How Humans Built The Biggest Bridges | Supersized Structures | Spark

paper was light gold in medieval times [Music] oh no tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong from the ancient world to the modern history tells the story of our ever-growing need to be ever-growing the story of how some people will go to extraordinary lengths to expand create to advance to push the realm of possibility to prove that size matters this series will explore larger than life creations that have influenced every facet of our society the way we live work and travel [Applause] the way we build empires and the way we dream we look back at the ways we've strived to make the biggest heaviest tallest the best [Music] we hear from experts about the technology that made these feats possible the challenges that were faced and the problems that were solved some of these inventions have changed the world and our way of life others not so much [Music] whether a success or a failure these giants have demonstrated mankind's need to build big humans have labored on some gigantic undertakings of the great achievements have helped us to move around our planet roads bridges canals that link oceans man loves to do things that stretch us because we're this this kind of creature that just wants to to do better than we already do these feats of engineering have allowed cities to grow and other mighty projects like the great dams that have controlled and stored water have also allowed them to grow and now engineering marvels are allowing us to see and to travel beyond our planet into deep space the very definition of building big humans have always traveled to hunt to explore to discover but what we travel in came second the first proof of our ingenuity was the building of what we travel on it's the story of how bridges tunnels and roads overcame obstacles [Music] it's about great highways that link horizons and like the trans canada join together the scattered parts of a vast country [Music] the trans-canada highway is a coast-to-coast atlantic ocean to the pacific ocean highway system in canada built over quite a while they started in the 1950s completed in 1971 the original trans-canada highway ran from saint john's newfoundland to nanaimo british columbia there were several major challenges to building the highway because canadians have it a bit harder than other people they are operating in very cold climate so they have different maintenance problems to people in other parts of the world one of which was rogers pass an area with so much snowfall that it is now home to the largest mobile avalanche control program in the world some of the solutions included avalanche cannons and snow sheds over roads in dangerous areas [Music] another major obstacle was overcome by the lewis hippolyte lafontaine tunnel a 5860 meter bridge tunnel crossing of the saint lawrence river pre-stressed sections of the tunnel were constructed in a dry dock floated into position and sunk in a prepared trench on the riverbed the overall length of the system is a bit more than 8 000 kilometers so it's a large system for sure also the main route of the highway has been equipped with recharging points making the trans-canada the longest electric car friendly road in the world almost contemporary with the trans-canada highway and equally innovative though meeting very different challenges is a stretch of road only two and a quarter kilometers long but that is long enough for it to be a record setting bridge the ponte 25 diablo suspension bridge spans lisbon's river tagus [Music] at the time of its construction the ponte 25 d'abro was the longest suspension bridge in europe the bridge was designed and constructed as a classic suspension bridge a key to the design of bridges for earthquake loading is flexibility and allowing the structure to respond to the ground movements rather than trying to resist that movement the road level is 70 meters above the river allowing crews and other container ships to pass easily beneath the bridge and enter the port of lisbon there is a great deal of maintenance required for a structure at that time the bridge needs to be inspected on a regular basis that there is a continual operation of repainting of removing corroded elements before they start to be structurally the bridge is used by 150 000 vehicles and 157 trains every day it was built at a time where cable stayed bridges spanning a kilometer were unheard of [Music] as we continue to build bigger and better the ponte 25 diabole has been overshadowed the elegantly sweeping vasco de gama a cable-stayed bridge also crosses the tagus [Music] at the time the bridge was constructed in 1998 this was the longest bridge in europe [Music] the vasco de garma is incredibly long more than 12 kilometers over 17 when all approaches are included in the measurement that's equivalent to 150 football fields the centerpiece of this bridge is the cable stage structure of two towers an 800 meter span and approximately a 400 meter approach span on either side it is 30 meters wide and has six lanes with plans for two more lanes when needed vasco da gama has a life expectancy of 120 years the design is planned to withstand wind speeds of 250 kilometers per hour and earthquakes up to four and a half times as strong as the devastating quake that destroyed lisbon in the 18th century 300 families living in slums were rehoused as part of the construction which also made provision for the protection of a bird sanctuary the vascular garment bridge presents as a simple elegant classic structure up to 130 000 vehicles per day use the bridge so it's useful it's efficient it's practical but a bridge on the other side of the world is all that and more the sydney harbour bridge sometimes known as the coathanger is one of the most iconic structures on the whole australian continent [Music] linking the north and south shores of one of the world's great harbours it was opened on march 19 1932 after six years of construction involving 1400 workers there's a lot of skepticism the 250 meter cantilevers would they fall is it an engineer's folly and yet the structure is now there over 80 years old the sydney harbour bridge remains the world's largest steel arch bridge the statistics that accompany its scale are stupendous 6 million hand-driven rivets 52 800 tons of steel which when first painted consumed 272 000 liters of paint [Music] as a bridge engineer i can appreciate the fantastic engineering that went into that structure the total length of the sydney harbour bridge is 1149 metres and the deck is high enough to allow the tallest tankers to pass beneath it [Music] the 49 meter wide deck makes sydney harbour bridge the widest long span bridge in the world to this day the sydney harbour bridge is more than practical it's a source of civic and national pride it's part of our national identity [Music] but for all the benefits that roads and bridges are supposed to bring there are some that ironically have made travelling more difficult los angeles is well known for its um road traffic and this is the epicentre of it [Music] the san diego freeway interstate highway 405 was always congested the i-405 sepulveda pass improvements project was meant to fix that adding a 16 kilometer long vehicle lane would transform one of california's busiest interchanges they spent two years handling power water sewage gas these types of things before they actually started work on the road proper however despite the time and money poured into the project a study by the analytics firm inrex has shown that auto speeds are the same as or slower than before the construction work the problem is the sepulveda pass corridor the most congested highway segment in the united states the 405 project has real benefits including the rebuilding and seismic strengthening of decaying freeways and bridges but to solve the traffic problem may take a project currently under discussion the construction of a huge tunnel through sepulveda pass running roughly parallel to the 405 and containing a multi-deck highway this would cost anything from six to twenty billion dollars and take decades to build you can't do large scale operations so easily and very expensive despite their occasional tribulations and regular frustrations roads and bridges are the backbone of modern travel providing us with the means of getting from one place to another they have fueled the growth of industry and of cities and that growth introduced a whole new set of problems and of massive engineering solutions [Music] humans now had a way to get from one place to another but once we've reached our destinations there were much more pressing matters to deal with like say how to collect and utilize water for agriculture and most importantly for the survival of an ever-growing population the three gorges down is the world's largest hydroelectric dam with a length of 2.3 kilometers and a height of 185 meters it's as long as 21 football fields laid end to end easily making it the world's largest reservoir construction of dams is often affected by the ground conditions that you find spreading across the yangtze river the dam is located in the city of yi chang in the hubai province in china [Music] the subsequent rising of waters from the massive dam submerged 13 cities 140 towns and more than 1600 villages that's obviously a big deal and probably the reason why you don't see so many big dams being built anymore [Music] speaking of big during the construction of the dam workers used some 16 million cubic meters of concrete a world record so quite a big infrastructure has to be provided to support the construction process over several years getting the size and the skill of the workforce all in one place at the one time the dam body was completed in 2006 and cost 37 billion dollars with 14 generators in the north side of the dam and 12 in the south side generating 700 megawatts each the full generating capacity of the dam is 18.2 gigawatts 11 times more powerful than the hoover dam in terms of installed capacity three gorges down is the world's largest power station the three gorges dam may be the largest reservoir in the world but it is not however the dam that can hold the most water that title belongs to a dam 50 years its senior cariba dam the capacity of the reservoir is 180 cubic kilometers i can't even begin to imagine that is a volume it's absolutely enormous a hydroelectric project on carriba gorge on the zambezi river on the zambia zimbabwe border kariba dam is one of civil engineering's mightiest achievements at 128 metres high and 579 metres long the dam was an initiative of the countries now known as zambia zimbabwe and malawi [Music] to sustain the pressure of the nearly 10 million litres of water that passes through the spillway each second more than a million cubic meters of concrete was poured into the wall that has a thickness of over 24 meters the forces on the dam are actually related to the depth of water not to the volume of water that is being held back so the design of the dam is a double arch on its side so that it's able to withstand the horizontal force being applied by the impounded water seems they've really got the wild zambezi under control at last the vast reservoir created by the dam carriba lake extends 280 kilometers over half the length of the grand canyon and has a maximum width of 32 kilometers the creation of the lake forced resettlement of about 50 000 people and in 1960 to 61 operation noah captured and removed the animals threatened by the lake's rising waters there's certainly been a lot of controversy in the last 10 15 years over whether or not the dam was going to fail so there is a project to improve the integrity and the safety of the dam the historic threat of flood particularly in low-lying countries has over the centuries produced ingenious solutions pumps dikes dams and canals in some places combining all of these has caused a city to rise above the water [Music] amsterdam was founded around 1250 with the building of a dam that gave it its name i'm stella radam [Music] the city that existed before needed to expand because the number of people doubled actually in a very short period and during 16th century they started to plan the number of concentric canals that we know today [Music] the canals are more than 100 kilometers in length and there are more than 90 islands that they create and there are also 1500 bridges through the 17th century the population grew from fifty thousand to two hundred thousand which made amsterdam the third biggest city in the world herrengracht the gentleman's canal is considered to be the most important canal in amsterdam in the 17th century the richest merchants and most influential regents of the city lived here kaisergracht the emperor's canal is the middle canal and at 31 metres wide is the widest canal prinsengracht the prince's canal is the third and outermost of canals which form the unesco listed 17th century canal belt although they are quite grandiose and they they feel monumental in a way they're very human you still feel slowness and that local character in that unique space but there are even more famous canals and an even more famous example of a city built on water [Music] the grand canal of venice runs for just over three kilometers so everything in venice is actually organized around that grand canal and you can imagine because it's lagoon it wasn't really a nice place to live as well so they needed to conquer many things to create a good space for living [Music] between 30 and 70 meters wide and with an average depth of 5 meters it is the city's only large canal which in a city that comprises 118 islands linked by 417 bridges makes it an important thoroughfare the grand canal intersects smaller canals at several points these are and always will be the streets of venice busy with water buses and gondolas none of the buildings stand on dry land venice was built on islands that were so marshy the buildings were erected on platforms they used wood and putting piles in a soil and once they had that foundation out of wood then they would put limestone on top of it and then start building the church of santa maria de la salute alone rests on over a million such logs [Music] wood is also quite interesting for foundation because of all the soil the chemical process actually happened so the wood started behaving as stone [Music] the grand canal of venice draws tourists from around the world but it is more than a tourist attraction it's the main road through a very beautiful city another canal achieves something even grander it cuts a continent in two and links oceans [Music] for hundreds of years travelling between the atlantic and pacific oceans involved a long and arduous trip around the tip of south america a french company began digging a waterway across panama in 1881 but abandoned the work and sold its rights and equipment to the united states which in 1904 embarked on the largest civil engineering project in its history they were pushing the construction technology and this construction capability to the limit steam shovels and what we would now regard as fairly primitive equipment conditions along the route varied considerably from swamps and grassy plains to rocky mountains repeated earth slides disrupted work burying equipment and destroying months of progress something in excess of five thousand people died in that construction project as well it took more than nine years of nearly non-stop digging to create the cut but the canal finally opened on august 15 1914 it now took not weeks to round cape horn but nine hours and 40 minutes for the passage of the first ship through the canal the whole concept of creating a lake 26 meters above sea level and then lifting the ships up and down was at the time enormously innovative it is an enduring symbol of human resilience persistence and ambition to build big ships that fly the oceans remain at the heart of global trade but carrying people is no longer a maritime affair people fly and perhaps the uniquely modern examples of building big are the massive airports serving virtually every major city they have become the new transport hubs but have not entirely displaced the system of transport that for a hundred years was the key to wealth and growth the railways [Music] at two hundred and twenty four thousand seven hundred and ninety two kilometers the united states rail network is the longest in the world the us rail network is almost as long as the next three main railway networks the russian chinese and indian combined and in the us more than 89 000 box cars and more than one and a third million rail cars carry goods and cargo coast to coast amtrak the principal rail operator with 20 000 employees also meets an enormous passenger demand amtrak schedules reach 500 destinations in 46 states carrying almost 85 000 passengers on 300 trains every day including intercity services that reach up to 241 kilometers an hour the tricky bit is to make sure that the system is configured in such a way it will meet the operational needs so many trains an hour so many passengers all the throughput questions have to be dealt with expressed as load carried per fuel kilometer nothing is more efficient at moving people or goods than these very fast very efficient trains that link cities in many parts of the world one passenger train takes 520 cars off the road so it's very good for greenhouse gas emissions and more people should be using trains but some journeys by their sheer size and epic scale take us back to the heyday of stylish train travel none more than australia's indian pacific named for the two oceans it links [Music] [Music] on 17th october 1917 work started and it was constructed using just pick shovel cart horse and camel everything in the rail business is slow because we're talking large pieces of fixed infrastructure and it is in crossing the baron nullarbor plane that the indian pacific travels the longest stretch of straight track in the world 478 kilometers without a kink [Music] the indian pacific railway takes three nights and four days to complete the journey between sydney and perth a distance of four thousand three hundred and fifty two kilometers aside from its journey the train itself is massive at seven 774 meters long and weighing 1400 tons twice the weight of rio de janeiro's famous christ the redeemer statue despite its heritage and its scenic appeal the transcontinental journey of the indian pacific belongs to a different age today the long distance traveller goes by air and journeys start at that most 20th century of structures the airport located in paris is one of the busiest and most important airports in the world charles de gaulle [Music] 26 kilometers northeast of paris the airport covers over 32 square kilometers london's heathrow by comparison covers only 12 square kilometers [Music] originally aeroport de paris nord paris north airport it was reopened as charles de gaulle in march 1974 after eight years of reconstruction and renovation [Music] in 2009 the airport was the sixth busiest in the world in terms of passengers handling almost 58 million travelers it was also the world's seventh and europe's second busiest airport in terms of aircraft movements and the world's fifth largest in terms of cargo traffic charles de gaulle is an infamously confusing airport officially it had three terminals although in reality it has nine terminal two was originally built exclusively for air force but has since been expanded and is now a collection of seven small terminals housed in separate buildings from which several airlines operate while less famous another airport arguably just as important is located at the geographical center of its country [Music] denver international airport is the largest airport in the states and third largest in the world twice the size of manhattan over 84 million cubic meters of earth were moved during the building of the project equivalent to a third of the earth moved in building the entire panama canal [Music] denver international airport opened on february 28 1995. the project cost 5.2 billion dollars and construction of the airport with 138 gates and a 100 meter control tower occupied 11 000 workers the airport is particularly known for its unusual look with sixty thousand seven hundred and three square meters of teflon coated woven fiberglass and its collection of strange art denver international is the largest airport in the us but the title of busiest belongs elsewhere hartfield jackson atlanta international is more than just the busiest airport in the us it's the busiest in the world hartfield jackson international airport has been the world's busiest airport since 1998. in 2011 it handled 92.4 million passengers averaging more than 250 000 passengers per day serving 150 u.s destinations and more than 75 international destinations in 50 countries the airport's runway configuration allows up to 90 landings and 100 departures every hour hartsfield jackson covers an area of 1900 acres 52 and a half hectares is taken up with the terminal buildings that have 207 gates and making sure that all the aircraft operates safely is the tallest air traffic control tower in north america at 121 metres not long ago flight and flyers were full of romance now commercial flight is efficient reliable and every day but there remains a final frontier with all the romance and risk of the unknown and here building big pushes not just transport but science beyond its limits [Music] distance is only one of the challenges of space one of the many that must be met when the project involves people living in space as they do aboard the international space station [Music] launched in 1998 the international space station is one of the most ambitious international collaborations ever attempted and by far the largest space station ever constructed the international space station is a large research lab that is in orbit around earth now with six people inhabiting it and doing research for humanity it's one of the most expensive single objects that and mankind has ever built 120 billion dollars is estimated indeed it continues to be assembled while in orbit and to date has been visited by astronauts from 18 countries most of the early endeavors by humans in space were related to the cold war on the other hand the international space station is a cooperation between many of the major space players including the united states and the former soviet union now russia so it's a very very important way in which mankind actually cooperates together the result is controlled by 52 computers huge arrays of solar panels which are the source of energy collecting sunlight and turning it into electrical power the solar array has a wingspan of 73 meters and the station weighs approximately 420 tons that's the equivalent of more than 320 cars and measures 109 meters about the length of a football field almost as soon as the international space station was habitable researchers began using it to advance the common goal to extend knowledge for the betterment of humanity the space station has been inhabited for almost 16 years and that's just kind of incredible to think humans have been living in space consistently for 16 years if you don't think we're a space faring civilization we are [Music] for centuries until we ventured into space our knowledge of the universe came from observations first with the naked eye and then 400 years ago galileo turned his telescope toward the skies in 1610 now we have married galileo's way of looking into the stars with space travel we have launched a telescope into space [Music] the hubble space telescope is the first major optical telescope to be placed in space above the distortion of the atmosphere rain clouds and light pollution nasa's hubble launched april 24 1990 has an unobstructed view of the universe it's traveling at about 7.5 kilometers every second which is pretty fast that's about 25 26 000 kilometers per hour that's very very fast and its pointing accuracy is comparable to shining a laser beam on a postage stamp 322 kilometers away the mirrors are extraordinary and extraordinarily big the main mirror has a diameter of 2.4 meters and a weight of almost 830 kilograms half the weight of a family car they're very very big lenders and they are ground to absolutely incredible perfection on the surface that's a very very challenging task the mirror was ground to a tolerance of 1 800 000 of an inch to a perfect curve by peering into space hubble is looking into the past to locations more than 13.4 billion light years from earth and it's still producing fantastic data for astronomers i think it might go for another 20-30 years as we slowly unravel the mysteries of our universe our curiosity prompts us to venture further out into space in the search for answers to questions we may not yet know how to ask [Music] the mars science laboratory spacecraft curiosity launched from cape canaveral air force station florida on november 26 2011. and successfully landed on the floor of gale crater on august 6 2012. touchdown [Applause] of curiosity is to explore some of the interesting features on the surface of mars and in particular to get up close to the edges of craters where its cameras can be used to look at the different layers of rock the exploration and analysis of the planet was achieved by the rover which is about the size of a family car weighing in at 900 kilograms three meters long and able to crawl over 65 centimeter obstacles this is one massive radio controlled car it can look for where it wants to go let's say that there's a ridge 100 meters away its goal is to get to that ridge and it's completely up to it how it gets there and what obstacles it avoids on the way and what things it has to do to get itself out of a mess that it might get into and it's demonstrated that it can actually do that and that's very very exciting the rover can pick up objects and cook them inside the craft it is analysis of the gases produced that tell scientists much of the story of the planet curiosity can travel up to 90 meters per hour on average it travels about 30 meters per hour based on power levels slippage steepness of the terrain visibility and other variables the rover carries a radio isotope power system that generates electricity from the heat of plutonium's radioactive decay this power source gives curiosity an operating life span on mars surface of a full martian year 687 earth days it's been able to help the people that we call planetary geologists to understand how mars behaves now and to try to understand where it came from and in the process to try to understand more about the solar system and how it evolved and how our earth was part of that evolution as curiosity seeks to uncover the secrets of mars so another interspace traveler juno seeks to do the same on an even more mysterious planet jupiter [Music] juno's purpose is to improve our understanding of the solar system's beginnings by explaining the origin and evolution of jupiter and jupiter is a long way away in fact if you drove there at a steady 100 kilometers an hour it would take you 3 196 years it took 10 years to get there was launched from earth and flew out into space for a while and then intersected with the earth orbiting around the sun to do a effectively a slingshot maneuver around the earth to give it some more speed in searching for answers juno will be subjected to radiation equivalent to about 100 million dental x-rays which is why her instruments are contained within a titanium box known to her designers as the vault it's the first spacecraft to reach the outer planets under solar power all of the previous space probes have been nuclear powered power comes from three solar panels with a total surface area of 60 square meters and comprising 18 698 individual cells by the end of its mission juno will have traveled 560 million kilometers in orbit around the planet that's equivalent to 150 000 journeys from los angeles to new york and then finally it's going to commit suicide it'll de-orbit and actually fly into the surface of jupiter and collect data for as long as it can and send it back to earth for as long as it can before the system finally dies [Music] it all sounds astonishing but the fact is that the journeys of curiosity and juno seem like neighborhood jaunts compared to the epic flight of the new horizons spacecraft the purpose of the new horizons mission is to help us understand the world at the edge of our solar system traditionally man has had this view of the solar system as being a collection of planets and that's it we're starting to see that there are more objects out there orbiting the sun than we had first thought launched on january 19 2006 new horizons conducted a six-month reconnaissance study of pluto and its moons in mid-2015 and will venture on into the distant kuiper belt the journey to pluto despite the fact that the new horizons is the fastest spacecraft ever launched reaching more than 16 kilometers a second took nine years not surprising when you think that the distance of 4.76 billion kilometers is equivalent to 16 round trips to the sun radio signals from new horizons take four and a half hours to reach mission control new horizons is so far from the sun that it cannot use solar energy it relies on a radio isotope thermal generator for energy and as its central controller on basically the same cpu as was used in the original playstation it's so new horizons did a fly past of pluto about 12 000 kilometers away from it that's about the distance from the earth to the gps satellites that we have orbiting the earth so it's not that far and the onboard cameras were able to get incredibly high resolution imagery of the surface of pluto it has also discovered four previously unknown moons of pluto new horizons will keep going away from the sun out of the solar system out into our galaxy for as long as the onboard power enables it to keep going if that's enabled it to reach escape velocity from the sun it will just keep going and going and going new horizons discoveries are the sort of extraordinary revelations we have come to expect from the space probes and rovers that are at the very forefront of design science and technology [Music] with them we can travel beyond our world and begin discovering others but they belong to a tradition of building big thinking big aiming high building colossal things is our fascination with trying to conquer time and trying to conquer our mortality the scale of it big projects the canals and the dams that changed how we live and trade [Music] the railways and airports that allow us to travel across continents in a matter of hours [Music] and the roads and bridges that first encouraged us to go further [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 57,102

Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, Engineering, Learning, How To, education, documentary, factual, mind blown, construction, building, full documentary, space documentary, bbc documentary, Science documentary

Id: T9S-s5hkQHo

Length: 49min 31sec (2971 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 01 2021