Building The Biggest Structures In The World | Building The Biggest Compilation | Spark

foreign off the coast of Norway a giant underwater structure makes its way up to Sea waiting to lure it to the ocean floor is the world's most powerful sea going crane at the same type of the coast of Britain another monster of the sea is creeping northward but just four kilometers a day these extraordinary machines may be 900 kilometers apart but they are very much working together building the biggest underwater pipeline in the world [Music] [Music] Britain is running out of gas at an alarming rate it is facing its greatest ever energy crisis the solution lies 1200 kilometers away deep beneath the Norwegian sea where 300 billion cubic meters of gas have been discovered over five thousand men are locked in a Race Against Time to release the gas construct a Refinery and send it to the UK along the world's biggest ever underwater pipeline named after a Viking ship the Ormond Langer gas field will supply the UK's energy needs for years to come the gas will be pumped from the ocean floor to nihama on the Norwegian Coast before traveling 1200 kilometers to easington in England there is however a slight problem there is no pipe to lay will take something very special the lb-200 inside 370 Mana working around the clock heading northwards towards the gas field of four kilometers a day it's a floating Factory basically it's a large assembly line it's a repetitive motion time and time again of putting the pipes together welding together to make one log assembly from one point A to point B it's going to pump gas for 9am and Norway to easington UK kilometers away the most crucial components of the whole operation is starting its slow Journey to the gas field the template is an extraordinary piece of bright yellow engineering that is the key to releasing the gas this giant tap will control the flow of the gas to the processed plant in Norway it also acts as a guide for the drilling apparatus but this is really the heart of the Simpson production system that's where the gas comes up it it's gathered there and it's sent to Shore and without the template we won't have any gas to shore it's really the key element of the whole production system getting the template to the site is one thing getting it to its final resting place needs a monster enter the Dutch heavy lifting barge the elf 71 000 tons of immense ocean-going lifting power that costs are staggering five hundred thousand dollars a day to hire it's the biggest world five meters wide and from deck to kill it's 52 meters high and if you take the Boomer from the trains up to the kill you are more or less 200 meters the biggest block of the crane can lift 7.1 million kilograms which is uh 7100 tons if you want an easier figure to compare then it's more than seven thousand cars each crane so we have two of those huge grains and they can lift together 14 000 cars you would wonder why you should need two times seven thousand tons of lifting capacity to lift the templates of 1150 tons the reason is that the combination of weight and depth is actually exceeding the standard setup on this Festival the template installation will be tricky because the target zone is a kilometer beneath the surface in total darkness will take several hours to lower it to the seabed the the elf then has to maneuver the template into an exact position above the gas field where it will be secured to the ocean floor but at such depths and I know from Wild conditions above and below the surface hitting the target is like trying to find a pin at the bottom of a swimming pool while wearing a blindfold first the theof needs to be set for the lift to reach the bottom of the ocean over six kilometers of brand new cable has to be threaded onto each crane and a cost of a million dollars by looping the wire around the pulleys just six times instead of the usual 40. we'll sacrifice lifting power but will gain the depth needed this is the first time that anything like this has ever been attempted at present we we reefed already one of our crunches our Portside Train The Block is at present at the depths which we require for installing the oral learning structures today we are reading the starboard parade with a few more rows careful preparation the field should be ready for the lift if all goes to plan they will attempt the lowering within the next 12 hours the situation is really that everything has to go right the first time and that's that's the special aspect of operations like this they can't compromise when we lift it off it's a point of no return so I'm looking a lot forward to the coming days but with conditions turning nasty will the attempt to lift the template if they don't go ahead it will be very costly push-up decisions have to be made [Music] thank you bad weather is playing Havoc at the gas field to attempt a lowering of the template now would just be too dangerous several hundred kilometers South conditions are still good the lb 200 is on schedule slowly but surely heading northwards towards the template in charge is Jimmy peacock we've been in the business for over 21 years he has led thousands of kilometers of pipe this is special 12 meters long or 40 feet whichever you prefer it's 23 mil or one inch thick almost one inch thick it's 44 inches in diameter which is a large piece of pipe it's also got roughly six mil of mastercoat and then 80 mL of concrete the concrete coat is what is used to keep the pipeline sitting on the bottom so it doesn't float to the surface all that added together which makes up to about 20 to 21 tons finished pipeline will need a million tons of steel and a million tons of concrete 124 000 pipes required are shipped to the lb 200 continuously four and a half kilometers of pipe today to keep a steady stream that way we can meet the deadlines before the end of the season below deck 370 men are working flat out around the clock welding on a new piece of pipe every six minutes the area where we offload the pipe from the pipe carriers onto The Deck Store them here in the storage racks until they're put into the beveling stations beveled with the imprints for your Mainline welding into detail welding that's still in this pfm pipefacing machine it's actually looks about the answer to the pipe so it doesn't [Music] have two of the 12 meter links are welded together make one 24 meter length is what we call a double joint [Music] foreign line with we've got stations one through one through four we do all the welding put the pipes together to make them one continuous line we've done it you know close the planets the galaxies going along the sun huh and this machine is going around the pipe that makes the job more save faster and easier [Music] well I'm doing it as a visual inspection of this well just making sure there isn't any surface defects this is a good world I'm quite happy with it to consume that NDP station five is where they did the scan of each weld to make sure there's no defects station six is where they put the Cyber rat featuring sleeve which seals the permanent water being able to get to the Bear Valley thank you and then it goes to station seven and eight with a foam Midfield protected from any trial boards and giving a smooth surface on the bottom I made a nightmare and I we've had an exceptional day just last week we laid uh 5.3 kilometers in a 24-hour period which was amounts to 216 double joints welded together in a 24-hour period which is exceptionally well in the all four industry to meet the deadline the lb 200 is up against it the bad weather hampering the template lift is on its way south and could bring pipeline to a standstill Jimmy and his crew are facing a cooling schedule and an unforgiving seabed in the waters around the gas field the sea floor is like a lunar landscape the results of a giant underwater Landslide eight thousand years ago horrendous terrain for pipelagging but to make things worse they have come upon a sheer Cliff 200 meters high normally offshore jobs DC bed is fairly flat so it's actually old Milano which is so special so it requires special Solutions and that solution spider an all-terrain underwater excavator specially designed to cut trenches through the most hostile of seabeds with the underwater Cliff standing between the pipe and the template spider is ready for action the ID came from Swiss Forester machine which is an extreme machine to work in in 30 to 40 degrees slopes like a climbing machine and we adopted that technology to actually use it under walking these legs can be moved to adapt and actually level the machine and work like normal spider operates over 800 meters a depth that no man can survive in and that no man has ever seen with his own eyes it's controlled by halver snelligan who relies on computer images to remotely operate the underwater path clear wrap this screen here Chelsea is party sitting on the seabed so when we sit down on the seabed we level up the machine so it's level when we are doing the work the way then dig the um the claws into the seabed so we don't slide and then we just start the high power pumps and we we cut up the soil and we suck it out we don't actually dig it we have a very accurate system during the operation the visibility is well basically zero so we depend entirely on this graphical monitors it's like a video game the spider has a tough job it has already cleared over 10 000 tons of rock and clay from the seabed we have now dredged all the steepest part of the whole all-malong area ready to to lay the pipelines it's been a lot of work in the wet a short time but now we are nearly finished so uh now I'm very pleased nihama an enormous building site the size of 120 soccer fields is being constructed on the Norwegian Coast [Music] when complete it'll process 70 million cubic meters of raw gas every day thank you [Music] the gas has to flow continuously but at such huge depths sea temperatures can drop below zero that could freeze the gas clog the template and stop the gas flow to shore the solution lies inside these tanks in these tanks we have a 30 million liters of antifreeze liquid the antifreeze liquid of course would be to prevent the Wellspring to freeze on the way from the subsea production tree and up to the onshore terminal the finished Factory will need over 300 kilometers of pipe and more than 15 000 valves to clean and dry the gas this is where the gas will arrive and depart two pipes coming in from the Ormond Langer field one going out to Brook the gas will spend just 10 minutes in the process plant at nihama before heading out on a two-day trip to Britain work isn't just taking place above ground beneath the surface a network of caves is being carved out of solid rock [Music] when complete these Chambers will be vast holding tanks for the light oil that comes off with the gas the method of construction explosives the explosives team is setting the next blast to obliterate the chunk of rock they're standing on and level it with a cavern floor below stage one charging boreholes stage two carefully connecting the detonation system stage 3 evacuation underground explosions create extremely dangerous shock waves only Key Personnel can remain in the cabin Blaster arrives on the cavern floor in an evacuation vehicle he carries carefully mapped detonation coordinates and oh yes in his pocket is a box of matches three minutes after a third diffuse so then the car better work foreign as the multiple charges explored over 5000 tons of solid rock disintegrates throughout the caves the pressure wave creates pulses of fog as everything settles the chief Blaster gives the okay clear up begins they come back with the their heavy machinery and they start mucking up the Rock and they continue that for approximately 20 hours and then they start to do it all over again how many blasts left probably around six seven for this bench that we're busting now and then we have the smaller stuff left to do later we hope to be finished in one or two months discovered foreign [Music] deadlines have to be met if they are going to be ready for the gas back at the template a storm has blown up overnight sea conditions are even worse with fear scales flashing rain and wild Seas the template is moved away from the field meteorologist Paul Hutchin is starting to feel the pressure well the soil conditions are looking forward to to do the lift is no more than sort of modular fresh winds they're doing any strong winds at all for the operation they also would be looking for a moderate Seas certainly not rough Seas so we're looking at Seas where you've not got very much white water we've just reached 34 knots and that's uh that's Gale horse so it's uh it's quite windy and as you can see it's uh it's very rough Seas as well so it's um yes quite spectacular conditions at the moment especially for August have a limitation in wave height because we don't want the barge to move too much if the barge hits the skirts before we manage to lift it clear that would be an awkward situation in addition the same wave criteria is there to prevent the crane investment to move too much because then we get too much loads in the flings so it's a number of things that can really knock us out lowering the 26 million dollar template dependent on a one thousand dollar ball that will help Paul predict something cold the significant Wave It's a significant wave is it's a statistically derived wave so it's not a wave you can actually see um but it's a wave that there would be most likely to be observed and that's that's what we forecast at the moment as I said we've got about 2.8 almost three meters of significant wave we're looking for for a lot less than that and the train level up to 45 knots of wind and we're looking for a lot less than that as well to do the job so so it's just it's far too wild at the moment good morning gentlemen and ladies Paul can we start with the weather forecast please well we're in a very unsettled spell of weather just now as we all know um the significant wave it's around about 2.4 2.5 meters at the moment and we do expect it to uh gradually Decay but um I think by the time we get through into the late morning uh tomorrow the significant wave I think will pick up above two meters the forecast means the template installation could start this afternoon a buzz goes around the ship but with the weather changing by the minute there may not be enough time to complete the lowering based on the weather forecast we have a small chance it's not not a big period for this evening this night and early morning morning tomorrow morning the other thing which is not very promising then there isn't a second gap for a long time the weather forecast it looks completely different than the forecast which you gave us yesterday can you explain that because yesterday you gave us a weather forecast which was going through the weekend to very good conditions the certainly look at the the seeds are the keying a little bit quicker today and the winds are picking up a little bit quicker tomorrow um unfortunately forecasts do change the the fact is uh the trough is pushing across through the course of Friday um is deeper and therefore those more wind associated with it it's unfortunate but um that that's the reason for the the change in story typical Norwegian somewhere with the possibility of the lift happening this afternoon it's just a matter of waiting for the next forecast but it isn't good news I've just had to tell the guys that it looks like the weather window we were hoping for tonight and tomorrow um is not there anymore hope certainly not the length they want anyway so instead of having our 20 or 24 hour weather window it's now down to sort of 12 hours so it's just not enough really to perform the lift your weather forecasting it's a tricky business and occasionally forecasts go wrong and you have to go down and uh and inform the client it's uh it's not nice but unfortunately it's part of the job the only thing we all need is the right weather window to start unfortunately the weather will come up tomorrow morning and pretty strong as well so that means that we just have to wait with the summer nearly over the longer they wait the fewer the chances of installing the template hiring out a half a million dollars a day the elf sits idle foreign [Music] Langer gas field weatherman pole has forecast rough conditions for the next few days delays are causing great concern the pipe is moving ever closer and the template needs to start his journey to the bottom of the ocean soon [Music] the Ormond langerfield will supply the UK with gas for the next 40 years but it's been far longer in the making [Music] 65 million years ago Norway's craggy landscape was forming Rivers were eroding The Rock and washing out to sea [Music] there it was squashed down into solid sandstone a reservoir for trapping gas by looking at samples of the Sandstone geologists created a picture of the prehistoric sea Bears quite High some of those are up to to Pebble sizes which is amazing and this is actually very interesting because this Pebble here is rounded so that may have been in the shore face on a ancient Shoreline 65 million years ago the gas has been here since dinosaurs roamed the planet it was formed out of the decaying remains of dead sea creatures formed in rocks of Jurassic age that is when the dinosaurs lived on earth and it moved into the much younger rocks the Sandstone unit the rest of our unit the normal maybe as late as 10 million years ago but it's interesting look at the composition of the class because they they may tell us something about the source area yeah the gas is actually trapped in open space between individual sign grains so it's not a big hole it's not a big cavern it's actually a millimeter scale pore space porosity as we we call it in between individual sign grants the the Sandstone itself is very high quality Sandstone which is very typical of the Ormond Sandstone the special thing about the sandstone in omelong is that it's very high quality and as this sample shows it has extremely high porosity and demonstrate the porosity by blowing into the the sandstone and a lot of the air that comes out of my mouth goes directly into the Sandstone because there is more than 30 percent of open space in here so it's uh it's a very high quality Rock uh it's one of the best rest of our rocks that we have on the Norwegian shelf uh so it's very well suited for containing the gas in omania with such a vast ocean to choose from how do they know where the gas was the story began many years ago it was 1984. a research ship was out surveying the Norwegian sea scanning the ocean floor they produced thousands of meters of information that ended up in a store room they remained their Gathering dust for the next six years until the oil company hedro dusted them down and made an amazing discovery I gave tianoxen who was my most experienced gift physicist the task of doing some reconnaissance work on seismic lines in the deeper part of the Basin a few days later he came into my office one late night very enthusiastic he had been discovering some very interesting uh stuff on this data it took me like five minutes to get equally enthusiastic because he both saw that this looked very promising the the most important observations he made was the these tiny black spots here called flat spots and those are actually indications of hydrocarbon Water contact and we thought it was gas they knew this two centimeter Trace was an incredible find buried in reams of identical data could be priceless so what happened next in that that was that I took contact with the top manager present and by the end I was convinced and said okay you have all the funds you asked for but just keep this Secret anyone who is leaking information will get sacked a handful of trusted employees were assembled to dig a Little Deeper sworn to secrecy The Chosen Few began to delve the depths in a multi-billion dollar Quest it was an ordinary day at work and I remember a hell came to me and he said you have to come into my office I have something to show you and he closed the door and he said this is top secret if you tell anything about it to anybody it will be very serious we knew this could be huge could be one of the biggest gas fields in the North Sea that was realized almost immediately by the team the only way to get a physical proof of gas or oil being present is drilling the expression well and to drill an expression well you need to have a license and our goal now was to get the license get the operatorship and then eventually you drill the expression well thank you summer 97 we started drilling the field and of course now that's what's the Moment of Truth approaching and approaching rather fast [Music] when you go to rig on location first I'll get started to drill it was anxiousness because all this work all this everything had to go right of course we've been certain before and it hasn't worked so there's always a great excitement when we drill expression was what we're waiting for once we approach the reservoir was what we call a drill break easier to drill sand than Trail and you can feel it all the way up to the rig in the way the drilling equipment behaves so I think it was 25th of August that we got a negative drill break so it was Kaboom down and then two meters below positive drill break we had sand on that then we knew that all the work and predictions young had on was just spot on was really huge we were pretty sure we found the second largest gas field on the Norwegian shelf that's what we felt the world had proved this is more than 300 billion cubic meters of gas a huge fine on any scale worldwide huge it may be but getting out from below the Hostile ocean floor is causing problems thank you the lb 200 pipeling ship has a matter of weeks to meet its deadline it's racing northwards towards the template at staggering four kilometers a day the lb 200 has to keep moving forward to do that it uses an unusual form of propulsion [Music] caging k-e-d-g-e it means to move by anchors so that's what we're doing we're crabbing alone instead of moving under its own steam it pulls on 14 anchors spread out around it anchors are moved forward by special tug boards the current position is here and the desired Position will be the little blue dot these are the stern anchors here like our main Stones our sevens of a great positioning them approximately 700 meters near to the barge one at a time but in choppy Seas the boats can't pick up the anchors safely if it becomes too dangerous the barge will come to a standstill in the middle of the ocean the barge is stationary for too long the pipe will have to be sealed and dropped to the seabed timely expensive and dangerous operational the boats are going to go look at their anchor Bush to see if it's possible to catch them if their man can safely uh connect to the Anchor buoys they'll go to work if it's still if they're criminal deck determined it's too dangerous they won't catch them later to London yes sir when you get over there before you go to the starboard six uh go to starboard seven see if you can grab the midline buoy and drag it back out away from the barge away the biggest ones are close to five I believe but really good with us right Roger that can uh just have a look at it uh if you can we will if you can we won't look at that unfortunately the sea is too rough and the lb 200 grinds to a halt today with a pretty miserable day because of the weather uh we're in a slow light period because it's a little bit too up for the anchor handlers to move the anchors safety is the number one goal out here we don't want to get anybody hurt we want everybody to go home the same way they arrived so a little bit too unsafe for the guys to win the acronym we will fall behind but now it's us against Mother Nature inside the pipe comes to a standstill the crew can only wait for karma conditions to return costly delay and the stormy seas are doing the pipe no good at all might be wanting to steal but the pipe still bends covered twice on the way down in an unsupported s-shape if the sea is rough the bends could become overstressed causing damage to the structure of the pipeline when we start to get above seven meters well you start to get into fatigue factors of the pipe which damages the concrete coating surface of it so at that time it's time to put the pipe on the bottom otherwise you're going to have to cut out everything that you've laid that day by 8 PM the weather's getting worse the pipeling ship is still stationary in the middle of the North Sea and Jimmy peacock's schedule is in danger it's getting close to the time you will need to consider dropping the pipe off the ship way he wants to do that today's Target we're way off we're laying probably six double joints apart today not so good at all but it's better than having to lay the pipe down if the wet when the weather does break we've already we've got the pipe up we're ready to roll so as soon as the weather breaks we can take off and start land piping back in the gas field the weather is getting worse lowering the template now will be just too dangerous while they wait for a break in the weather Jim gelpy Navigator of the remote controlled Subs uses the time to prepare for the template installation Subs will track the progress of the template on his journey to the Bottom of the Sea it will then become the eyes of the engineers as they position and secure the template to the seabed at this point in time we can dive we're just waiting for the sea state to come down so that they can launch the template and get it through the water column in a a safe manner this is where we control the ROV from basically this lady this Pilot's chair and the Navigator's chair is over there we have various cameras a black box records the video and all the pertinent data from the sub scribe Rob is anybody outside make sure it's all clear all right all clear on RV deck the vehicle just got out of the water uh not too long ago so it's just residual water drops on there later [Music] we also have a power monitoring ground fault resistance so drop your skull and a gentleman get up I mean the team likes to be working it's our job and we enjoy our job I have some friends that really think I have the coolest job in the whole world Jim and his team are relaxed about the disruption to the schedule but below deck head chef bertis telpolars is getting very concerned about the delay with over 350 Hungry Mouse to feed 24 hours a day he is running out of food we thought we would be here only for a few days economy longer and longer and we only have professions for about three or three more weeks and that's it then we are empty completely with supplies running short burtis has taken drastic steps staggering the meals 120 hungry Souls wait to be released from behind closed doors we have four settings today every six hours one and we have three main courses 24 hours later midnight we have breakfast I have bacon and eggs English breakfast with it and the same at 5 30 in the morning Harry Paulson is the provisions manager when he put in his food order before the theater of left Rotterdam he didn't account for the weather delays now it's quite empty because we are already three weeks on the sea now when we are in Rotterdam yeah we're gonna score this uh totally full Harry needs the biggest shopping trolley in the world when he goes to the supermarket it's about the Thousand kilo of of meat we use and 20 000 kids 20 25 000 kilo of fish that's quite a lot there I guess of course we we just have to wait uh it's not such a surprise when there is no action it's not that much fun and with wives and kids at home you'd like to get home as fast as possible on the other hand this is an operation that most of us have been waiting for for a long time so therefore we are fairly tolerant with time running out and the weather getting steadily worse there's a chance the template will have to return to shore all the team's hard work be rewarded or will the whole operation be thrown into chaos [Music] the two machines brought in to build the biggest underwater pipeline in the world might be big but they've been tamed by bad weather thankfully at the lb 200 conditions have taken a tone for the better and it's on the move once again going back to normal Lake thank you [Music] the weather is has broken up that the anchor tugs that are able to catch the anchor buoys and start moving daggers for us now we're going back into production and continue laying the pipeline we'll be back into a full swing within the next hour or so and then we'll just keep laying five until the next weather front comes through making as much ground as we possibly can it's always good to get back going to work get everybody back in the motor working again hey it's good news for everybody much further north the weather delays have held up the template installation nearly a week but our last conditions have improved a little and the engineers decide to go for it once we have the right weather then we bring the barge into the stern of the vessel that's under the two big cranes [Music] the rigging is prepared and laid out on the top of the template we hook up and once that's done it's it's a liftoff lifting off the barge is one of the riskiest parts of the installation the template must be hoisted up quickly to prevent a collision [Music] when lifted successfully its Journey Begins a journey that will last several hours a journey to the bottom of the ocean [Music] The Vessel around we get it in the right position and then we slowly lower it into the seat it's a tenth moment as the team from Hydro gathers to watch the final positioning [Music] in needs to be accurate to within two meters [Music] even after the template this landed there's still lots of activity going on the ROV people eagerly working to close hatches and clean up remove stuff and a number of activities [Music] 12 and a half hours after starting the template is securely positioned on the seabed [Music] we have had a lot of struggling with the weather finally we got exactly the right weather and the operation was performed very safe everything went according to procedures and the structure is is perfect on the seabed right now so um yeah I'm I'm very happy and very relieved this operation has been a major step towards realizing one of the world's biggest building projects despite the horrendous weather conditions the lb 200 managed to complete the southern half of the pipeline on schedule moving slowly but steadily it reached its underwater target with time to spare the hard work of thousands of men have kept the project bang on schedule for switch on that's when the gas will eventually start to flow from Norway to England along the world's longest underwater pipeline [Music] Singapore an economic miracle in one generation this tiny Southeast Asian island has made the move from third world status to first it's now undergoing one of the world's largest ever Subway expansions a mighty challenge given that they're tunneling underneath a bulgy Metropolis difficult soil conditions would you put any pressure on it and it just does that flat toothpaste the work is time consuming and dangerous what I'm a little bit concerned about is this the tunnel going machine is stationed right below the swimming pool what I'd like to see is that TBM moving forward away from those Condominiums can they do it without causing a collapse of the mass of towers buildings and roadways that make up Singapore can they drill these new tunnels through the eye of a needle [Music] [Music] Singapore is one of the most densely populated countries in the world four million people packed onto a tiny Island that's fifteen thousand people every square mile confronted transport chaos by creating a public transport system with no equal by 2010 there will be a subway stop every 400 meters throughout most of the island risky business for the men building it under this massive Humanity one of the points about our alignment here is that we have to avoid two high-rise structures these are private structures Condominiums here and here Chris Knight hassle is a British engineer who recently worked on the London Underground expansion he's now working for the Singapore government on this massive project if we're wrong here by about an inch that's just not acceptable and these are the things that we just can't get wrong these are the two buildings Chris's team is tunneling under as we're increasing the amount of underground networks and so on in Singapore we're coming closer and closer to buildings and here you can see an example where we're literally threading ourselves through the eye of a needle so here I am below the the swimming pool and behind me here is the slurry TBM the tunnel boring machine is launched through a shaft in the ground often at depths of 30 meters like a giant earthworm it moves its way through the ground chewing through soil and rock concrete rings are then put in place where the soil has been removed right up until it meets its destination it's almost like a manufacturing plant they're doing the same same old thing we're digging the ground pushing ourselves forward building a ring and removing the soil as we go along the world of tunneling is slow they can only put in about seven of these 19 ton concrete Rings a day that's about 10 meters of tunnel move too quickly in Singapore's soft soil and you're asking for trouble if we try and progress the tunnel Boy Machine too quickly we may end up drawing in too much ground and if that was to happen what what that would translate into is perhaps too much or excessive settlement to surface what this could mean is that you start seeing cracks or something in the building and that's something we're really trying to avoid take almost a year for the massive tunnel boring machine to break through the wall of the excavated station that lies ahead this is the glory moment that all the men working underground dream of making it here in one piece okay up and down exercise begin one two three each morning at eight a.m the Japanese contractor gets an army of men ready for the day's work exercise begins they start with a few limbering up exercises exercise begin one two three four four two three four okay knee rotating exercise one two three four two two three four three it ends with a call to action it's off to work 25 meters below ground all right today there's a problem the tunnel boring machine is not chewing through the rock as well as it should so the man in charge has stopped it and gone to one of the most dangerous places underground The Cutting head all this metal piece turns and what it does is that it uses these bike Cutters to scrape and breaks all the rocks and soils to dig through the soil so this is the thing that is doing all the job but it's not looking good he's decided The Cutting heads need changing a dangerous job for his men we are about 20 meters below ground this soil it can drop anytime if we are not careful but the work needs to get done the men are called into work in one of the most dangerous places underground one wrong move could spell disaster [Music] Singapore is undergoing one of the world's biggest ever Subway expansions 13 construction squads working throughout the island over 5000 men putting in 33 kilometers of tunnel and 29 new stations a 6 billion dollar project [Music] it requires two shifts Working Day and Night often in heated humidity soaring above 40 degrees [Music] today they've had to stop one of the giant tunnel machines and go right to the front where the soil around them can drop anytime they've decided to change the cutting teeth treacherous an expensive job each Blade cost ten thousand dollars to change all the teeth costs half a million dollars [Music] if it start to settle we know that the ground on top of us is moving and if we see a lot of movement then I will start I have no choice has to get my guys out the job continues Into the Night it's a tough business with long hours for the man overseeing the work sometimes I had to work for three days non-stop if I have problems I have to stay if I have problems the job goes smoothly and the tunnel Boring Machine starts turning again [Music] it's work that goes largely unnoticed in the expanding Metropolis 25 meters above the ground four million people living on an island half the size of Los Angeles [Music] it's one of the richest and most culturally diverse countries in Asia it's also said to be the most modern and efficient city in the world but not too long ago Singapore was a very different place [Applause] if you can go from one end of the universe to the other end of the universe in 40 years I think Singapore has traveled their Journey I think one of the little known facts about Singapore is is that is one of the very few developing countries that has actually made the transition from developing to developed status and all in the space of 30 to 40 years in 1965 when Singapore gained independence from Malaysia it was poor rickshaws and old buses rattled along the streets and cars clogged the roadways of this tiny little Island [Applause] we would have people 15 people living in a room in my case we had a family of six and we lived in a one-room house in Singapore so it was you know a typical developing country in 1965 when Singapore became independent I think we have the same per capita income as Ghana about 500 per year Singapore's new leaders set out to build a new nation they demolished old buildings and re-housed people in Satellite towns and suburbs and to get them to work they revolutionized the commute [Music] its mass transit system is now one of the crowning jewels of Singapore moving over 1 million people every day it's the first country to boast heavy rail driverless trains Singapore is also the only country in the world that regularly reminds its commuters how they are expected to behave please do not eat or drink on the railway premises thank you for your corporations and that includes chewing gum and now Infamous Singaporean law do you know that the reason why chewing gum was banned in Singapore one of the reasons is that somebody would stick a piece of chewing gum and the doors of the train wouldn't close and so the train couldn't move so I think that's when the government got very upset and said hey this has got to stop Singapore opened its first subway line in 1987 and has been expanding it ever since [Music] but before they started to dig they consulted Mr Chong an expert in the ancient art of feng shui many singaporeans were superstitious about digging a tunnel through the center of the city they were worried it would bring bad luck Singapore's economic hub well this is the place where you're surrounded by Bank by Bank best all the money is so Mr Chong went to work using an ancient feng shui Compass he determined that the subway tunnel connected the land across the river to the business center must run exactly north south the floor the energy is this way a good sign that would allow the chi a Chinese word for energy to flow through the tunnels and this would bring Prosperity not bad luck to Singapore it's moving the energy energy must move energy should not be stagnant just let a door when usually when the door is Swing all the time you will not get a rusty door the door will be there and the door would never get attacked by worms so anything is moved will be a better and smooth flow okay there has been 130 kilometers of tunnels and tracks laid down on this small island removed a quarter of Singapore's population each day by 2010 an extra 29 stations will be built it's expected to be one of the most advanced transit systems in the world by getting there is not going to be easy there is another problem with the tunnel Boring Machine it's only moved a few feet and as if heavy Rock looks like pressure is getting higher it looks like a showcase so can you ask operator to stop the excavation hello the tunnel boring machine has once again grown to a halt it is now directly underneath the swimming pool Chris has to make sure this doesn't turn into a disaster hi guys we've still got blockages here yeah we are still having a trouble with the Rocks yeah those are the ones over there just down here yep these have been blocked in ring two five one yes since yesterday we are having with those rocks are trouble with this choking in our pipes all right yeah and this is coming through the slurry discharge line before we get to the crusher yes yes today is what the problem is we're currently live with this problem we've gone through about two to three shifts now of picking up um Big Blocks of rock back stones that are caught up uh in our line and it's causing a blockage for us so that that causes a lot of downtime and it means we have to strip pipes uh can be really quite an issue for us [Music] blockage in the pipes means too much pressure can build up in the front of the tunnel boring machine if there's a pressure build up Saul can drop potentially damaging the two Condominiums Chris's worries take him underground to check on the problem is very aware that the tunneling machine is stopped in a precarious place what I'm a little bit concerned about is this the tunnel Boeing machine currently is stationed right below the swimming pool between two large high-rise condominium buildings one of my concerns is throughout this process have you been able to maintain support to the face or to the front of the tunnel Boeing machine because that's what stops too much ground coming in have you managed to do that yeah we we didn't do any kind of heavy dbm showing we only did about 10 mm maximum Chris dispatches a team of men to check out the Condominiums they measure for any movement any changes below the ground will usually indicate changes above they also checked for any shifting of the Condominiums themselves [Music] foreign so on this particular instrument here what's the movement you're talking two million yeah two minutes right two millimeters is considered nothing anything more than 30 millimeters is when cracks could start appearing in buildings when the saw shifts so can the foundations all our instruments are showing that we've done a good job that we've balanced the pressures yeah always always not the case and we don't have any settlement or we didn't have any noticeable changes so far all is safe meanwhile the Rocks causing the blockage have been cleared the control room gives instructions to the driver below ground to start the giant drilling machine style decoration no one is more aware of Singapore's dangerous soil conditions than the engineers working 30 meters below ground especially after April 20th 2004 when they had their worst disaster ever they were almost finished Excavating a station pit like this one when the retaining walls holding these steel beams collapsed [Applause] when the construction site caved in underground gas line snapped water mains broke and the six-lane highway right next to it buckled in two a cement mixer and a crane toppled into the water-filled pit and four men were trapped inside finding bodies was not going to be an easing task for the rescue workers and down to the water we can't see anything at all so we have to fill ourselves around and that's how we start the operation by fueling ourselves around the water under the water the rescue team searched for bodies in the market Waters risky business as they face the chance of a further collapse well you can hear speaking sound like expansions of the steel bars and contraction and gives you the sense of insecurity around the size in the end three bodies were recovered the fourth was never found heavy rains made the rescue mission impossible we didn't finish the job we will always try to at least recover the body so that you know we can give the family and the next okay good close closer to the incident and for us we're unable to do that is yeah it's a it's a difficult thing for us and to accept [Music] the memories of 2004 still haunt many of the workers thank you beautiful every day they pray to the Earth Gods to keep them safe as they remember the four lives lost the April day [Music] progress progress okay behind programs Graham Peterson has had to pick up the pieces of the accident a veteran tunnel engineer from London his job is to rebuild the old nickel Highway station and is having to do it in Singapore's Mucky soil a major factor in the collapse beautiful stuff for making putty but you put any pressure on it and it just does that black toothpaste has been described to me so consequently when it comes to tunneling medium it's not very good it needs constant support just like a fluid what you doing original station is just fronting compost building which is that Graham and his team are having to rebuild the station 100 meters from the collapsed area and bore a whole new set of tunnels and the rough alignment of the board tunnels it starts from here so we've now pulled the tunnels further to the South and you can see the station is now slightly further away from the buildings it's about 100 meters to the South yeah yeah yeah and then we've got a very tight Bend at the far end it was decided that it's easier safer certainly safer to abandon it all it's a bit of a shame two perfectly good tunnels abandoned throw them away the old nickel Highway station has now been almost completely covered over across the road they've started building the new station [Music] its supporting walls will be thicker and the station will be dug deeper all to avoid the disaster of 2004. [Music] the Japanese crane operator keeps a fish hanging in his window a symbol of good luck foreign a few kilometers away Graham and his team are dealing with another setback a Condo building called Oki house it's right next to where they are Excavating one of the new stations there's about 18 to 20 meter thick of marine clay underneath this building so all Street consultant agreed that if we proceeded with the excavation the building would be in the danger so the decision that was taken was that we would acquire the building because Paramount would be the safety of the people living there so they've started tearing it down once it's demolished they can start the Excavating work again it's good to see the progress on this now I mean what's in a few weeks we get this done yeah it's very good progression excavation yeah but that's the key Point as soon as this is down within the next you know four or five weeks we can get going on doing some work outside getting on with the real work yeah this is a long week isn't it for a very long wait yeah a very long way their obstacle is now being removed but for the 35 residents and seven shopkeepers of this building they've lost their homes at their livelihoods [Music] [Music] Singapore is one of the most urbanized places on Earth spanning its subway system underneath all this Humanity possible task sometimes it means knocking down buildings condominium was in serious danger of a collapse with construction work going on right next door 35 people lost their homes and many businesses were raised to the ground Mr Tan fiang was the very first resident to move into the condo building in 1965. he now lives with his grandson above the family t-shirt store foreign the day he knows that we are moving off from the building don't know how to say a word it's very very heartbreak and he was like staying sitting there staring at the wall looking here and there he lost the contacts and lost the friends he lost everything he's very very sad this is sometimes the human cost of tunneling disturbing life above but there's one place on Earth where destroying buildings to expand a subway line is strictly forbidden [Music] historic Amsterdam many of its buildings date back to the 17th century it was one of the richest cities in the world soon they will be driving a tunnel underneath the city and soil softer than Singapore's the challenge is not one of these ancient buildings can be touched no one is more sensitive about this than the vice mayor of Amsterdam Mark vanderhorst it's very very important for everybody who lives here the the city is kept as the way it is because all these historical buildings it just feels deep in your heart if you if you touch it with one finger people get angry and then I think they're right that he put in a subway line 30 years ago it was impossible to use a tunnel boring machine technology had not Advanced far enough to needle through such soupy soil you so they dug the old-fashioned way ripping up in the streets and destroying buildings along that path not a popular move in this medieval setting tensions mounted as homeowners of The Condemned buildings from Human barricades it filled up its build up and then suddenly it came to it came to a burst [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it was March 24 1975. police arrived with tear gas and armored cars to force people out of their houses [Music] [Applause] [Music] by the end of the day 30 people were injured only a few left the easy way it was one of the worst riots in Amsterdam's history that was actually the start of two decades of let's say metrophobia even the word metro line as we we call it here in in Amsterdam was more or less forbidden all plans for expanding their Metro System were put on hold but today the congestion and the historic heart of Amsterdam has only gotten worse there is simply no more room on the streets for extra trams of buses if you want to improve the public transportation system you have to go underground and that's why we're making the north-south subway right to the Heart of the City Center from north to south the city has finally greenlit a plan that's been on hold for 30 years three kilometers of the route will run through the most historic part of the city center this time is that not one of the 1500 buildings can be demolished the spongy soil of Amsterdam that's an almost impossible task it's like flying to the Moon by riding a bicycle I think it's the best description that you look at Amsterdam it's impossible but still we're doing it [Music] they've passed that impossible task onto a handful of experienced engineers the video is the bank of building you stop there oh yes I can these men are virtual tunneling before the real work begins they use computer models to predict the exact effects the tunnel machine will have on the historic buildings these predictions are critical to the success of this project that building is all red because it's in the inside of the curvature the system tells us that we need to be very careful at that spot it's a challenging tunneling route with tight corners and narrow streets start the wood foundation that these buildings sit on and they could sink in an instant what we're actually doing we're driving a tunnel under the city and we're almost tickling the pile toes where all the buildings are founded on and this specific engineering topic hasn't been dealt with in the past there are museums embassies and even the Royal Palace at stake a lot is resting on the virtual tunneling predictions so it's the best we can do at the moment there's no reference in the world for a project like this so at a certain time you have to start when there's no guts there's no glory so they've started digging the station's pits only meters away from buildings it's precise work that requires a close watch for any shifting soil [Music] and that's done by robotic stations computers measure 7000 points every day all along the tunneling route the biggest monitoring program of its kind in the world this building has settled almost 30 millimeters wow if there's any unusual movement the engineers are the first to find out the system warned us when settlement was ongoing during the weekend while there was no construction going on at that time so we were alerted and we thought well what's going on there's only one thing we could do that was fill the excavation pit with water again to make things stable the building they're most worried about is Central Station one of the signature landmarks of Amsterdam it's also the busiest transport Hub in the Netherlands welcoming 300 000 passengers a day now they're getting ready to do the impossible drill a tunnel right underneath but before they can start they have to rebuild the foundation constructing two massive columns 30 meters deep today they're working in the grand entrance hall pouring cement into those two Foundation columns done using high pressure work that the city Engineers are overseeing like Hawks what special measures have you taken cities curtains we have installed you know we don't want the risk that it's all exploding onto the walls and the and the ceiling so we have taken these protective measures to avoid it and so far now incidents have occurred minor incidents but not of any importance actually yeah Johan Bosch is the city's chief engineer I certainly would be glad to see [Music] he knows what's at stake it's building to our National Heritage anyone arming this building has a big problem they're satisfied with the monitoring system yeah performance installed in total 54 prisms on the facade of the Central Station and they are being measured weekly to see what the settlements have been on the uh we have to be careful yeah you can see that we are just grounding at the moment yeah obviously something went wrong in the process okay there's no room for error any mistakes in the project will be shut down nothing may go wrong because when we damage this old inner city the project will be stopped and this would be a real shame for the men and women working right across the street as construction workers dig archaeologists sift through the excavated soil a golden opportunity for the man in charge of preserving Amsterdam's history this is just a what came up in the last hour let's not build material but those are individual fights we select already by eye for example this is a clipping from the outer Hull of a ship probably uh 14 15th century we have a piece of early medieval Ceramics probably 13th century just a couple of the finds Jersey garonsky's team is pulling out about 200 fines a day in a spot which was once the medieval Harbor of Amsterdam [Music] is up till the 1900s all these ships left of course at races in the in the riverbed itself and while we're Excavating here we're finding hundreds and hundreds of tools dealing with the maritime activities in the harbor of Amsterdam as construction workers dig deeper the artifacts get older they are now working eight meters below the surface and most of what's coming up is Medieval this is the small caliber Cannonball of stone so God is probably also medieval let's say uh 1500 16th century archeology is the size of the as expected I didn't expect to find a cannonball where we find them of course we can do predictions but what we actually find every day we can't guess so every day is a it's a surprise [Music] [Music] garonsky is piecing together history looking for clues of Life dating back to the 12th century when the first people moved to Amsterdam items which will one day find their way into a public exhibition integrating archeology will the building process you have an advantage of two results in one in one Enterprise a new Metro will be built at the same time on that side where the Metro is built history will be recovered this is one of the benefits of tunneling in an ancient city a perfect opportunity to an earth the past [Music] back in Singapore its business as usual at serangoon Subway Station 25 meters below the ground Engineers are dealing with one of their biggest challenges yet they're digging a tunnel underneath an existing train station to do it they have to remove the massive steel piles the station was built on doing it by hand will take them one and a half years to go a mere 180 meters this is grueling and dangerous work the ground is porous and full of water which means collapsible soil are serious threat to the train station above gopali Krishan is one of the engineers paid to make sure there's no tragedy in the making [Music] the station work I mean the tracks will obviously will follow the station it will get banned so if there are settlement in excess of the uh of the maximum allow then there's a chance that the trains may be real or close into some other problems and which is which which will cause major disaster this team constantly monitors the ground for any sign of Shifting soil [Music] that's great is that okay Salman the station has already settled two millimeters they're going to have to go in overnight and reset the tracks to their original level necessary measures to avoid derailment [Music] several kilometers away another construction site they're getting ready to blast 25 meters below the ground they're building an escape shaft in case they have to evacuate trains between two subway stations they've hit hard rock so they're using Dynamite the man put the dynamite into pre-drilled holes six meters deep they're using 73 kilograms of dynamite right in the center of a residential neighborhood and next to a school playground door-to-door warnings are given to make sure no one Ventures outside really aware of yes the siren will go on for 30 seconds and then after that just one blast okay we'll make sure I saw that the children are not at the playground at that moment yeah they're not all right thank you so much thank you bye you don't have any small children in your house right so then that's fine only the dogs but I think they're quite well behaved okay no no it's not going to be very loud but you definitely hear the sound the weather can change quickly in Singapore and it has a precarious situation for the men setting the dynamite because the weather is turning back it's um we're expecting a bit of lightning we are using electrical charges so we have to bless it before the lightning comes we don't want any interference with the lightning and the right now electronic detonators with the storm closing in the team is rushing to get the blast ready in time if they miss this window schedules will be thrown into chaos [Music] expanding Singapore subway system can be a hazardous business especially when the construction crew has to work in residential Neighbors these men are blasting right next to a school playground they're building an escape shaft an underground exit point between two subway stops using Dynamite a dangerous game when the skies above could bring lightning [Music] the charges are set and the site is evacuated everyone appears to be inside and the storm seems to be holding off [Music] [Music] [Music] removing the cover reveals a textbook blast five more blasts to go and this small part of the Singapore Subway expansion will be finished [Music] when completed Singapore will have 29 news stations added to their state-of-the-art subway system [Music] many singaporeans don't know it but many of the stations are also built to be bomb shelters a not so foreign idea halfway across the world [Music] [Music] in September of 1940 the sound of Air Raid Sirens filled the Streets of London this is the music they play every night the Germans had occupied the skies the blitz was on tens of thousands of people fled to the London Underground the world's oldest Subway the tube became the Refuge a place to eat sleep and stay clear of the bombs dropping above many of the 80 stations used as shelters will have two canteens each tons of food are consumed every night deliver it is the work of over a thousand people over the many months to come the London Underground saved countless lives this inspiring story gave Singapore an idea what we are seeing here is the closing of the entrance blast resistant door this is a sliding door and it is important for us to see a lot of the entire station before it can function as a civil defense shelter almost every new station Singapore is building these days can be transformed into a state-of-the-art defense shelter flick of a switch there are 20 tons of concrete in each door nothing's getting through here this will prevent the Ingress of our contaminants that may be outside in the external environment from entering into the protected space this will also prevent blood leakage from the outside entering into the shelter [Music] so when the entrance blast doors are closed the occupants to the shelter will have to come by this way if they are found to be contaminated they'll be directed to enter our decontamination chamber and we have a series of showers to do a decontamination procedure before they will be directed to join the rest of the shelteries in the clean area of the shelter [Music] singaporeans are Master planners they prepare for everything several stations are completely built the trains won't stop there for another seven years they just like to be ready [Music] foreign [Music] vision for Singapore to have one of the most comprehensive mass transit systems in the world move people quickly and you've got a fast-moving economy it's one of the ways Singapore has managed to Leap Forward in third world status to First space of a few decades a mighty accomplishment indeed [Music] the International Space Station just 400 kilometers above Earth this is man's Outpost to space if we ever want to get beyond the Moon is this man-made structure that will help us to get there 16 nations from around the world have come together to build the elements needed to complete this Cosmic Outpost one of the most important parts of space station historically is the fact that this was the world combined leaving Earth for the very first time permanently you're in a real International part of the International Space Station an American robotic workstation inside a European coupler operating a Canadian arm and one of the things the arm is going to do is grapple the Japanese transfer vehicle that would also be supplying Logistics to the station with an estimated 60 billion dollars spent and behind schedule teams are working around the clock to get the essential components for the space station ready for space only if NASA's shuttle runs regularly will it be possible to complete the biggest structure ever to be built in space [Music] foreign [Music] more than 180 000 kilograms the International Space Station orbits the earth every 92 minutes as it travels over us at 28 000 kilometers per hour engineers and astronauts from four continents are busy building a unique Research Center the Columbus laboratory is under construction in Germany the Note 3 and cobbler observation deck are being built in Italy and the Japanese experiment module under trusses are nearing completion at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida [Music] the shuttle is the only means to transport heavy equipment to the International Space Station so if the ISS is to grow it's essential the shuttle runs as often as possible Elena long wait may be over on behalf of the many millions of people who believe so deeply what we do good luck God Steve have a little fun up there to watch team and to everybody in the shuttle program the crew is go for lunch start seven six five three engines up and burning three two one and liftoff of Space Shuttle Discovery beginning America's New Journey To The Moon Mars and Beyond discoveries rolling onto a course for rendezvous at the International Space Station standing by now for a burnout in jettison of the twin solid Rockets Discovery jettison's external fuel tank the shuttle's destination is the International Space Station from the launch team down here we have a lot of smiling happy faces now that the United States is back in the crew launch business the task of supplying the hardware and the know-how to build the ISS is down to a Global Network of space flight experts and scientists some have devoted their entire careers to making the International Space Station a reality the combined Manpower that has gone into building launching an in-space assembly of the space station to date represents the biggest construction project in history but it all comes down to this can they get the hardware and Equipment still needed to complete the station safely in space and at what cost it was on February the 1st 2003 that the shuttle program suffered a catastrophic setback s this is amazing it's really getting uh fairly bright out there in Columbia Houston we see your tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last Communications with Columbia were lost at about 8 A.M Central Time about the 10 minutes ago flight director lero Kane is now instructing controllers to uh get out their contingency procedures and begin to follow those following the tragedy the shuttle fleet was grounded indefinitely leaving the fate of the International Space Station hanging in the balance to try and fly the shuttle again after a crash after we've killed people takes a lot of a lot of people working together but it really takes a lot of courage to do it as well after a seemingly textbook launch mission control were faced with a frightening reality form insulation are disengaged from the fuel tank no one knows the extent of the damage or indeed if the shuttle and its crew will be able to return home safely [Music] July 2005. Earth weights as NASA prepares to inspect the damage on the shuttle the very future of the International Space Station hangs in the balance billions of dollars worth of space Hardware sits on Earth waiting for a ride into space [Music] Katie honey daddy's got a main phone call can you please be a little quiet honey I think if they can't land in Florida they end up Landing in California Ian Christie and his team at neptec developed the laser scanning technology that is being used to locate the damage on the belly of the Space Shuttle Discovery the team has just arrived back from Houston where they undertook the critical in-orbit scans of the shuttle [Music] this is the first of about a 90-minute procedure sweeping back and forth using the laserdynamic range imager which is an infrared camera ensuring that the nose incurred no damage during discoveries eight and a half minute climb to orbit yesterday but I bet there's a bunch of flight directors and people in the mmt who were quite happy to have 3D data and will wonder where it is next flight if they don't have it the nose cap piece of damage actually did have some laser camera data so of all the things that they were concerned about that one was presented there and that's without having having thought a lot about how to get the date I mean next play Lessons Learned will will be expecting to do contingency stuff right yeah it seems like whenever they want to look at tile they look at LCS the neptec laser camera is attached to a shuttle arm which Maneuvers around the damaged craft the scans were a success and the damage on the shuttle was located the team has discovered that some of the thermal insulation panels that protect the shuttle from extreme heat on re-entry have become dislodged at launch [Music] it's funny for me because I've been working with Ian Christy for over 10 years he supported me on my first flight and to see those those early thoughts of the lasers and the cameras that we need to see them evolve and grow into something that made it possible to fly Discovery those guys should really take a lot of pride in the creativity in the inventions they came up with Chris Hadfield knows all about the operation of mechanical arms as chief of Robotics for NASA astronauts he's responsible for the shuttle arm's bigger Brother Canada arm too permanently fixed to the space station Canada arm 2 weighs in at 1800 kilos is 17.5 meters long and is capable of moving a mass of over 100 000 kilos when the major structural components of the station make it into space it will be Canada arm 2's job to lift them into position a job that requires detailed preparation and rehearsal [Music] so once you've grappled it and the state the shut alarm has released it sure we're going to perform a role okay like such and then we're going to move it up okay and we're going to actually I should say you are going to connect it to the uh the station okay so I will still be on on grapple fixture number three here yeah and the other end will be down on the arm so it's a pretty good reach for Canon arm to get this thing there yeah it's it's at its limits do we have the space walking astronauts out there giving us any sort of uh guidance okay so it's purely done on the robotic views okay I don't think people realize that even though they're up in microgravity things still have a mass and in order to get something moving you still have to exert such a force and at the same time in order to stop it you still require a great amount of force and humans just couldn't do that yeah moving something around that that has a massive 20 000 kilograms and trying to move and it's like like pushing a sailboat sitting next to the dock even though it's hugely massive you can get it started but if it gets going fast it can still crush your leg against against the dock as the Shuttle Discovery awaits repairs on earth work continues to get the major components completed and ready for departure the man coordinating the various projects from his home in the Netherlands is Alan thorgetel he is responsible for work on the Columbus module in Germany the Note 3 in Italy and the Coppola observation deck at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the Netherlands he's also at the Helm of the design and development of the ATV the European space agency's automated transfer vehicle the ATV is an unmanned craft that will ultimately be responsible for supplying the International Space Station and the astronauts who live there with all they need to survive in space this is the automotive transfer vehicle that will be coming up there to load best part of 20 tons of supplies for you it adds the most complicated spacecraft we've ever built in in Europe with a million lines of code on the thing all sorts of subsystems combining a human spacecraft with with all the the satellites as well it's a very very complicated vehicle complicated it may be but across the Atlantic at the Kennedy Space Center they have a complication of their own space they've run out of it until we start flying more hardware and getting it out of the building floor space is going to be a real premium and then once we have a manifest and we know when the trusses will start flying and the building will start emptying out then we can make a better plan for how we're going to accommodate the the pressurized section and the other external facilities billions of dollars of Hardware sits and waits for the decision on the shuttle it's on the floor of the high Bay at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral Florida the elenia facility in Turin Italy and here at the space Transportation division a Bremen Germany [Music] [Music] foreign the Columbus module is a 10 payload four and a half meters long laboratory where when completed astronauts will be able to conduct thousands of experiments in the weightlessness of space [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] node 3 designed to carry the life support systems for the ISS Note 3 will also provide valuable additional docking ports for the new structures crucial for the growth of the International Space Station but like the Columbus module it will go nowhere until the work here is complete so what about the planning today well uh we basically have two activity the first is uh to check the problem that we have found yesterday that uh yeah on the rather beam and uh when we go ahead with the installation of the EMD valve so this means that the overnight she is completed the RMS installation yeah so they have found no problem for this night so still today we are proceeding with further to shift first Yes again a second shift again the third shift also again hardness hopefully if we solve this issue on the radial beam we are back on track in Italy the Note 3 team are back on track but in Germany the Columbus module team is feeling the pressure head of systems engineering rudiger klezig and project manager Gunther branta behind schedule a conference call has been arranged so that Bernardo Patty Columbus project manager for the European Space Agency can get some answers weeks of delay for Columbus reintegration and we have taken two more weeks of delay for payload integration so that makes 11 cool weeks and uh okay if there is a lesson learned fine we should not get any more delay if we don't learn the lesson which is to control those open works then we are going to expand this delay and I understand the shuttle is grounded I understand a lot of things but I don't care at all you know what we want which is our policy yeah I agree what you're saying yeah all the time at the moments are sitting with a list and the current schedule and see how they can put those activities into the schedule [Music] thank you [Music] one of the first pieces of Hardware destined for the space station when the shuttle resumes regular flight will be the 300 foot integrated truss structure the backbone of the ISS will support a one acre span of solar panels it will provide its inhabitants with up to 110 kilowatts of power [Music] external storage platform is filled with Hardware that will be installed on the station on future shuttle assembly missions when large truss structure components are delivered to the station to expand the station's electrical capability and to set the stage for the addition of other International modules such as the Europeans Columbus science laboratory and the Japanese kibo module foreign managers David Bethy and Charles Hardison oversee final assembly work on Space Station components at the processing facility a Kennedy Space Center in line 42 horse the nearest firetrucks to install e-test bearings this morning led by lift manager Jim Daniel the team will use a 12-ton crane to lift the 4 000 pound truss into position to insert the new bearing it's a delicate task that requires Precision Care and a lot of manpower this is an important modification that will allow for more experimental attachments on the Truss this payload's about four thousand pounds we're going to ground the sealer to the hook but we're not going to do any Metrology the objective is just to lift this payload about 12 inches we'll install the utas bearings they go on the south side of the payload we will do a trending inspection we'll clean the entertainments set it back down torque the caps and restow the ceiling all right let's have a safe lift John up increased to two John up slow to four [Music] as Crews on earth work three shifts a day to get equipment ready for transport in space fixing Shuttle Discovery is of the utmost importance at Houston do you want us to press on or we could wrap this up now it's your call but working and living in space comes with its own set of rules there are things that that happen to the human body in space it's like this super accelerated test bed for the body uh your bones demineralize it's as if suddenly I was 75 years old uh getting aged like in some Star Trek episode where suddenly my my bones are shedding and I'm getting osteoporosis it happens to me right away in space and yet we don't understand why and when I come back it reverses we don't understand the mechanism yet here's this great laboratory where people and and any other animals we bring up with us we can study and maybe crack the the causes of osteoporosis and how to treat it and how to reverse it and if you can get up to space and do those things you can do fundamental research that is absolutely impossible to do on the surface of the Earth [Music] foreign [Music] the shuttles will be retired in 2010 as ordered by the president of the United States and will ultimately be replaced by unmanned craft like the automated transfer vehicle it's a very well proven docking system that the Russians have used on the soyuz and the progress for many years very reliable good robust system and we're very happy to have it on the ATV and here we see the end of the mission actually of the ATV returning back to Earth because it burns up completely in the atmosphere yes all the trash that you've generated on orbit goes into the the ATV and we we bring it back and burn it up so that the station doesn't get full of full of rubbish so the next project then is to make one of these but that doesn't burn up so you can bring me back to Earth the longest serving manned spacecraft in the world is the soyuz three two one we have ignition and liftoff liftoff of the soyuz rocket beginning the first expedition to the International Space Station and setting the stage for permanent human presence in space after the Columbia space shuttle disaster of 2003 the only remaining link between Earth and the space station where the Russian soyuz Rockets standing by for contact we have contact of the soyuz function was to deliver replacement Crews it was also the emergency escape vehicle for the inhabitants of the space station and only left for earth when another came to replace it soyuz partner is the unmanned progress cargo spacecraft for the last two and a half years the progress craft has delivered all of the life-giving supplies needed by the polica space station the one thing that I cannot do is deliver the nodes and modules needed to complete the ISS that can only be done by NASA's shuttle [Music] there's no Partners around the globe hurry to prepare the crucial hardware for the space station astronaut Steve Robinson and sawichi naguchi step out into the vastness of space to begin their own important task assessing firsthand the damage to Shuttle Discovery ah there we go [Music] August 2005 and the future of the International Space Station hangs in the balance space agencies around the world can't be certain if their equipment will ever be transported into space with the damage and Discovery located it's up to astronauts Steve Robinson and suichi naguchi to perform vital repair work good view of sawichi naguchi at the end of the canadarm 2 which is being operated by Wendy Lawrence she is maneuvering him over to the brand new control moment gyroscope near the AFT bulkhead of the payload Bay of discovery foreign [Music] Gucci work in the cold dark vastness of space fellow astronauts Thomas writer and Dan taney's office is the pool at the neutral buoyancy lab at over 200 feet long and 40 feet deep this pool takes over a month to fill and contains full-size replicas of the space station components it simulates as close to a spacewalk experience as is possible on Earth it also gives the astronauts the opportunity to practice and rehearse difficult maintenance tasks on the replica immersed in over 6 million gallons of water uh good morning this morning we're going to be running the increment 13 crew Thomas Ryder and Dan Taney through the 12a cleanup Eva one task in giving them the familiarity for those tasks the main focus is to have them really gain as much familiarity with the umbilicals if they get anything beyond that that's all extra gravy so it's completely out of my way and I can still get to it but you can tuck it back in under that El Salva I wanted to bring actually my glasses um yeah that's exactly it right now [Music] astronaut Dan Tani trains with veteran Thomas writer Thomas is scheduled to be one of the next astronauts to live and work on the space station for every hour of walking in Space the astronauts need to do seven at the pool in Houston [Music] happy new alarms and good morning secretary this is Greg your test director had to remind me this morning 81 safety ev2 copying them on the backup and Dan and Thomas I would just remind you again today make sure you use the Descent line to let yourselves down make sure you clear your ears early enough once you get that out 90 degrees you can reinsert the pit pin on the lockout arm [Music] s you might look up to the lab window hey guys we're getting an awesome video and now Susan's looking at looking at you about the lab window but we also see on reflections of all the clouds go by reflected in the lab window you know the big difference between this and working underwater in the training pool is uh is even though you're floating in the water you're still weighed down by gravity in the suit but when you get to space you are weightless and the suit is weightless so you are in fact floating around like a ping-pong ball in a cage inside your space walking suit it's the weirdest feeling [Music] foreign [Music] cattle has two pressing issues to deal with severe delays with essa's Columbus laboratory being fitted out in Bremen Germany and closer to home a critical test deployment of the ATV's solar array panel in the Netherlands I think we should not wait Jeff you'll have to take the lead this morning on the the server I drive test itself because I've got a meeting with with Danielle now that I have to attend a 10 30 so I'm not quite sure but proceed without uh without me if necessary I'll join you as soon as I can the test being performed on the billion dollar ATV is to make certain that the solar array panels deploy properly there have been some serious concerns about the bracket hinge system experts from Germany and France have flown in to work with the Dutch team the solar array panels will power the ATV on its Journeys to supply the space station [Music] three so did you hear they're going to delay the uh the next shuttle flight until March March next year yeah for us now because with Columbus and the uh the nose that have got to go up we're getting later and later and uh the scientists are getting a little bit upset that they're not getting there they're working on properly the way they wanted to I really hope that NASA can get the things sorted out and get it up and flying again because it's it's very very necessary still the longer it's on the ground the more the ATV is necessary [Music] scientists throughout the world are waiting for the launch of sophisticated research modules like the Japanese experiment module it is the single most advanced laboratory ever destined for space the key design feature of the gem is an exposed deck that weighs over four thousand kilos here it will be possible to create experiments in the vacuum of space using a 12 meter long robotic arm manned by the astronauts it was named Keeble the Japanese word for hope The Hope here is that after 10 years of development and sitting at Nasa for two years it will finally take its place in space and if all goes well then this too is where the Columbus module will call home in Germany discussions continue over the American and European size discrepancies they are causing severe delays to Columbus's completion we are able to crimp the American size wires with our European size pins correct although they all have the same AWG size from the specification they are the same but the tolerance are so big that we have had to develop a method to to fix it into the pin and we do it by inserting small thin wires to fill the crimp up and then we endemic them but tomorrow in our telecon we have a proper story for Aza I think so I think it's Plano delay and x and salt and now we can also commit to to the test that we envisioned here yes but on the other side we cannot take any compromise on the quality so we have to fix it really and I told you the other day that we make the voltage drop test over such a crimp and if the voltage drop is not okay or if it's in the specification we cannot accept the tomorrow we tell laser that's problem solved we solved it yes sorry we have the delay due to due to what they get material which is out of specifications some of the times why can't they stick to the standards huh yeah by consistency American how to do this one day back in America at the Kennedy Space Center work is nearly finished on the insertion of the bearing into the truss [Music] all right if both your shackles are loose please uh de-shackled Lily did you say the weight was four thousand and we had of course you know we put the flight wing on the other main thing that we had going on today was the lift of the S5 cargo element to put that split bearing on we have a bunch of vendors coming in next week to start the work on the on P5 and S5 and we still had that forward work on S5 to get that split bearing in lift should be going on now yeah so now you can check it out on this let's take a look see I think it's 47. Channel stuff VAB administrator yeah there we are today we're just lifting it up to get that split bearing on so when they install the the device inside the trunnion that if it expands we'll be able to get the bearing off they wrap it up that doesn't uh real successful job today so uh and then we have to move very slowly as the International Space Station continues on its 160 million mile a year Journey sometimes a few feet on Earth can prove difficult the ATV Supply vehicle is being moved into position for testing Federal and position stop to get to this point almost 150 International Space experts analyzed over 50 000 pages of technical documentation before the design was approved foreign [Music] okay thank you meanwhile back in Germany Columbus program manager Gunter Brandt has been summoned to a conference call to update Alan Thor Kettle good afternoon Ellen well good afternoon uh Gunter well I just want to give you feedback on the on the problems that we had in our harness production I think we mentioned that there was this stupid discrepancy between these American wire Gorge and the European pin we did all this testing and all these goodies so now the process is okay and we proceed in crimping the harness and yesterday we checked the situation and I think we can now commit to our our test day the 14. yeah I'm not that concerned with uh with what may or may not have caused this uh this slippage gun so what uh what I'm concerned with is the slippage and uh uh the whole schedule that uh that we're trying to to work on is to make sure that we finish all the power-up activities on the uh the flight Hardware by the end of this year and what I absolutely need from you is confirmation that uh you've got workarounds that will enable that still to uh to occur in Italy another setback progress on the Note 3 is halted when tape securing a heater protection pad has come loose something as simple as this on Earth could lead to catastrophe in orbit if this become loose could be dangerous for the people inside because you know these heaters are critical for the operation of the north especially when is the Note is not power in orbit during the transfer from the shuttle to the boat into the station this is to prevent freezing and condensation next they need to install a vital valve to stabilize the pressure between the shuttle and node 3. it's about the possibility to reach the same pressure before to open the door internally understanding it will have also the change of the hair itself because we have an inlet line and an outline then they can open the door and have the real access to the to the shuttle in addition to the race to complete the various nodes and modules in time the team also faces the challenge of coordination and transport between projects which straddle International borders with a big value is the reason not that the work of integration and is then shipped back in a different configuration I I work but I'm not an important expert and I don't know how many laws I will be bending or breaking if we change something it's not really easy for us because then we we have to go back to our government organization [Music] as it flies in the freezing temperatures of space the ISS needs protection from the elements like Kennedy Space Center a team of Swords put together thermal blankets which cover every single part of the structure we'll model the blankets that needed modifications [Music] they didn't want to take the blanket off again they wanted to leave it on the station so we had to basically go up there and literally fix the thing that's where it allowed the hand sewing really came in handy on a mission in 2001 dantani and Linda Godwin wrapped insulation blankets around vulnerable solar array Drive Motors four years on Steve Robinson is about to undertake the single most important spacewalk in recent NASA history as he locates and attempts to remove discovery's tail Gap filler that came loose during its launch yeah looking through Steve's eyes here you have to shake your head while you're up there just to focus back in on what you're doing because the the visuals absolutely fill your mind it's just overpowering it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your life constantly like Niagara pouring into your head and somehow you've got to clear all that and focus on fixing the space shuttle do they have training on how to focus on the task and not you know that's on the earth that's going by that was the biggest surprise for me was I had concentrated so much in the pool getting trained technically but when I went outside I just absolutely had to stop for a minute and just honor the world and just look at it you could not ignore the beauty of what was happening around you [Music] it is crucial that the person who's operating the arm has a very steady and a smooth ramp in and a ramp out otherwise you do induce oscillations in your robotic arm right sure don't want to be about bounce back and forth up against the belly of the Orbiter yeah especially if you have somebody on the end of it who himself he can he can induce some oscillations in the arm so it's very important that you have that steady steady hand controller inputs like a worm on a hook Steve Robinson retrieved the loose tile Gap filler from the belly of the shuttle and to everyone's relief it was a simple procedure it's a great song it's coming out very easily very nice okay Steve DCA they aren't back away so they must be looking into what type of things could make one of these things come loose well it's a big mystery as to why they came loose and why they don't I mean there are thousands of them how come only two of them came loose you know and and when Steve reached in to grab them out on the spacewalk I mean he could just grab it and just slide it out like pulling a letter out of an envelope and we don't know why they work loose the big question was would they have allowed us to enter the atmosphere safely or not with one of these sticking up this much out of the belly probably we would have been okay but since Colombia probably is not good enough you know Steve is the lead guitarist in the band I play in and so he really trusted him with the to have the the finger picking skills to yank this out of there looks so simple yeah and it really turned out to be simple a huge relief to everybody because if it had been hard and he had to saw it off or something it would have been uh much less elegant but he really showed that through a huge amount of work planning on the ground you can make something that has previously been impossible is something very straightforward [Music] with The Gap filler removed NASA gives the okay to return home [Music] you know what we're doing here is worth it and we know that there's risk but if we don't if we don't uh try it we're never going to be able to beat the risk [Music] Steve Robinson successfully Removed the damaged tile and Mission Control gave the shuttle the green light to start its Journey Back Home to Earth [Music] Houston and station we have physical separation [Music] the two-week 5.8 million mile journey is almost over all that NASA and their International Partners hope for was a safe shuttle mission to get the space station program back on track [Music] landing gear is down and locked and Discovery is home with the shuttle safely home it's now all about the future the future of the International Space Station so Frank there's one other thing I wanted to show you and that's a little element called the cupola it's the only part of the station that's specifically designed for the astronauts that's really good other areas are designed for the scientists and uh and to house all the clever systems and everything but the coupler is specifically for the astronauts it's your window on the world the part of the vehicle that's designed for astronauts exclusively for astronauts for you to be able to see Mother Earth we will also control the robotic arm from inside the cupola yeah yeah the robotic workstation will will go in there also the interior design you mean will be very nice to look at that's right yeah we designed like a Ferrari but at the cost of a Ford or maybe like a four but at the cost of a Ferrari my dad worked on the Apollo he was inspector that inspected the module and that type stuff when we were doing the Apollo everybody was 25 to 28 years old who cuts no goatees very studious and it was just really different you know well been a day today huh yeah that's about all I could say it's a typical day but everything went well and that's what we try to do every day right I've got some a lot of good memories and a lot of great great work out there and that's on the station right now I make it an effort every time I know I can get a visual of it when it flies overhead I like to go outside in the morning early in the morning go out and watch it Fly overhead knowing that that's my work up there I think we did ourselves proud I think the experience in MCC really paid off they were actually using our stuff to learn stuff about the shuttle it wasn't just you know it was an important contribution and it made a difference we take the folks who built the particular element and we take the folks who are going to fly it you know put their keisters on the line and we sit down and we drink a bottle top to bottom you're in a real International part of the International Space Station an American robotic workstation inside a European Cooper operating a Canadian arm and one of the things the arm is going to do is grapple the Japanese transfer vehicle that would also be supplying Logistics to the station it's a very good Multicultural environment indeed it certainly is and we are in such early stages of exploring space people take it for granted but in the whole history of the American space launched 145 times total with people you know 145 times you're just you're just starting to understand something and yet people think it's it's very mature and so much of what we do in space is the is the early stages of just trying to establish right from wrong oh does this work well that doesn't work we don't do that when you're building a spaceship when you're building a space station if we're going to go any further out into space we've got to have a place to test all those things without a place to test them we'd just be guessing when we leave Earth [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 2,781,941

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

Id: 56OFs20tY1U

Length: 136min 51sec (8211 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/CPE_Rimsky-Korsakov]

... and that sort of squawking that they come-out with - whatever 'tis exactly that they say ... or memes they put-out - like one I saw a little while-back depicting one of those Jazz Funerals of New Orleans that the goodly Black Folk of those parts are renowned for ... except that they were carrying a Globe instead of a coffin (it's buried somewhere in Globeskepticism-Parliament) ... or various other silly memes they similarly concoct depicting what they fancy to be the 'demise' or 'passing' of

The Globe .

Like: the folk who're a-dingle-dangle-dongling the kindo'stuff shown in this documentary are now on the point of going

❝ ¡¡ oh dearie-us !! ... we are, afterall,

going to have to reconsider everything we do @ the behest of those Flatwits, and humpbly admit to them we've been figuring amiss of the very shape of the landscape, who, it now transpires, have been right all this time!❞ ...

... yea yea: I'm sure they're trempbling in their boots @

'The Globe'

being about to be 'smashed' , or whatever.

😃😅😂😆😄🤣

 

Puts space-vehicles into perspective, aswell: OK that's a different kind of thing: sortof ... more ... intense, & concentrated ; and it is undoubtedly very remarkable ... but in-view of the fact that all this colossal-scale industrial stuff is patently gingle-gangle-gongling on, it's scarcely 'remarkable' to the point of implausibility .

 

I've seen a few of these Spark videos, recently, & they've all been particularly excellent: is it a new online documentary outfit!? ... or maybe a television series the copyright of which has 'matured' such that it can now be shown on Youtube-Contraption ... or somptiging!?