Engineering the Impossible

Cities Inside a City Engineering the Impossible focussed on three incredible, yet physi wishy possible, engineering projects the 170-story Millennium brood, the society mile (14 km)-long Gibraltar Bridge, and the 4000+-foot-long liberty Ship. Millenium Tower Imagine a skyscraper almost doubly the coat of the Empire State Building. This colossus would be a city within a city, hosting its own hospitals, schools, and a range of entertainment and sell options large enough to attract and keep the transaction necessary for the pecuniary success of such an endeavor. StatsHeight 2,755 feet, 170 stories Resident Population 52,000 ski lift Traffic 100,000 people per day view Hong Kong Harbor snuggled reinforcement congenator Petronas Towers, Kuala Lampur (1,483 feet, 88 stories) Construction Duration Approximately 10 long time Cost $10 zillion Beyond the physical challenges of building the tallest skyscraper in the world, it will only be successful if it attracts residents, tour ists and offices. The Millennium Tower necessarily to offer many choices to begin it a destination of choice. Residents can go to not just one grocery store, but many.Office workers can swan a few clothing stores on their level or the equal amount 30 floors up. Tourists can find the movie they want in at least one of the many theaters available. Designers vocalise Millennium Tower will house as many options as youd find in several city blocks. Construction of the Millennium Tower will include traditional building techniques, that, in this case, will put ironworkers thousands of feet in the channel to place 5-ton girders with a marginal of safety gear. But engineers are homework to alike use a new technology building by computer.The Self-Rising Factory is a set of computerized cranes and lifts surrounded by a proof enclosure. According to a precise schedule, the stigma beams are essentially give to the machinery which then places them for workers to bolt together. Once the beams and concrete panels for each floor are complete, the machinery hoists the entire structure and the process starts over. Gibraltar Bridge A link spanning 9 miles over the Straits of Gibraltar at the entryway to the Mediterranean would be the bimestrial and tallest ever built.It would connect cultures of Christianity and Islam and potentially increase ties between the economies of Europe and Africa. Stats Location Strait of Gibraltar. Links Spain and Morocco. Length 9 miles, Two spans of 4 1/2 miles each Height Each tower is 3,000 feet tall (twice as high as the worlds tallest skyscraper) Width 5 traffic lanes, 2 segmentation lanes in each direction Road Deck Material fibreglass Length of Wire Cables 1,000,000 miles (Enough to circle the Earth almost 30 times) Closest living relative Akashi bridge in Japan, worlds longest suspension bridge at 12,828 feet.Cost $15 billion Dangers Wind speeds of 80 mph at tops of towers, venture collision, ocean currents, traffic, Sahara Desert dust storms Building a bridge the size and configuration of Gibraltar Bridge is usually protected by artificial islands so that places run aground before they can do any damage to the structure. But building an artificial island in the ocean isnt an option. Instead designers envision a ring of underwater bumpers to withstand ship collisions. This could be impossible to span a 9-mile bridge but actually, they can.When find the exact size of the bridge, designers had to choose between a shallow athletic field that spanned 20 miles, which would have meant many piers in a busy cargo ships zone, and a narrow portion thats 2,700 feet deep. But designers lucked let come in. After closer revue of the narrow portion revealed an underwater mountain in the center that could throw off the center piers, dividing the bridge into to spans of 4 1/2 miles each. 5 lanes of traffic in either direction will flow over a roadbed made of spun glass.Fiberglass materials of this sort are rat ed 5 times stronger than concrete, and any cracks or other damage could be isolated due to its web-like internal structure. Engineers say fiberglass bridge materials can last up to 100 years. Theyre also easier to install. A concrete roadway on the Gibraltar Bridge would take 3 months to pour as opposed to a few days or weeks with fiberglass. Freedom Ship Freedom Ships designers originally planned to create an island society to provide Hong Kong-based businesses a place to relocate if the handover of that city to China were to make life difficult for them.When they applied the same model to a touching sea platform, they ended up with what would be the largest ocean-going vessel ever constructed the minimum requirement for a city at sea. Stats Length Approximately 1 mile Width 3 city blocks (4,320 feet) Height 25 stories incubus 3 million tons Volume Titanic, Queen Mary, USS Nimitz and super-tanker Jahre Viking would all outfit comfortably inside. Population 50,000 residents, 15 ,000 workers, 20,000 visitors/day Construction Hull composed of 600 120x100 steel cells bolted together.Location Circles globe every two years Closest Living Relative Japans Megafloat Airport, Tokyo Bay (1km long, 70 meters wide, 20 meters depth) (Series of interlocking pressurized steel boxes) ply 100 electric podded propulsers at 3500 horsepower each. Cost $9 billion Freedom Ships designers say it will be able to handle tidal waves and large-scale hurricanes by steering out of their way to avoid them altogether. If a confrontation is unavoidable, theyll turn all of the ships 100 propellers, pointing towards the center of the ship for stability.The ships take away is composed of 600 huge air-tight steel boxes. A significant get along of these would have to be punctured before residents noticed anything amiss. Freedom Ships designers call it a floating sea platform. In simliar design, Japans MegaFloat airport id built out of steel boxes bolted together to form a surface on the w ater. Whereas the airport is moored to keep it from drifting, Freedom Ship would be mobile. A structure this size couldnt be built in a traditional manner at a shipbuilding facility and subsequently be lauched into the sea.The construction on this project would instead take place in the water, with large pieces floated out to be attached on the site. Freedom Ships designers aim to create a new lifestyle. Residents will have a homelife while constantly traveling. The ship would be like a Disneyland offshore, entertaining tourists with the amenities of a restore while residents enjoy daytrips in each port. If successfully built The Freedom Ship will be the largest ocean going vessel in history, it will become a luxury city afloat travelling the world.