How Humans Built The Biggest Cargo Freight Ships | Supersized Structures | Spark

paper was light gold in medieval times [Music] oh no tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong from the ancient world to the modern history tells the story of our ever-growing need to be ever-growing the story of how some people will go to extraordinary lengths to expand create to advance to push the realm of possibility to prove that size matters this series will explore larger than life creations that have influenced every facet of our society the way we live work and travel [Applause] the way we build empires and the way we dream we look back at the ways we've strived to make the biggest heaviest tallest the best [Music] we hear from experts about the technology that made these feats possible the challenges that were faced and the problems that were solved some of these inventions have changed the world and our way of life others not so much [Music] whether a success or a failure these giants have demonstrated mankind's need to build big people aren't the only ones that need to travel our way of life has long relied on the transportation of cargo freight and raw materials and transport has had to evolve to keep up with the demand the driver for size is really driven by what is the design requirements today we look at huge ships colossal aircraft mammoth mining machines and the longest trains in the world as we discover that when it comes to moving the world around us big simply isn't good enough [Music] for as long as we've lived we've been on the move and as long as we've moved we've found ways of hauling our goods with us today one of the oldest methods of moving freight is as important as ever ships [Music] the reality is that the vast majority of the world's trade still travels by sea and it always will and the biggest boats in the world are cargo ships indeed these floating behemoths are some of the largest man-made objects ever created and amongst these the container ship with the highest capacity in the world is the msc oscar [Music] the ship was named after the son of diego aponte the president and chief executive officer of msc modern ship design techniques enable us to design very large structures like large container ships much more precisely and more accurately with more economical use of steel in their construction the latest ship from the mediterranean shipping company oscar's nominal capacity of 19224 teu or 20-foot equivalent units makes it the largest container ship afloat container ships that traverse the world are carrying out cargo everything that we need is traveling by sea in large quantity built by daewoo in south korea at a cost of 140 million dollars the oscar is 395.4 metres long longer than the height of the empire state building if it was laying on its side the vessel is so huge that its area of the deck is equivalent to four football fields only 30 years ago no ship was able to carry more than 5 000 shipping containers now in the midst of the shipping industry's arms race the oscar is capable of carrying 19 224 this makes the oscar one of the world's most efficient and environmentally friendly vessels on the water able to transport copious goods while minimizing levels of carbon dioxide per teu so while some vessels seem to be big for the sake of bigness when it comes to the msc oscar there is a method to the mass the more economically we can carry those cargos by sea the better it is seeing these beasts makes it easy to forget that they were built on a long and proud maritime heritage established by the ships that came before them in their way just as grand and in their day just as pioneering with mankind's history of warfare it was unavoidable that we would use ships to transport our weapons of war and in modern times the biggest of these are the aircraft carriers [Music] the hms illustrious was decommissioned in a ceremony in portsmouth on the 28th of august 2014 the last of the invincible class aircraft carriers the end of her 32-year career also marked the end of an era the ship essentially operated in this dual capacity for most of its life where you would either operate in support of amphibious operations or operate in blue water as a command ship or a task group affectionately known as lusty by her company she was the fifth warship to bear the name illustrious the last functional aircraft carrier of the royal british navy she has played a vital role in modern international military operations in 1976 during the falklands war construction of the carrier was sped up while the conflict was resolved before the ship was completed she was used as an air defense base in the conflict's aftermath due to the nearby raf airfield being in desperate need of repairs we've spent a fair amount of time in the south atlantic providing that sort of stability and security and really honing its ability to operate either in the amphibious role or in support of general maritime operations she would go on to sail almost 1.5 million kilometers during her operational history and helped enforce a no-fly zone during the bosnian war of the 1990s as well as in the persian gulf during operation southern watch at 209 metres long and weighing 22 000 tons the hms illustrious was a giant in her day along with her sisters invincible and ark royal we asked a young sailor what it was like on board we said they're so big you must hardly know you're at sea and he said don't you believe it they can roll just like anything else the illustrious will be replaced by two 65 000 ton aircraft carriers for the royal navy hms queen elizabeth and hms prince of wales she will be preserved as a tribute to her class of royal navy aircraft carriers and while her service may be over her eventful history and legacy will not soon be forgotten however in terms of size she has been well and truly left behind [Music] first launched in 1985 and made fully operational 10 years later this ship remains the only aircraft carrier in the russian navy the admiral kuznetsov dubbed project 1143.5 the kuznetsov was constructed at nikolayev south shipyard on the black sea the evan kutsenov is the largest aircraft carrier after the u.s large nuclear-powered aircraft carriers so its size is about just over three football fields in length a second kuznetsov class vessel the vayag was launched in 1988 but never commissioned by the soviet navy it was sold to the people's republic of china under an agreement that stipulated it was never to be fitted for combat unusual thing about the kutsunoff is it also has 12 granite cruise missiles which have a range of about 600 kilometers and they can be launched against ships but also against land targets the other difference compared to other larger carriers is that it doesn't have catapults but it has a ski jump and aircraft get their lift through that the gigantic kuznetsov serves as the base for 17 aircraft including 12 sukhoi su-33s and 5 sukhoi su-25s as well as 24 helicopters with a crew of 1960 a length of 302.3 meters and a rating of 100 000 horsepower from its steam turbine the kuznetsov may be one of its kind but that doesn't stop it from dominating the waves the admiral kuznetsov's purpose is to carry aircraft but other ships as we've seen so far are built to carry anything the world's third biggest container company cmacgm is the creator of the explorer class ships [Music] named for benjamin franklin marco polo and magellan among others these are some of the largest ships afloat [Music] in 2013 the explorer class held the title for largest container ships in the world it is three and a half times the length of a football field at 396 metres long and it can hold 16 000 containers to put that into perspective an explorer class can hold 2.1 million refrigerators a big ship is more adaptable you can make changes more easily you can provide for modular payloads where you can take a ship into port and change the role of the ship by taking out one capability and putting another one in the delivery of the french explorer class marked the beginning of an epic rivalry between cma cgm and its competitor musk you build something very big because you're building something bigger than the other fellow has it seems that current shipping companies embody the go big or go home mentality as evidenced by one of musk's latest ventures as some of the world's largest and most efficient ships musk's triple e class dominates the waves 20 of these vessels exist in a class which reaching almost 400 meters in length are the longest ships in the world the height of the triple e is 73 meters even higher than the gigantic allure of the seas cruise ship albeit by only one meter the triple e is revolutionizing trade delivering massive amounts of goods on less fuel making it cheaper and more environmentally friendly very large container ships which are being built today are usually designed for a specific route from port a to port b across the pacific or across the north atlantic or something like that the triple e sails the asia to europe route which is the busiest container trade route in the world not only is the triple e currently the largest vessel on the water it's likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future due to current port restrictions the triple e class is for now as big as physically possible it's pointless going extremely large you might get great economies of scale in the ship but if you can't birth the ship anywhere there's no point to put it into perspective the steel used to build one of these ships could build eight eiffel towers and its cargo bay could fit 36 000 cars which sets the world record for a single ship's capacity surpassing the emma maersk by 16 and continuing maersk's record of having designed the largest container vessels in the world while technology advanced transport across the oceans on land nothing much changed for centuries in the 19th century a new mode of transport spread rapidly across the world opening territories and making and losing fortunes for speculators it was the age of rail in its day the most powerful train in australia was the bayer garrett steam locomotive [Music] everything's on a massive scale and you get up in that cab and it's almost intimidating how big this machine is you feel like you're doing a million miles per hour and now in canberra the australian capital it's being restored to its former glory it has been over three decades since the bayer garrett 6029 moved under its own steam it's exciting it's sort of about human endeavour and that locomotive is the epitome of steam technology the bayer garrett is unique in its design in that it is designed in three parts two steam engines on individual frames and a boiler on the central frame it's actually lighter on the rails and some physically smaller locomotives mainly because of this clever design of spreading the weight across all those wheels and axles and also the articulation allowing to go around tight bits this allowed a train of its length to maneuver easily if it were designed as one the train would be too long and rigid to navigate many landscapes to go anywhere of a reasonable distance it needs a lot of water also needs a lot of coal it goes through 37 kilos of coal a minute at full power in fact goes so quickly through the coal that a fireman couldn't shovel it fast enough and so it has an automatic stoker to draw the coal through from under the tender to pulverize it on the way through and then jets of steam are used by the farmer to fire around a firebox the grates which are the size of nearly four grand pianos the train was built in the 1950s and operated throughout new south wales and the australian capital territory for 30 years before falling into disrepair housed at the railway museum of canberra a group of volunteers from the australian railway society has been restoring 6029 for the past eight years raising over four hundred thousand dollars to bring the train back to life once complete the bayer garrett 6029 will be the largest operating locomotive in the southern hemisphere i first saw a bayer garrett in a country railway yard i vividly remembered i was about six years old what appeared in front of me didn't look like any locomotive i'd ever seen in my life it was just massive big black fire breathing monster trains this big need engines to match and on the other side of the world there are eight surviving train engines that are still the largest in the world [Music] an integral part of the old american rail landscape with the big boys a fleet of trains containing the largest successful train engines ever built essentially the main innovation was the scale that was so damn big [Applause] [Music] their purpose was to haul trains up sherman hill in the wasatch mountain region of utah [Music] the trains they hauled were up to 3 200 tons in order to do this attractive effort of 61 235 kilograms was needed with a factor of adhesion of four that in other words was how much power would be needed and how well the wheels would need to stick to the rails to achieve this the weight would have to be about 244 940 kilograms if you happen to slam on the brakes too quickly you flat spot the wheels and that costs tens of thousands of dollars it was decided the trains would have a 4884 wheel arrangement the only locomotives to use this arrangement starting in 1941 20 engines were built which dominated sherman hill for 21 years and were some of the most powerful locomotives in the world the final big boy was retired in july 1962 today eight survive i still when i stand next i cannot believe someone dreamt or had the guts to build something that big [Music] trains like the big boys were essential to the development of north america but railways need tracks to run on and in many parts of the world that is a challenge [Music] the canadian national railway operates the longest general freight trains in the world and is itself the longest railway system in north america [Music] it's really difficult to design a a large system they tend to be very complex [Music] its rail network stretches over three coasts with more than 33 700 kilometers of track reaching over 75 percent of canada's population with the history dating back close to 100 years canadian national railway began as the union of five financially struggling railways the grand trunk the grand trunk pacific the intercolonial the canadian northern and the national transcontinental in 1988 the canadian national railway implemented the first regularly scheduled double stack service in canada double stack container trains are just that two containers stacked on top of each other doubling cargo capacity [Music] it goes without saying that these trains are absolutely massive and if you're having a very intense pressure through the bogey onto the track your track has to be in really good condition but they have sophisticated condition monitoring systems to actually virtually x-ray the track to see if there's any minute cracks for me the only transcontinental rail network in north america the canadian national railway continues to grow in success earning over 10 billion dollars in revenue in the last fully reported year the fascination in building big railway systems is really legacy rail infrastructure is one of those very long term assets it's something to be remembered by across the pacific some of the biggest trains ever built operate in one of the most remote regions in the world the australian outback is home to a family of giants or trains in the pilbara region of western australia rio tinto operates the world's largest collection of iron ore trains the task for a heavy haul railway is the same the world over you want the cheapest method of getting from mine to port so you need long iron ore trains with as many wagons as you can fit on them that your locomotives are capable of pulling so that you minimize the amount of trips from mine to port and you maximize the amount of iron ore that's on each train rio tinto operates 15 iron ore mines in this region and 180 locomotives that operate on a 1 700 kilometer privately owned and operated rail network a fully loaded train three locomotives 2.4 kilometers long carries about 30 000 tons of war to the port but while rio tinto has the biggest rail network they don't have the biggest train that title belongs to bhp iron ore who set a new world record by running the longest and heaviest freight train between its yandy mine and port headland the 7.3 kilometer train was even longer than the las vegas strip it was made up of 682 wagons which conveyed 82 000 tons of iron ore but while bhp was working on breaking records rio tinto was working on a new project of its own the mine of the future program is focused on finding new ways of extracting minerals while reducing environmental impacts part of this program involves converting the entire pilbara rail fleet into driverless trains eliminating the need for stopovers and driver changeovers and that's taking some of the automatic train operation concepts from passenger railways and for the very first time in the world applying it to a heavy hall railway this auto hall system continues to develop and once fully operational will be the world's first fully autonomous heavy haul long distance railway system [Applause] rail transportation is great so long as you've got rails for everything else on land there are roads tracks and wild places [Music] the largest and heaviest road legal transport units in the world can be found in the australian outback they call them road trains restricted to the outback road trains are banned on most roads in populated areas due to their enormous size several regions in the northern territory western australia and queensland rely on road trains for the transport of goods from fuel to ore to cattle and everything in between a road train is made up of two or more trailers connected by converter dollies which means there is almost no limit to their theoretical length although 53.5 meters is the maximum length allowable on most roads but there are some private and mining roads in rural australia where you can find even bigger rigs super quads these road trains are comprised of four trailers spanning a total of 60 meters about three times the length of a cricket pitch one super quad can carry a 140 ton payload with predictable massive economic benefits road trains are most commonly seen on the stuart highway north of alice springs and the victoria great northern highway between catherine and broome so if you venture into the outback keep a lookout for the biggest vehicles on the road in an urban cityscape however road trains would never be able to [Music] operate it may sound contradictory but for every day hauling we need smaller scale super-sized vehicles the sprinter comes in two wheelbase variants two rooftop heights and three body lengths and can be used as a cargo van a crew van or a passenger van the highline version has been tailored so that you could literally stand up inside it all up the award winning series has over 40 variants making it one of the most versatile road vehicles in the world the sprinter has up to 16.6 cubic meters of cargo volume and the van itself is almost seven meters long two meters wide and 2.7 meters high with a wheelbase of 4.3 meters and it can be configured in any which way you want so as a luxury mobile office or as a general commuter bus with luxury accoutrements unladen it weighs up to a hefty 5003 kilograms [Music] the sprinter is available with a number of different engine options and the biggest being a twin turbo v6 diesel the sprinter is a giant of the large van landscape not just in size but in market share which is more than double that of its nearest rival making it one of the most dominating vehicles on the road [Applause] but there are places where it simply does not belong like where for instance the world's largest haul trucks operate introducing the caterpillar 797f [Music] as caterpillar's largest highest capacity haul truck it can move just about anything the 797f was developed because the machines to dig and load the materials kept getting bigger the 797f even when it's empty weights 623 tons and has a payload capacity of 363 tons that's the equivalent of two and a half average suburban homes even when the truck is fully loaded it can run up to 68 kilometers per hour that is amazing for such a huge machine and it's the most technically advanced mining haul truck caterpillar has produced the mammoth machine went from concept to production in just 18 months it was designed as a solution for mining companies to reduce cost per tonne in large scale operations and clearly it's succeeded one of the most exciting things about this truck is to climb the ladder in front of it and when you reach the cab the view that you have that is like staying two stores off the ground is amazing the 797f can hold just about anything but they need the materials first this is where the tackraf ers 710 comes in [Music] bucket chain excavators are among the largest terrestrial machines ever built bucket excavators are effectively diggers conveyors and loaders all rolled into one and it's the conveyor-like nature of the bucket excavator that makes it so extremely efficient they are continuous mining machines able to remove coal ash and earth among other things one of the largest excavators ever created is the tacraf ers 710 it has 38 buckets each with a capacity of 710 liters the tack raft can outstrip the production rates of all traditional types of earth moving equipment such as drag lines face shovels and haul trucks the ers710 can move 1500 cubic meters in just one hour give it a couple of hours and it can scoop out an olympic swimming pool bucket chain equipment like the tack wrap are not necessarily the right tool in every mining environment but in the right situation they are unbeatable for the amount of earth they can move when it comes to moving lots of earth in a hurry only the biggest most powerful machines will do and the biggest is the bagger 288 strip miner the guinness record holder for the largest terrestrial vehicle a bagger is a digger a conveyor and a loader all rolled into one the 12 247 tonne miner was originally designed to operate at the hambach mine in western germany where it removed the top layers of soil from coal seams before mining the bucket wheel excavator is 96 metres high meters long with an impeller that is eight stories high there's a central body of the machine which sits on a set of caterpillar crawlers and that that's advantageous because it gives it a relatively low ground bearing pressure which means the machine's inherently stable in a day the bagger can move up to 217 724 tons of earth and coal that's enough to remove the top layer of earth on almost 100 football pitches unsurprisingly it didn't take long for the bagger to exhaust the coal supply at hambach and in just 23 years it put itself out of a job [Music] luckily there were bigger and better things waiting for it at gas violence strip mine the bagger helps produce approximately 91 million tons of coal per year this means that this gigantic machine provides 15 of germany's general electricity supply [Music] i think being a human being sitting inside so many tons of machinery with such powerful motors and able to move such vast amounts of earth would be an incredibly humbling experience as technology continues to advance so does our desire to build big and today some of the biggest machines aren't found on land or water but in the air [Music] in the mid-1980s a unique airlifter was designed and constructed to transport huge heavy cargo it's the antonov am 225 maria and it's the biggest plane in the world it was awesome and that's to use the word properly it was awesome simply because of its size big enough to hold 10 battle tanks and with a wingspan twice the length of a football field the maria has set 240 world records in its time including transportation of the heaviest cargo at 230 tons the heaviest single piece of cargo at 169 tons and the longest cargo at 42.1 meters back in the 1930s when boeing introduced the b-17 bomber which is tiny like modern standards oh it'll never fly it's too big well of course it did and then the 707 airliner i will never fly and of course it did and so it goes on because those basic physics principles apply [Music] in the 1990s the maria was considered as the basis for the development of several aerospace systems it was originally designed to carry the buran which was the soviet equivalent of the space shuttle at 84 meters the maria is longer than the airbus a380 and the boeing 747 it's got six engines of around 50 000 pounds thrust each so that's 50 more power than the 747 and its size helps it to save lives the maria is often the only aircraft big enough to speedily deliver all the supplies urgently needed in response to emergencies it flew generators to samoa to provide electricity after a devastating tsunami and delivered bulldozers trucks and tractors to haiti in the aftermath of its dreadful earthquake it is the biggest conventional airplane in the world has been since 1988 when the one and only example made its first flight it is huge if you see it in the flesh the maria is undoubtedly a huge success but not every super-sized flying machine is a plane sometimes you need more than size you need versatility the world's best production helicopter in terms of load capacity is the mil mi26 used to transport troops the mi-26 is deployed for all sorts of operations from transportation to evacuation to firefighting [Music] the mi 26 can carry up to 82 fully armed troops or 20 tons of cargo at a maximum speed of 295 kilometers per hour its size is more hercules transport than helicopter in 1982 the mi 26 broke the helicopter record for greatest mass lifted to 2000 meters lifting 56 768.8 kilograms of cargo about half the weight of a blue whale the helicopter was designed by marit tischenko to transport such large military equipment as armored personnel carriers and mobile ballistic missiles to remote locations it's got two enormous turbo shaft engines which are jet engines that drive the rotors more than 11 000 horsepower each they are massively powerful engines and they need to be because a helicopter basically needs three times as much power to get off the ground as a conventional airplane of the same weight does the mi 26 which first flew on the 14th of december 1977 and was in military and commercial service by 1985 remains the second largest and heaviest helicopter ever constructed nothing else really matches it as far as its load lifting capability at the moment and it fills a niche that no other helicopter can do today the fleet is made up of around a dozen helicopters with an additional 22 of the up-to-date variants the mi 26t [Music] the mil-mi 26 is a super-sized example of one of the most high-tech forms of modern aviation but all amazonian aircraft come from humble beginnings taking flight on november 2nd 1947 the h4 hercules was built from laminated birch and spruce wood earning it the nickname the spruce goose it was six times the size of any aircraft at the time [Music] it was 67 feet long had a wingspan of 97 meters so its length was only about 4 meters less than a 747 so that gives you some idea of its size which of course was for its time enormous it's a 200 ton machine laid out something like a ship inside with two decks and accommodation for 700 people howard hughes a hollywood movie producer founded the hughes aircraft company in 1932. in 1937 he personally broke the transcontinental flight time record after flying around the world in three days 19 hours and 14 minutes the idea behind the spruce goose was conceived in 1941 when america entered the second world war the american government commissioned hughes's company to build a flying boat which could carry men in material long distances [Music] due to the war steel supplies were limited which is why hughes opted for wood the hercules cost 23 million dollars to develop and took so long to build that by the time it was completed in 1946 the war was over nevertheless the hercules embarked on its maiden flight the next year these tests now being carried out but intended to be no more than runs on the surface presently hughes opened her up he flew her just above the water for about a mile and i'll bet that gave the millionaire pilot one of the biggest roles in a lifetime full of thrilling adventures but it was found that its wooden frame wouldn't support its weight over long distances and the hercules remained in hughes's private hangar until his death it is well known that howard hughes was inclined to be a bit eccentric from time to time it flew we did it that was how it used that's the way he operated [Music] despite the failure of the spruce goose designers and engineers were not deterred from dreaming of building big there is only one aircraft with the lift speed and size to transport some of the elements of the international space station the super guppy the super guppy was part of a family of guppies built by aerospace lines the company in america there was the super guppy there was the mini guppy and there was the pregnant guppy capable of traveling at 467 kilometers per hour the guppy has a cargo volume of 1104 cubic meters about a hundred times more than the big drum on a concrete mixer truck it's about the size in terms of length of a boeing 737 so it's not a huge airplane but its hugeness of course comes from the structure that has been built on the top of the fuselage to carry the outsized loads [Music] logistically the transport of oversized cargo has always been a problem trains and trucks have limitations nasa's guppy offered a solution the original intention was for it to be carrying components of the saturn v rocket for nasa nasa was able to transport crucial cargo in only 18 hours [Music] compared to the 18 to 25 days it would take on a barge the guppy played its part in helping america win the space race a larger super guppy was built in 1965 featuring more powerful engines a bigger cargo bay and a unique hinged nose that could be opened to 110 degrees to simplify and improve the efficiency of cargo loading the cockpit swung open like a giant door so they could load whatever they wanted to load into it i thought interesting concept works well during its service the super guppy has flown almost 5 million kilometers and has supported nasa's apollo gemini skylab and international space station programs the super guppy is still part of the space program today believe it or not there is another aircraft that can carry even more than the super guppy and it is designed to transport the components of other giant jets the airbus a300 600 st beluga [Music] the beluga was built by airbus to replace the guppies it was using to transport its various components around europe to the factories the beluga is 56.15 meters long and 17.25 meters high with a wingspan of 44.84 meters with one of the widest cross sections of any aircraft the beluga can transport just about anything from space station modules to helicopters the beluga combines the ability to carry oversized cargo with the speed and efficiency of a modern airliner they took the airbus a300 and did a guppy to it basically put a large lump on top of the fuselage the opening front to slide the bits in and out and off they went also known as super transporters the five existing aircraft will soon be joined by a new generation of aircraft the beluga xl it's fascinatingly interesting because of what it does and the way it's been designed to do its job [Music] sea rail earth and air anywhere in the world and for every facet of life we found ways to haul just about anything within the next 20 years we will begin to see cargo ships operating without any crew on board at all from cutting-edge engineering marvels to machines that give back to the environment to life-saving giants [Music] as we continue to supersize and extend the realms of possibility one thing remains the same we're in this for the long haul big time you

Channel: Spark

Views: 134,537

Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, Engineering, Learning, How To, education, documentary, factual, mind blown, construction, building, full documentary, space documentary, bbc documentary, Science documentary, science mom, space documentary black holes, documentary space, warships season 10, warships season 8, warships season 9, warships in south china sea, mega mechanics channel 10, how do ships sail inot the wind, Canadian navy, Navy ships, ship science, hms ocean, cargo ship

Id: CVggI0-3h_0

Length: 52min 8sec (3128 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 15 2021