 's message that sent an office Center crew into service in 1955 rickover's theory was put to the test as USS Nautilus became the world's first nuclear-powered submarine although the Nautilus speed is a secret it is known to be by far the fastest submarine in the world three years later Nautilus proved the submarine was now master of all the oceans even those that were largely unexplored in her historic four-day Journey Nautilus opened a new frontier went across from the Pacific to the Atlantic under the ice of the Arctic Ocean passing directly under the ice packs of the North Pole Nautilus completed the first undersea Transit of this hostile environment a tumultuous Harbor greeting is given the record breaker the ship returned to a hero's welcome a tribute to exploits that Mark a new age and man's progress a great step forward in the mastering of the Seven Seas well done very well done later in that same month the crew of a different atomic submarine would establish a new endurance record for underwater operation for 60 days between August 7th and October 6 1958 the crew of this ship remained submerged beneath the forbidding ice flows of the North Pole the name of that ship was ussc Wolfe predecessor to today's nuclear-powered Wonder teachings [Music] 700 feet coming 800 feet they charge your place on board today Seawolf submerging for 60 days is simply routine with its nuclear-powered engines and ability to manufacture oxygen and water sea wolf could theoretically remain underwater for years at a time but beyond her extended range nuclear power has also given Sea Wolf another important Edge speed while her top speed is a closely guarded Navy secret officials admit she cruises faster than 25 knots about 30 miles per hour experts privately acknowledge Sea Wolf can actually travel much faster well it's funny people try to figure out how fast the ship goes they always ask the crew and the crew will say they have an acronym they say it goes so fantastically fast that stuff falls off you know that's that's their little joke but they won't tell you for sure how fast it goes it is certainly a it is certainly a sports car compared to the other ones hell left-handed Reese Runner City Court zero eight zero in fact even the designers of this undersea sports car were surprised by how fast she really is the ship is tremendously faster than what they expect and people don't believe it you go back to some of the scientists who did the original calculations they refused to believe it for all its high-tech power Sea Wolf is still a warship and life aboard this ship is no pleasure Cruise every square inch of sea wolf is designed for maximum efficiency which doesn't leave much room for human comforts the crew eats and shifts over 130 men will pass through this compact Galley three times each day space and privacy aboard Sea Wolf are luxuries the crew learned to live without even their sleeping quarters are designed for efficiency the reason why we call it hot racking or hot monkey is you have three guys to two racks uh the reason why you have that is because you don't have enough space available for each member of the crew the reason why they call it hot racking is because while you always have one on watch you have two in the rack when that person gets off watch that rack is still warm from the other person so that's pretty much why they call it and plus you jump around from rack to Rack you'll never sleep in the same rack twice it's not uncommon for some Sailors to actually sleep in the torpedo cradles luxurious accommodations for taller men frustrated by confined bugs because space aboard a submarine is at a premium maximizing every available inch has always started with the design phase during the 1980s Sea Wolf designers were able to use emerging Technologies to increase available space for example CD-ROM technology met thousands of technical manuals and drawings required on early Subs could be replaced by compact discs no minor achievement this freed up 350 cubic feet of space and eliminated over six tons of paper on board a major tactical advantage of sea wolf is her arsenal of computers this massive network of incredibly powerful machines are the most ever used on any Naval vessel her communication software alone uses 6 million lines of programming code Seawolf submarine is probably the most complex product built by man in the world today if you took the floppy disks 1.4 megabit uh floppy disks and took the data that's in the submarine and stored them in those floppy disks they would be taller than the World Trade Center there's just an enormous complexity of material science machines computers protection bearing 273 classified biologic the computer-driven sensor systems on Seawolf are so Advanced they can even pick up the most minute natural sounds of the deep [Applause] what you're hearing is shrimp feeding in the cold Waters of the Atlantic the crew listens as Dolphins swarm in for lunch but beyond just hearing faint natural sounds see sensors can detect and identify even the most silent of ships by their sound signatures today's acoustic sensors both on the submarine and also towed behind the submarine have allowed us to be able to detect very quiet submarines and surface ships out to thousands and thousands of yards in range out to many many nautical miles Those sensors combined with very improved and highly capable heavyweight torpedoes give us the capability to attack both submarines and surface ships almost at will crew members say the difference between sea wolf and non-nuclear submarines is like comparing a biplane to a jet but for all its Space Age capabilities the job of traveling Beneath the Sea remains extremely dangerous no mission is more dangerous than the alpha trial the submarine's first meeting with the sea as the crew of USS Seawolf continues their Shakedown Voyage a mission from decades earlier casts an ominous shadow a mission in which another nuclear submarine was being tested mission that would be cut short by tragedy a tragedy that would shock a nation and forever change the nature of Submarine Construction the Navy's newest nuclear submarine the thresher is launched at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard when USS Thresher was launched in July 1960 she was the first of her kind a new class of submarine like the crew of sea wolf thresher faced a regular series of tests designed to further submarine exploration but on April 10 1963 the incredible danger associated with any undersea Journey became all too clear [Music] at 7 47 PM about 200 miles east of Boston thresher began a deep descent known as a test dive for reasons still unknown at 9 13 PM the ship radioed a message that it was experiencing minor difficulties and was attempting to blow its ballast tanks a procedure used to surface during an emergency four minutes later a garbled message was received then the horrifying sound of the ship breaking up USS Thresher along with her crew of 129 men was gone it was a chilling a chilling and memorable day it was almost like where you were when the president was assassinated which was also thank you as ships and deep diving equipment scoured the ocean for the wreckage investigators began a decades-long quest to find out why she sang in a remarkable series of pictures the Navy photographs the eel starred sum in one photo her number shows clearly the tail section with the stern Plains is plainly visible here Navy submersibles found what was left of thresher in June of 1963 at a depth of over 8 000 feet a Navy Court of inquiry however was never able to fully determine the exact cause of her demise no Navy official was more devastated by the loss of thresher than the father of nuclear submarines Admiral rickover while some critics attacked the performance of the ship's nuclear reactor rickover believed that submarine construction itself must change he lobbied for improved fabrication techniques better inspection methods and more attention to emerging Technologies and new ways of thinking when we lost the pressure we went from what had been a proactive approach to building submarines to a very strong reactive approach and it focused our engineering discipline into what do we have to do to make a submarine safe for the people in the harsh environment not just in Wartime but in peace time too and so Threshers not only historical memory we remind people of thresher as part of our submarine Education and Training we go around and remind them the consequences of not adhering rigorously to this technical specifications in the processes so it's still the backdrop for the subsafe program here is 34 years later [Music] the design and construction of submarines are highly specialized crafts constantly being revised to accommodate new technologies [Music] as Technologies develop the workers who build Subs must also adapt continually undergoing rigid certification tests which measure their skill and expertise even the body of sea wolf is made from a new material the hulls of early Subs were made from a high strength steel called hy-80 this material could withstand pressure of 80 000 pounds per square inch [Music] the Seawolf class submarines are created using a new super steel called hy100 able to withstand one hundred thousand pounds of pressure per square inch this means that designers can now create submarines which can die deeper than their predecessors of the same weight although just how deep is classified or they can create new lighter weight Subs capable of reaching the same depths as the earlier heavier Subs but regardless of its weight a submarine's Effectiveness has always been judged by its ability to remain undetected once at Sea an engine hum a mechanical noise even a crew member's conversation could reveal the ship's location with deadly consequences stealth is the most important thing submarine maintains its capability and its safety by never being detected for example if there's a conflict a hot conflict somewhere in the world submarines especially U.S submarines usually the first war fighting or peacekeeping platform on the scene and it does that without being detected it can then provide information with surveillance feed that information back to the president uh in sort of the decisions can be made and the submarine has the capability of doing that quietly quickly and it's virtually undetectable two things you know they know we have them and we can be there fast until even when they don't know we're there they're not sure we're not there because these things are stealth so they could be thinking that well maybe around the corner there's an American suburb maybe it's just off a little bit and that will prevent countries I think from doing foolish things and after all that's much preferable to actually going to war to maintain stealth every joint and substructure within the ship is designed to minimize sound and vibration even operating at top speed Sea Wolf will be quieter than the older submarines were when idling at the pier if you know quieter than any other submarine in the world and that required an enormous amount of technology in quieting things like switches and valves and hydraulic piping the ship's inner decks are not attached directly to the hall but rest on rubber mountings to reduce vibrations other sophisticated anti-detection strategies are also integrated into the construction process propellers are designed to produce minimal noise anti-detection tiles made from sound absorbing plastic compounds line the inside of the hull and finally an additional layer of sound absorbing material is applied to the Hall's exterior when finished while the ship is cloaked by a silent defense its stealth-like capabilities also create a formidable offensive weapon weather Gathering covert electronic intelligence monitoring an enemy's shipping lanes or detecting and deploying mines Sea Wolf will be able to get in and out of Dangerous Waters faster than any warship ever created thank you but sometimes the most deadly threat to a submarine crew comes from inside the ship [Music] fire something very quickly if you don't do the right thing you can get out of control you see this is an enclosed environment this is all we have if you get a big fire going it gets very hot in here in a hurry and very very hazardous and there's nowhere else to go trapped hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface a fire could wipe out a crew in an instant or slowly consume the ship's life-giving oxygen supplies it is a terrifying scenario but one that is planned for in the design of a ship in its construction and at the naval submarine school this training doesn't end once on board on a submarine crew members constantly rehearse and plan for every conceivable situation all hands in the foreign when building a military craft like Sea Wolf designers must also plan for every eventuality the most obvious and most dangerous is combat [Music] like an aircraft carrier a submarine is divided into separate watertight sections this way if a torpedo should penetrate the hull or if a fire should start in one section the rest of the ship is still able to function make your depth 750 feet 25 down 750 feet two five degrees if the crew of ussc will can pass its sea trials it will be judged ready for combat closed by 2000 yards in about four minutes we'll be at the firing Point Tomahawk chick going to Pivot train a level starboard side clear ing an arsenal of lethal weapons that can be targeted with pinpoint accuracy the ship will Patrol the Seas with more military power than many countries possess weapons coordinator Captain report status of uh Texas a silent and deadly predator Sea Wolf will be the most advanced heavily armed attack submarine the world has ever seen all station's rival path is direct pass carry on [Music] as the pieces of a new nuclear submarine are forged at this historic Shipyard workers at the electric boat company now face an imposing task transporting the giant sections to their Dry Dock facilities in Groton Connecticut to do this modules weighing over 700 tons each are placed on the largest transport truck in the world there are only two such vehicles in existence and both were specially made to assist in submarine Construction when these two vehicles are used together workers can move modules weighing over 1400 tons now they will travel by barge for the 60-mile journey from this Rhode Island machine shop to the Connecticut Dry Dock facility as the pre-assembled pieces arrive at the dry dock they are suspended in order and then pieced together to form the complete ship many months of assembly have been condensed into seconds to see this amazing process in action as the pieces of this two billion dollar puzzle are carefully assembled even top-ranking Navy officials are amazed by the complexity of the operation the design Development and Construction of a submarine I view it very much like eating an elephant how do you eat an elephant it's one bite at a time if the Assembly of this submarine happens one bite at a time then these are its sharpest teeth the Weapons Systems now with its body almost complete the deadly Arsenal is installed on board Sea Wolf four levels of robotically controlled storage racks can deploy a lethal force on a moment's notice man battle station [Music] it's Tomahawk cruise missiles can be placed with pinpoint accuracy Guided by a global positioning satellite I guess we could talk about San Diego to San Francisco that's about 520 miles I would say that if this missile took off from Jack Murphy Stadium you could put it right about between pitcher's mound and second base down there in Candlestick Park sea Wolf's anti-submarine missiles make her a fearsome underwater Force as well she has stealth she has improved sensors and she has maneuverability everything that makes a fighter aircraft Superior is what sea wolf brings that underwater dogfight educated military craft ever created but the road leading up to this 20th century superstructure actually began hundreds of years ago it was a road paved with Danger in 1775 only 25 miles from the side of the Electric Boat Company a young Irishman named David Bushnell built this device called the turtle driven by his intense hatred of the British and with the support of George Washington Bushnell created an underwater craft that could place an explosive device on harbored British warships its name came from the design resembling two turtle shells seven feet long and four feet wide this craft of wood iron and leather could approach an enemy ship with a hand cranked propeller and was able to stay submerged 20 feet below the surface for almost 30 minutes unfortunately when Bushnell's device was tried on a British man of war the attaching screw could not penetrate the copper sheathing on the hull the turtle was lucky to escape but the theory of this unique weapon delivery system survived the underwater sneak attack was born during the Civil War both sides developed submarines but it was a confederate version invented by Horace L Hundley that became the first sub to record a torpedo hit on an enemy ship it was a milestone that came with a terrible cost the 60-foot HL Hunley used a crew of eight to turn its propeller crankshaft towing a single torpedo behind it in 1864 in the Charleston South Carolina Harbor the Hunley delivered its deadly cargo against the Union's USS Housatonic the attack did little damage to the union ship but the exploding torpedo sank the Hundley as primitive as these early craft appear they actually use the same engineering Principle as today's modern Subs the ability to submerge and Surface by adding or subtracting ballast I grown up 750 feet use 25 degree down angle icer during her sea trials one of seawolf's most critical challenges will be her ability to perform deep Dives inside the hull are ballast tanks designed to temporarily fill with water in the original sub designs the ballast tanks were located port and starboard as shown here when the Tank's fill with water negative buoyancy is created causing the vessel to sink when compressed air flushes the water from the compartments buoyancy returns and the ship Rises 700 feet coming to 300 feet wolf also employs this basic principle of physics but the ballast tanks on this ship are located four and aft so the ship can submerge or Surface with Incredible speed how's the deck ship is unordered that 300 feet sir the propulsion of early Subs required exhaustive manual labor performed in suffocating spaces with no fresh air ships could only die for brief periods staying close to the surface in order to ventilate The Craft on board Sea Wolf the same nuclear power that propels the ship also supplies the crew with life-giving oxygen water molecules are formed from two hydrogen atoms spinning around a single oxygen atom on Seawolf sophisticated machines use electromagnetic force to disengage the hydrogen atoms from the molecular structure leaving pure oxygen for the ship's life support system but it was another source of energy that first turned the submarine into a viable fighting machine John Philip Holland was an industrious Irish immigrant who pioneered a double propulsion system for submarines Holland's boat used a 50 horsepower gas engine for surface sailing and then to keep the air breathable a battery-operated motor while submerged this dual engine approach to underwater navigation gave the sub greater range and submergence capability something that U.S Navy officials realized in 1900 able to dive to just over 100 feet the irishman's craft became the first submarine commissioned by the Navy the crew of USS Holland became pioneers of a new world under the sea over the next 14 years 25 more of these amazing devices called submarines were built but beneath the waves the United States would not be alone for long May 1915 the ocean liner Lusitania is fired upon and sunk by a German U-Boat in under 20 minutes over 1100 passengers died many of them Americans the U.S moves one step closer to war with Germany during World War One the potential of this new machine would be put to the ultimate test the age-old ritual of enemies facing each other in head-to-head combat was replaced by the sneak attack the dream of John Holland and the early submariners forever changed the nature of warfare I think certainly that Holland when he designed and built his first craft probably never recognized where we would be today John Holland might never have imagined a vessel like Sea Wolf but to the Navy it marks the beginning of an entirely new class of Submarine high-tech Subs that will begin in virtual reality and end up resembling science fiction but first Sea Wolf must prove to the Navy and the public that her design is sound that her crew is ready now as she nears the end of her crucial maiden voyage the future of the next generation of Subs hangs in the balance her propulsion and life support systems have been tested she has performed rapid dive to classify deaths under stressful Warfare scenario she has been deemed combat ready as the end of USS sea Wolf's maiden voyage draws near Captain Dave McCall has witnessed what billions of dollars worth of machinery and a highly trained crew can really do while young in age McCall's crew are ready to become submariners it's 2.3 billion dollars for this ship and the first underway watch station an 18 year old stands or occupies is he's driving this ship he has his hands on the wheel of a 2.3 billion dollar sports car and that's a lot of responsibility you have to want that kind of responsibility you have to be ready to take it and uh and they choose themselves they have trained rehearsed and drilled now it's time to come home [Music] but as Sea Wolf and her maiden voyage she is bringing back more than just the crew over 100 workers of the electric boat company have gone with her on this dangerous but crucial first journey while these shipbuilders were on board to perform tests engage the success of their handiwork they also wanted to send a message this was a ship that had been constructed properly and they would put their lives on the line to prove it they've literally worked 24 hours a day seven days a week for three years with very little time off [Music] years of hard work and grueling training have led to this one moment the return of USS Seawolf to her base in Groton Connecticut to the trained Observer the presence of a simple wooden broom attached to the ship's superstructure tells them everything they need to know the ship has performed a clean sweep of its first major test the mission is a success probably our finest ship in the water today it performs Beyond expectations after seeing it start from the early stages of design early stage of construction where we just started bending steel to watch the crew bring it alive start operating it we've been through a lot of major obstacles that would have normally brought another project to his knees and stopped it against a backdrop of budget cuts and shifting political power structures the designers Builders and crew of USS Seawolf have achieved a stunning Victory under a mandate to do more with less they have Rewritten the book on how to build a submarine now the success of sea wolf will provide a blueprint for the submarine of The Next Century a vehicle known simply as the new attack submarine when production of these Sleek new Subs begins they will be able to do everything Sea Wolf can but cost less to build that's because advancements in computer technology just beginning when Sea Wolf was constructed now provide designers with Incredible new tools tools today give us collectively as a community the Navy electric boat our supplies the ability to go in fact integrate the very best design very early in the program this 3D generated sailor named Ergo man is an example of this new Space Age Technology virtual reality programs like these enable designers to see what these Subs will be like for human inhabitants before construction even begins we got to verify how low can we drop the sump another significant change based on sea Wolf's success is a brand new approach to the management of sub Construction in video teleconferences like this the workers who will build the sub and the men who will travel in them interact with the designers and engineers at every phase of development Jimmy if you just want to Circle that so our friends down it's in Washington you can see that that flange we're possibly talking about eliminating today we're not interested who comes up with a good idea we make it a team effort to go produce the very best design for this country that we can produce and that's exciting and that's different than it's been in the past and the new attack submarine are designed to evolve with Technologies of the future soon even the venerable Periscope itself a staple of submarines throughout history may be replaced by powerful liquid plasma display screens with the success of their first C trial the crew of sea wolf will continue a long and distinguished tradition even though this is a new ship with a young crew they are traveling in the footsteps of those who have gone before many of whom did not return these are the names of the United States submarines lost in the service of Duty with all hands on board submariners say these ships and the men aboard them remain on eternal patrol we'll also be checking the tubes uh shooting no one is more aware of the dangers of the deep than the men who will ultimately certify The Vessel as being ready to join the fleet good yes sir head this way I am the person who signs for a submarine that it's ready to go to Sea and it's sub-safe and we do that through a very rigorous discipline process that literally takes thousands of hours of documentation test and and retest had Sea Wolf failed on its first mission the consequences for the Navy would have been disastrous thousands of jobs billions of dollars and the lives of the crew were at stake now for the thousands of men and women who created her seawolf's successful first voyage is a time of great emotion you know the day I give up the ship it's gonna be kind of like the day I give up my daughter to her husband or a wedding it's going to be it's gonna be a hard day [Music] the design and construction of a nuclear submarine requires the imagination and determination of thousands Ford from Silicon and steel they are born in giant factories but here beneath the waves is where they will spend most of their lives by the time Sea Wolf ends her final mission it's difficult to imagine how far man will have ventured into the realm of the deep ocean but waiting in the winds will be an entirely new class of undersea superstructures I hereby certified that he has qualified in submarines on board USS Seawall and a new generation of submariners piloting these Guardians of the deep into the next century and beyond congratulations past World Art thank you sir oh [Music] foreign

Channel: Progress - Technology History Documentaries

Views: 799,109

Keywords: Progress, Documentary, Technology, Science, History, Full Documentary, Super structures, superstructures, engineering, construction, hibernia oil rig, hibernia, oil platform, grasberg, grasberg mine, gold mine, mark hamill, mark hamill documentary, USS seawolf, nuclear submarine, submarine

Id: 9svxHXlU_KQ

Length: 154min 42sec (9282 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 16 2023