How To Plan A Mega-Project | Building The Biggest Compilation | Spark

Overseas, off the coast of Norway, a giant underwater structure pushes its way into the sea hoping to lure you to the ocean floor. It is the most powerful maritime crane in the world. On the same type of coastline as Britain, another sea monster is crawling north, but only four kilometers a day. These extraordinary machines may be 900 kilometers away but they are working together to build the world's largest underwater gas pipeline. is running out of gas at an alarming rate is facing the

biggest

energy crisis in its history the solution is 1200 kilometers away, in the depths of the Norwegian Sea, where 300 billion cubic meters of gas have been discovered, More than five thousand men are trapped in a race against time to release the gas, build a refinery and ship it to the United Kingdom along the world's largest undersea oil pipeline that bears the name. a viking ship the ormond langer gas field will supply the uk's energy needs for years the gas will be pumped from the bottom of the ocean to nihama on the norwegian coast before traveling 1200 kilometers to easington in england however there is a small problem no There is To lay the pipeline you will need something very special, the lb-200 within 370 Mana, working 24 hours a day, heading north, towards the gas field, four kilometers per day, it is a floating factory, basically, It's a big assembly line, it's a repetitive motion over and over again to put on. the pipes are welded together to form a set of logs from point A to point B.

It will pump gas at 9 a.m. and from Norway to Easington, UK, miles away. The most crucial components of the entire operation are beginning their slow journey to the gas field. Template. It is an extraordinary piece of bright yellow engineering that is the key to releasing the gas. This giant tap will control the flow of gas to the processing

plan

t in Norway. It also acts as a guide for the drilling apparatus, but this is really the heart of the system. The Simpson production system, that's where the gas comes from, it's collected there and sent to the coast and without the template we won't have gas to the coast.

It's really the key element of the entire production system, getting the template to the site is one thing. Taking it to its final resting place requires a monster to enter the Dutch heavy-lift barge, the elf. 71,000 tons of immense transoceanic lifting power whose rental cost is staggering: five hundred thousand dollars a day. It is the largest in the world, five meters wide and from the deck. to kill it is 52 meters high and if you take the Boomer train to the slaughterhouse you are more or less 200 meters away, the largest block of the crane can lift 7.1 million kilograms, which is 7100 tons if you want a figure easier to compare.

So there are more than seven thousand wagons per crane, so we have two of those huge grains and together they can lift 14,000 wagons. One would wonder why it takes twice seven thousand tons of lifting capacity to lift the 1,150-ton jigs. that the combination of weight and depth actually exceeds the standard configuration in this Festival, the installation of the jig will be complicated because the target area is one kilometer below the surface in total darkness, it will take several hours to lower it to the seabed and then The elf has to maneuver the jig into an exact position above the gas field where it will be secured to the ocean floor, but at such depths, and I know this from the wild conditions above and below the surface, hitting the target is like trying to find a pin at the bottom of a pool blindfolded, first you have to configure the roof so that the elevator reaches the bottom of the ocean, you have to run more than six kilometers of new cable on each crane and it costs a million dollars to roll it up. the cable the pulleys only six times instead of the usual 40.

We will sacrifice lifting power but gain the necessary depth. This is the first time something like this has been attempted today. We have already curled one of our abs on our port gear. The block is currently at the depth we require to install the oral learning structures. Today we are reading the starboard parade with a few more rows. Careful preparation. The field should be ready for lifting. If everything goes as

plan

ned, they will try to go down inside the area. In the next 12 hours, the situation really is that everything has to go right the first time and that's the special thing about operations like this: they can't commit when we take it off, it's a point of no return, so I'm looking forward. for the next few days, but with the conditions becoming unpleasant, will the attempt to raise the squad if they do not move forward be very costly?

Flex decisions must be made, thank you. Bad weather is wreaking havoc on the gas field to attempt a downsizing now would be too dangerous several hundred kilometers to the south conditions remain good the 200 lb is going as planned, slowly but surely heading north towards the Staff in charge is Jimmy Peacock, we have been in business for over 21 years. drove thousands of miles of pipe, this one is special, it's 12 meters long or 40 feet, whichever you prefer, it's 23 mil or an inch thick, almost an inch thick, it's 44 inches in diameter, which is a piece of large pipe, it also has about six thousand of master layer and then 80 ml of concrete, the concrete layer is what is used to keep the pipe at the bottom so it doesn't float to the surface, all that added up, which makes approximately 20 to 21 tons, the finished pipe will require one million tons of steel and one million tons of concrete 124,000 pipes needed are shipped to the 200 lb. continuously today four and a half kilometers of pipes to maintain a constant flow to meet the deadlines before the end of the season below deck 370 men are working flatten 24 hours a day welding a new piece of pipe every six minutes in the area where we unload the pipe from the pipe supports to The Deck.

Store them here on the storage shelves until they are placed on the chamfering stations chamfered with the traces for your main line welds in detail the weld that is still on this pfm pipe facing machine. Actually, look at the answer to the pipe, so it doesn't have two of the 12 meter links that are welded together to form a 24 meter length, it's what we call a double foreign joint. In line with, we have stations one to one to four, we do all the welding, we put the tubes together to make them a continuous line, we have done it, you know, close the planets, the galaxies go along the sun, huh, and this machine is spinning?

The pipe that makes the job faster and easier, well, I'm doing it as a visual inspection of this well, just to make sure there are no defects on the surface. This is a good world. I'm very happy with him consuming that NDP. station five is where they did the scanning of each weld to make sure there were no defects. Station six is ​​where they placed the Cyber ​​Rat with sheath that seals the permanent water being able to reach Bear Valley thanks and then it goes to station seven. and eight with a foam midfield protected from any test board and giving a smooth surface on the bottom.

I made a nightmare and we had an exceptional day last week, we covered 5.3 kilometers in a 24 hour period, which is equivalent to 216 double joints welded together in a 24 hour period, which is exceptionally good for the four industries meet the deadline. The 200 lb faces it. The bad weather that hinders the lifting of the template is on its way south and could paralyze the pipeline. Jimmy and his crew face a cooling schedule and an unforgiving seafloor in the waters surrounding the gas field. The seabed is like a lunar landscape. The results of a giant underwater landslide eight thousand years ago.

Horrendous terrain for pipe lining, but to make matters worse, they have encountered a sheer cliff 200 meters high, usually in offshore work. The bed of DC is quite flat, so it is actually the old Milano, which is so special that it requires special solutions and that solution is a spider, an all-terrain underwater excavator specially designed to open trenches through the most hostile places . The seabed with the underwater cliff between the pipe and the spider jig is ready for action. The identification comes from the Swiss Forester machine, which is an extreme machine for working on 30-40 degree slopes like a climbing machine and we adopted that technology to actually use it.

When walking, these legs can move to fit and level the machine and work like a normal spider. It operates at more than 800 meters, a depth at which no man can survive and which no man has ever seen with his own eyes. It is controlled by Halver Snelligan, who he trusts. in computer images to remotely operate the underwater path, clear this screen here Chelsea is having a party sitting on the bottom of the sea, so when we sit on the bottom of the sea, we level the machine so that it is level when we are doing the work and then we dig the um it sticks into the bottom of the sea so we don't slip and then we just start the high power pumps and we cut the earth and suck it up we don't actually dig it we have a very precise system during the operation visibility is Well, basically zero, so we are completely dependent on these graphic monitors.

It's like a video game. The spider has a tough job. It has already cleaned more than 10,000 tons of rock and clay from the seabed. Now we have dredged the steepest part of it all. Malong area is ready to lay the pipelines. It's been a lot of work in wet conditions in a short time, but we're almost done so I'm very happy. Nihama. A huge construction site the size of 120 football fields is being built on the coast of Norway. When completed, it will process 70 million cubic meters of raw gas each day. Thanks, the gas has to flow continuously, but at such great depths, the sea temperature can drop below zero, which could freeze the gas, clogging the jig and stopping the gas flow.

On land, the solution is inside these tanks. In these tanks we have 30 million liters of antifreeze liquid. The antifreeze fluid, of course, would be to prevent the Wellspring from freezing on the way from the subsea production tree to the onshore terminal. The finished factory. More than 300 kilometers of pipelines and more than 15,000 valves are needed to clean and dry the gas. This is where the gas will come and go. Two pipelines arriving from the Ormond Langer field, one leaving Brook, the gas will spend just 10 minutes at the processing plant in Nihama before embarking on a two-day trip to Britain.

The work is not only carried out in the surface, below the surface, a network of caves is being excavated in solid rock when completed, these chambers will be huge light holding tanks oil that is released with gas the method of construction of explosives the explosives team is preparing the next explosion to destroy the piece of rock they are standing on and level it with the floor of a cavern below stage one charging the wells stage two carefully connecting the detonation system Stage 3 evacuation Underground explosions create extremely dangerous shock waves . Only key personnel are allowed to remain in the cabin.

Blaster arrives at the cavern floor in an evacuation vehicle. She carries carefully mapped detonation coordinates and, oh yes, in his pocket is a book of matches three minutes after a third. diffuse, then the car better run abroad while the multiple charges explore over 5000 tons of solid rock disintegrate in all the caves the pressure wave creates pulses of fog as everything settles the boss Blaster gives the go-ahead, The cleaning begins, they come back with their heavy machinery and start cleaning the Rock and they continue like this for about 20 hours and then they start doing it all over again.

How many explosions are there probably left around six and seven for this bank that we are breaking from time to time we have the smallest things left? What to do later we hope to be finished in a month or two we discover that foreign deadlines must be met if they are to be ready for the gas to return to the template a storm has broken out during the night sea conditions are even worse with stopovers of fear flashing rain and wild seas the squad moves away from the field meteorologist Paul Hutchin is starting to feel the pressure well the ground conditions hope to make the lift is nothing more than a kind of modular cool winds are making strong winds at all For the operation, they would also look for moderate seas, certainly not rough seas, so we are looking for seas where there is not a lot of white water.

We just hit 34 knots and that's the Gale horse, so it is. quitewind and as you can see the sea is also very rough so yes the conditions are quite spectacular at the moment especially in August they have a limitation on the height of the waves because we don't want the barge to move too much if hit. the skirts before we manage to lift it, it is clear that it would be an uncomfortable situation, in addition, the same wave criterion is there to prevent the crane inversion from moving too much because then we receive too many loads in the launches, so there is a series of things that can really knock us out by reducing the $26 million staff dependent on a thousand dollar ball that will help Paul predict something cold, significant wave.

It's a significant wave, it's a statistically derived wave, so it's not a wave that you can actually see, um, but it's a wave that would be more likely to be observed and that's what we're forecasting right now, like I said, we have around 2.8, almost three meters of significant wave that we are looking for, much less than that and the level of the train up. at 45 knots of wind and we're also looking for a lot less than that to get the job done, so it's too wild at the moment. Good morning gentlemen and ladies, Paul, can we start with the weather forecast please?

We are in a very unstable period of time right now, as we all know, the major wave is around 2.4 or 2.5 meters at the moment and we expect it to gradually break down, but I think by the time we get to the end of the tomorrow. uh, tomorrow the significant wave I think will increase above two meters. The forecast means that the installation of the jig could begin this afternoon. There is a buzzing sound around the ship, but as the weather changes by the minute, there may not be enough time to complete the descent based on the weather forecast.

We have a small chance that it won't be a great period. this afternoon tonight and early in the morning tomorrow morning the other thing that is not very promising so there is no second interval for a long time the weather forecast looks completely different from the forecast you gave us yesterday, can you explain why? Yesterday you gave us a weather forecast for the weekend in very good conditions. Certainly, look, the seeds are changing a little faster today and the winds are rising a little faster tomorrow. Unfortunately, forecasts change. The fact is that the depression is advancing during the course of Friday.

It is deeper and therefore there is more wind associated with it. It's unfortunate, but that's why the typical Norwegian story changes somewhere with the possibility of the uprising happening this afternoon. It's just a matter of waiting for the next forecast, but it's not good news. I just had to tell the guys that it looks like the weather window we were hoping for tonight and tomorrow is no longer there. I hope it's certainly not the duration. They want it anyway, so instead of having our 20 or 24 hour weather window, it's now down to about 12 hours, so it's not really enough to make the increase in your weather forecast, it's a complicated matter and occasionally the forecasts go wrong and have to be lowered. and uh and inform the client that it is not pleasant but unfortunately it is part of the job the only thing we all need is the right weather window to start unfortunately the weather will improve tomorrow morning and it will be quite strong too, that means we just have to wait, Since summer is almost over, the longer you wait, the lower the chances of installing the template.

Rent of half a million dollars a day. The elf remains inactive. Foreign meteorologist for the Langer gas field has predicted difficult conditions for the coming days. The delays are causing great concern, the pipeline is getting closer and closer and the crew must begin their journey to the ocean floor soon. Ormond Langerfield will supply gas to the UK for the next 40 years, but its development has taken much longer, 65 million years ago. The rugged landscape of Norway was being formed The rivers were eroding The Rock and flowing into the sea there it was crushed into solid sandstone a reservoir to trap gas by observing sandstone samples geologists created an image of the prehistoric sea Quite tall bears some of They are up to pebble sizes, which is amazing and it's actually very interesting because this pebble here is rounded, so it may have been on the coast of an ancient coast 65 million years ago, the gas has been here since Dinosaurs roamed the planet on which it formed.

From the decaying remains of dead sea creatures they formed in rocks from the Jurassic era, that is, when dinosaurs lived on Earth and moved to much younger rocks, the sandstone unit, the rest of our unit , the normal maybe 10 million years ago, but it is interesting to look at the class composition because they can tell us something about the source area. Yes, the gas is actually trapped in an 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. The spatial porosity, as we call it between individual signs, gives the sandstone itself a very high quality sandstone, which is very typical of the Ormond sandstone.

The special thing about the sandstone in omelong is that it is very high quality and as this sample shows, it has extremely high porosity and I demonstrate the porosity by blowing into the sandstone and a lot of the air that comes out of my mouth goes directly into the sandstone because there is more 30 percent open space here, so it's very high quality. Rock, it is one of the best remains of our rocks that we have on the Norwegian shelf, so it is very suitable to contain the gas in Romania 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 exploring the Norwegian Sea exploring the ocean floor. They produced thousands of meters of information that ended up in a warehouse. They remained collecting dust for the next six years until the oil company Hedro dusted them off. I fell and made a surprising discovery. I entrusted Tianoxen, who was my most experienced physicist, with the task of carrying out some reconnaissance work on seismic lines in the deepest part of the Basin. A few days later, he came to my office one night, very excited. Discovering some very interesting things about this data, it took me about five minutes to get excited because they both saw that this looked very promising and the most important observations he made were these little black dots here called flat dots and those are actually indications. of hydrocarbon Contact with water and we thought it was gas, they knew that this two centimeter trace was an incredible find buried in reams of identical data that could be priceless, so what happened next was that I contacted the high manager present and in the end I convinced myself and said: "Okay, you have all the funds you asked for, but keep this a secret." Anyone who is leaking information will be fired.

A handful of trusted employees gathered to dig a little deeper. They were sworn to secrecy. The chosen few began to delve deeper. in a multi-million dollar search it was a normal day at work and I remember hell came over me and he said you have to come to my office, I have something to show you and he closed the door and said this is top secret. If you tell anyone about it, it will be very serious. We knew this could be huge. It could be one of the largest gas fields in the North Sea. The team caught on almost immediately.

The only way to get physical proof of gas. The presence of oil is to drill 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 operation and then eventually drill the expression well. Thanks in the summer of 1997, we started drilling the field and Of course, that's the Moment of Truth approaching and approaching pretty quickly when you first go to drill in place. I'll start drilling, it was anxiety because all this work, all this had to go well, of course, we were sure. before and it hasn't worked, so there's always a lot of excitement when we drill.

The expression was what we were waiting for once we approached the site. It was what we call a perforation. It's easier to drill sand than Trail and you can feel it all the way. to the platform in the way the drilling rig behaves, so I think it was August 25th when we had a negative drill break, so Kaboom was down and then two meters below the drill break positive, we had sand on us, so we knew that all the work and the predictions that the young people had were correct was really huge we were pretty sure that we had found the second largest gas field on the Norwegian shelf that's what we felt that the The world had shown that more than 300 billion cubic meters of gas is a huge fine.

Any global scale may be huge, but getting out from under the hostile ocean floor is causing problems. Thank you. The 200 lb pipe ship has a few weeks to meet its deadline. She is running north toward the template at an astonishing speed of four kilometers a day. It has to keep moving forward to do that it uses an unusual form of caged propulsion k-e-d-g-e means moving by anchors so that's what we're doing, we're fishing on our own instead of moving by its own steam, it pulls 14 anchors spread all over the place. The anchors are moved forward by special tow 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 seven of a great positioning, about 700 meters close to the barge at a time, but in rough seas the boats cannot raise anchors safely if it becomes too dangerous The barge will stop in the middle of the ocean The barge will be stopped for too long The pipe will have to be sealed and thrown to the bottom of the sea In timely, expensive and dangerous operations, the ships are going to go look at their anchor bush to see if it is possible catch them if your man can safely connect to the anchor buoys, they will go to work if they are not already there.

Re criminal deck determined it's too dangerous, they won't catch them later to London, yes sir, when you get there before you go to starboard six, go to starboard seven, see if you can grab the midline buoy and drag it out. . barge away, the

biggest

ones are about five I think, but very good with us, right, Roger, that can, just take 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 200 lb stops today with a pretty miserable day due to the weather uh we are in a slow light period because there is too much height for the anchor handlers to move the anchors.

Safety is the number one goal here. We don't want to hurt anyone, we want everyone to go home the same way they came, so it's too unsafe for the guys to win the acronym, we'll be left behind, but now it's us against Mother Nature within the pipeline. standing still, the crew can only wait for karma conditions to return, costly delays and stormy seas aren't doing the pipeline any good, maybe they want to steal, but the pipeline still bends covered twice on the way down S-shaped without support if the sea is rough, the bends could be overloaded causing damage to the pipe structure when we start to exceed seven meters, well, you start to have pipe fatigue factors that damage the surface of the casing concrete, so at that point it's time to put the pipe in the bottom, otherwise you'll have to cut everything you put in that day at 8 p.m. the weather is getting worse the pipe ship is still sitting in the middle of the North Sea and Jimmy Peacock's schedule is in jeopardy The time is approaching when you will have to consider dropping the pipe ship the way he wants do it.

Today's goal is very far away. We're probably putting in six separate double joints today. It's not that good at all, but it's better to have. to lay the pipeline if there is humidity when the weather changes, we already have the pipeline up, we are ready to taxi, so as soon as the weather improves, we can take off and start landing the pipeline back to the gas field. the weather is getting worse lowering the jig now will be too dangerous while waiting for the weather to improve Jim gelpy The Remote Controlled Subs Navigator uses the time to prepare for jig installation.

The Subs will follow the progress of the jig on its journey to the seabed, then will become the eyes of the engineers as they place and secure the jig to the seafloor at this time we can dive, we are just waiting for the status of the sea ​​goes down so thatcan you launch the jig and put it through the water column safely this is where we control the ROV basically from this lady this pilot's chair and the navigator's chair are there we have several cameras a black box records the video and all the data pertinent comments from subscriber Rob, there's someone outside, make sure it's all clear, all clear, on the RV pad, the vehicle just came out of the water, not long ago, so there are just drops of residual water left there later, We also have a power monitoring ground fault. resistance, so drop your skull and stand up, knight.

I mean, the team likes to work, it's our job and we enjoy our work. I have some friends who really think I have the best job in the world. Jim and his team are relaxed about the schedule disruption, but Below Deck Head Chef Bertis Telpolars is very concerned about the delay with over 350 hungry mice to feed 24 hours a day. He is running out of food. We thought we would only be here for a few days. Economy more and more. and we only have professions for about three or three more weeks and that's it, so we're completely empty and supplies are running out. burtis has taken drastic measures staggering meals 120 hungry souls waiting to be released behind closed doors we have four settings today every six hour one and we have three main courses 24 hours later at midnight we have bacon and eggs for breakfast english breakfast and the same at 5: 30 in the morning Harry Paulson is the provisions manager when he placed his order for food in front of the theater he left Rotterdam he did not take into account the weather delays it is now quite empty because we have already been at sea for three weeks now that we are in Rotterdam yes, let's get this, uh, totally packed.

Harry needs the biggest shopping cart in the world when he goes to the supermarket, that's about a thousand kilos of meat that we use and 20 000 children 20 25 000 kilos of fish, that's quite a lot, I guess, of course, we just have to wait, It's not a surprise when there is no The action is not very fun and with wives and children at home you would like to get home as quickly as possible. On the other hand, this is an operation that most of us have been waiting for for a long time, so we are quite tolerant. With time running out and the weather steadily getting worse, there is a possibility that the squad will have to return to shore.

All of the team's hard work will be rewarded or the entire operation will be thrown into chaos. The two machines they brought to build the largest underwater oil pipeline in the world. The world may be big, but we have been tamed by bad weather, fortunately at 200 pounds, conditions have improved and we are on the move once again, returning to normal. Lake, thank you, the weather has improved. broken that the anchor tugs that are able to catch the anchor buoys and start moving daggers for us now that we are going to return to production and continue laying the pipeline, we will be back in full operation within the next hour or so and then We will continue to place five until the next weather front arrives, making as much ground as possible.

It's always good to get back to work, to get everyone back to work on the engine. Hey, it's good news for everyone, much further north in the climate. The delays have held up the jig installation for almost a week, but our latest conditions have improved a little and the engineers decide to do it once we have the right weather and then we move the barge to the stern of the ship which is below the two big cranes. The rig is prepared and placed on top of the jig, we connect it and once this is done, it is a takeoff.

Taking off from the barge is one of the riskiest parts of the installation, the jig must be raised quickly to avoid a collision when successfully lifted. Your journey begins a journey that will last several hours a journey to the bottom of the ocean The boat around we place it in the correct position and then slowly lower it to the seat is a tenth moment while the Hydro team gathers to observe the final positioning must have an accuracy of two meters, even after the template landed, there is still a lot of activity in the ROV staff anxiously working to batten down the hatches and clean, remove things and a series of activities 12 and a half hours after starting the the template is placed safely at the bottom of the sea, we have had a lot of problems with the weather, finally we got exactly the right weather and the operation was done very safely, everything went according to procedures and the structure is perfect at the bottom of the sea ​​right now, so, yeah.

I am very happy and very relieved that this operation has been an important step towards the completion of one of the largest construction

project

s in the world. Despite the horrendous weather conditions, the 200lb managed to complete the southern half of the pipeline on time, moving forward slowly but steadily. she reached her underwater objective in time to save the hard work of thousands of men. kept the

project

on time for ignition. That's when gas will finally start flowing from Norway to England along the world's longest undersea gas pipeline. Singapore. An economic miracle in In one generation, this small island in Southeast Asia has gone from third world status to first.

It is now undergoing one of the largest subway expansions in the world. A big challenge given that they are digging tunnels beneath a bulging metropolis. Difficult ground conditions. Would you put any pressure on him? and it just makes that toothpaste flat the job is time consuming and dangerous what worries me a little is that the tunnel machine is parked right under the pool what I would like to see is that the TBM moves away from those Condominiums will be able do so without causing the collapse of the mass of towers,

building

s and roads that make up Singapore.

Can these new tunnels pierce through the eye of a needle? Singapore is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, four million people? Crammed on a small island with fifteen thousand people per square mile, he confronted transportation chaos by creating an unparalleled public transportation system. By 2010, there will be a subway stop every 400 meters on most of the island. a risky business for the men who built it under this enormous Humanity, one of the points of our alignment here is that we have to avoid two high-rise structures, these are private structures. Condos here and here.

Chris Knight is a British engineer who recently worked on the expansion of the London Underground and now works for the Singapore government. On this massive project, if we get it wrong here by about an inch, that's just not acceptable and these are the things we just can't get wrong. These are the two

building

s that Chris's team is tunneling under as we increase the amount of ground underground. networks and so on in Singapore we are getting closer and closer to buildings and here you can see an example where we are literally passing through the eye of a needle, so here I am under the pool and behind me here is the TBM of mud, the TBM is launched through a hole in the ground, often to a depth of 30 meters, like a giant earthworm, it moves through the ground chewing up dirt and rock, then concrete rings are placed in the place where the soil has been removed. until it reaches its destination it's almost like a manufacturing plant, they're doing the same old thing, we're digging the ground, pushing ourselves forward, building a ring and removing the dirt as we go, the world of tunnels is slow, They can only place about seven of these 19-tonne concrete rings per day, which is equivalent to about 10 meters of tunnel.

Move too quickly on Singapore's soft soil and you'll be asking for trouble. If we try to move through the Boy Machine Tunnel too quickly, we may end up getting close too. a lot of ground and if that were to happen, what that would translate into maybe is there being too much or excessive settlement on the surface, what this could mean is that you start to see cracks or something like that in the building and that's something that we're really trying to avoid. a year for the huge tunnel boring machine to break through the wall of the excavated station up ahead this is the moment of glory when all the men who work underground dream of getting here in one piece well, up and down, the exercise starts one, two, three every morning. at eight in the morning the Japanese contractor prepares an army of men for the day's work the exercise begins they begin with some warm-up exercises the exercise begins one two three four four two three four okay knee rotation exercise one two three four two two three four three it ends with a call to action, we are going to work 25 meters underground, well, today there is a problem, the TBM is not chewing the rock as well as it should, so the man in charge stopped it and went to one of the most dangerous places underground The cutter head rotates this whole piece of metal and what it does is use these bike cutters to scrape and break up all the rocks and soil to dig into the ground so this is what who does all the work, but not looking good, has decided that the cutterheads need to change a dangerous job for his men.

We are about 20 meters underground. This earth can fall at any time if we are not careful, but the job must be done. Men are called to work in one of the most dangerous places underground One wrong step could spell disaster Singapore is undergoing one of the world's largest subway expansions. 13 construction teams work throughout the island. More than 5,000 men are building 33 kilometers of tunnels and 29 new stations. A 6 billion dollar project that requires two shifts. Working day and night, often in hot humidity exceeding 40 degrees, today they have had to stop one of the tunnel's giant machines and go directly to the front, where the earth around them can fall whenever they decide to change sharp, treacherous teeth. expensive job each blade costs ten thousand dollars to change all the teeth it costs half a million dollars if it starts to settle we know the ground above us is moving and if we see a lot of movement then I'll start I have no choice I have to get my boys out the work continues Into the Night is a difficult business with long hours for the man who supervises 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 work goes smoothly and the tunnel boring machine starts to turn again his work goes unnoticed in the sprawling metropolis 25 meters above the ground four million people living on an island half the size of Los Angeles is one of the richest and most culturally diverse countries in Asia Too It is said to be the most modern and efficient city in the world, but not long ago, Singapore was a very different place if you can get from one end of the universe to the other in 40 years.

I think Singapore has traveled. your journey I think one of the little known facts about Singapore is that it is one of the few developing countries that has actually made the transition from developing status to developed status and all in the space of 30 to 40 years in 1965 when Singapore gained its independence. of Malaysia were poor rickshaws and old buses that rattled through the streets and cars clogged the roads of this small island. We would have 15 people living in one room, in my case we had a family of six people and we lived in a one room room. home in Singapore, then it was a typical developing country in 1965, when Singapore became independent.

I think we have the same per capita income as Ghana, around 500 per year. Singapore's new leaders set out to build a new nation, demolishing old buildings and re-housed people in satellite cities and suburbs and, to get them to work, revolutionized commuting. Its mass transportation system is now one of Singapore's crown jewels. It transports more than 1 million people every day. It is the first country to have driverless heavy trains. Singapore is also the only country in the world that regularly reminds its travelers how they are expected to behave. Please do not eat or drink on railway facilities.

Thank you for your corporations and that includes chewing gum and now the infamous Singapore law. Do you know what is the reason for chewing? Chewing gum was banned in Singapore, one of the reasons is that someone would stick a piece of gum and the train doors wouldn't close and the train couldn't move, so I think that's when the government got very upset and said: " Hey". This has to stop Singapore opened its first subway line in 1987 and has been expanding it ever since, but before they started digging they consulted Mr Chong, an expert in the ancient art of feng shui.

Many Singaporeans were superstitious about digging a tunnel through the centre. of the city were worried that it would bring bad luck.economic center of Singapore, well this is the place where you are surrounded Bank by Bank, the better all the money is, so Mr. Chong got to work using an ancient feng shui compass and determined that the subway tunnel that connects the land via the river with the business center should run exactly from north to south the floor, the energy is this way, a good sign that would allow chi, a Chinese word for energy, to flow through the tunnels and this would bring prosperity and not bad luck.

Singapore is moving, energy, energy must move, energy must not be stagnant, just leave a door when, usually when the door opens all the time, you will not get a rusty door, the door will be there and the door will never be attacked by worms, so nothing. transferred will be a better and smoother flow. 130 kilometers of tunnels and tracks have been installed on this small island, eliminating a quarter of Singapore's population every day. By 2010, 29 additional stations will be built. It is expected to be one of the most advanced transit systems in the world. Getting there will not be easy, there is another problem with the tunnel boring machine, it has only moved a few feet and, as if the heavy rock seems like the pressure is increasing, it looks like a display case, may you ask? operator to stop the excavation hello the TBM has stopped once again it is now directly under the pool Chris has to make sure this doesn't turn into a disaster hello guys we still have blockages here yes we are I still have problems with the Rocks, yeah, those are the ones right down here, yeah, they've been blocked in the ring two, five, one, yeah, since yesterday, we're having problems with those rocks, with this choking in our pipes, okay, yeah , and this is. passing through the slurry discharge line before reaching the crusher.

Yes, today is what the problem is. We currently live with this problem. We have gone through two or three shifts to collect large blocks of rock. They are stuck in our line and it is causing us a blockage, which causes a lot of downtime and means we have to dismantle the pipes. It can be really a big problem for us. Blockage in the pipes means that too much pressure can build up. in the front of the TBM if there is a buildup of pressure Saul can fall potentially damaging both condominiums Chris' concerns take him underground to check the problem he is well aware that the TBM is stopped in a precarious place what I am A little What's worrying is this: The tunnel's Boeing machine is currently parked right under the pool between two large high-rise condo buildings.

One of my concerns is that throughout this entire process, have you been able to keep your footing on the face or front of the Boeing Tunnel Machine because that's what keeps too much ground from coming in. Have you managed to do that? Yes, we didn't do any heavy DBM, which shows that we only did about 10mm max. Chris sends a team of men to check the condos. measure any movement, any changes below ground will generally indicate changes above, they also checked any movement of the condos themselves overseas, so on this particular instrument, what is the movement you are talking about?

Two million, yes, two minutes, two millimeters, are considered nothing. More than 30 millimeters is when cracks can begin to appear in buildings when the saw moves and also the foundations. All our instruments show that we have done a good job, that we have balanced the pressures, yes, always, it is not the case and we do not do it. We have had no agreement or no notable changes so far everything is safe while the rocks causing the blockage have been cleared the control room instructs the driver underground to start the giant drilling machine style decoration no one is further afield both from Singapore's dangerous soil conditions and those of engineers working 30 meters underground, especially after April 20, 2004, when they suffered the worst disaster in their history.

They were almost done. Digging a station well like this when the retaining walls supporting these steel beams collapsed when the construction site collapsed into the underground gas pipeline. Broken water pipes broke and the six-lane highway right next to it split in two. A concrete mixer and a crane fell into the well full of water and four men were trapped inside. Finding bodies was not going to be an easy task for the workers of rescue and even the water we can't see anything at all so we have to fill up and that's how we start the operation feeding around the water underwater the rescue team searched for bodies in the market Waters risky business as it Faces the possibility of a greater collapse, well, you can hear sounds like expansions of the steel bars and contraction, which gives you a feeling of insecurity around the size.

Three bodies were ultimately recovered, the fourth was never found. Heavy rains made the rescue mission impossible. we don't finish the job we will always try to at least recover the body so you know we can give the family and the next good close to the incident and for us we can't do that yeah it's a It's a difficult thing for us and accept that the memories of 2004 still persecute many of the workers. Thank you beautiful ones, every day you pray to the Earth Gods to keep you safe as you remember the four lives lost on April Day.

Progress. Progress. Good behind the 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 motorway station and he has to do it in Singapore's Mucky soil a major factor in the collapse beautiful things to putty but exercise pressure on him and he just does it. That black toothpaste has been described to me, so when it comes to tunneling medium it's not very good, it needs constant support like a fluid. What the original station does is just in front of the compost construction, which is that.

Graham and his team have to rebuild the station 100 meters from the collapsed area and drill a completely new set of tunnels and the approximate alignment of the tunnels starts from here, so now we have taken the tunnels further south and you can see that the station is now a little further from the buildings, it is about 100 meters to the south, yes, yes, and then we have a very sharp curve at the other end, it was decided that it is easier, safer, certainly, more Sure, abandon everything. It's a shame that two tunnels in perfect condition are abandoned, throw them in the trash.

The former Nickel Highway station has now been almost completely covered over on the other side of the road. They have started building the new station. Its supporting walls will be thicker and the station will be excavated deeper. To avoid the disaster of 2004. The Japanese crane operator keeps a fish hanging in his window, a symbol of good luck abroad. A few miles away, Graham and his team are dealing with another setback. A condo building called Oki House is right next to where they are. When excavating one of the new stations, there is between 18 and 20 meters thick of marine clay under this building, so all of Street's consultants agreed that if we proceeded with the excavation, the building would be in danger, for What the decision was made was that we would acquire the building because the paramount thing would be the safety of the people who live there, so they started to tear it down, once it is demolished, they can start the excavation work again.

It's good to see the progress on this now, I mean in a few weeks we'll be done with it. Yes, it's a pretty cool progression dig, yes, but that's the key point. As soon as this is over in the next four or five weeks, we can continue working outside and get on with the real work. Yes, this is a long week. But for the 35 residents and seven merchants of this building they have lost their homes and their livelihoods. Singapore is one of the most urbanized places on Earth along its subway system beneath all this Humanity is a possible task sometimes it means tearing down buildings the condominium was in serious danger of collapsing with construction work underway right next door side 35 people lost their homes and many businesses were demolished Mr.

Tan fiang was the first resident to move into the condo building in 1965. He now lives with his grandson above the family's overseas t-shirt store the day he knows we we leave the building he doesn't know how to say a word, it is very, very distressing and it was like sitting there looking at the wall looking here and there he lost his contacts and lost his friends he lost everything he is very, very sad this sometimes is the human cost of making tunnels disrupting life above but there is one place on Earth where destroying buildings extending a metro line is strictly prohibited Historic Amsterdam many of its buildings date back to the 17th century it was one of the richest cities in the world they will soon build a tunnel beneath the city and the ground is softer than Singapore the challenge is not one of These old buildings can be touched.

No one is more sensitive to this than Amsterdam Deputy Mayor Mark Vanderhorst. It's very, very important to everyone who lives here that the city stays the way it is because all these historic buildings are deeply felt within. If you touch your heart with a finger, people get angry and then I think they are right that they put in a subway line 30 years ago, it was impossible to use a tunnel boring machine, technology had not advanced enough to go through that thick earth, so they dug the old fashioned way, tore up the streets and destroyed buildings along that path, not a popular movement in this medieval setting, tensions increased when the owners of the Los Condenados buildings of the human barricades filled their construction and then Suddenly he realized, it exploded, it was March 24, 1975.

The police arrived with tear gas and armored vehicles to force people out of their houses. At the end of the day, 30 people were injured, only a few abandoned the easier path. of the worst riots in the history of Amsterdam which was actually the beginning of two decades of, let's say, metrophobia, even the word metro line as we call it here in Amsterdam was more or less banned, all plans to expand their subways were suspended, but Today, congestion and the historic heart of Amsterdam have only gotten worse. There is simply no more space on the streets for additional trams or buses.

If you want to improve the public transportation system, you have to go to the metro and that is why we are going north. -subway south direct to the heart of the city center from north to south the city has finally given the green light to a plan that has been on hold for 30 years three kilometers of the route will pass through the most historic part of the city center this Maybe not One of the 1,500 buildings can be demolished. The spongy soil of Amsterdam. It is an almost impossible task. It's like flying to the Moon on a bicycle.

I think that is the best description of what Amsterdam looks like. It's impossible, but we're still doing it. I've handed that impossible task over to a handful of experienced engineers. The video is the construction bench. You stop there. Oh yes, I can. These men are digging virtual tunnels before the real work begins. They use computer models to predict the exact effects the tunnel machine will have. the historic buildings these predictions are fundamental to the success of this project that building is all red because it is inside the curvature the system tells us that we must be very careful in that place it is a challenging tunnel route with tight and narrow corners The Streets begin with the wooden foundations on which these buildings sit and could collapse in an instant.

What we're actually doing is driving a tunnel under the city and we're almost tickling the feet of the stilts that all the buildings and stuff are based on. A specific engineering topic has not been addressed in the past, there are museums, embassies and even the Royal Palace at stake. A lot depends on virtual tunnel predictions, so it's the best we can do at the moment. There is no reference in the world for a Project like this, so at a certain time you have to start when there is no guts, there is no glory, so they have started digging the station wells just a few meters from the buildings.

It is a precise job that requires close monitoring to detect any movement of the ground and that is done using robots. Station computers measure 7,000 points every day along the tunnel route. The largest monitoring program of its kind in the world. This building has settled almost 30 millimeters. Heck, if there's any unusual movement, the engineers are the first to discover it. The system notified us when the settlement occurred. This continued over the weekend while there was no construction going on at the time, so we were alerted and we were like, well what's going on, just one thing thatWhat we could do was fill the excavation pit with water again to stabilize the building they are in.

What is most worrying is the Central Station, one of Amsterdam's characteristic landmarks. It is also the busiest transport hub in the Netherlands, serving 300,000 passengers a day. Now they are preparing to do the impossible: drill a tunnel right underneath, but before they can begin, they have to rebuild the foundation by building two enormous columns 30 meters deep. Today they are working in the grand entrance hall pouring cement into those two. foundation columns using high pressure work that city engineers are watching like hawks what special measures have cities taken curtains us What we have installed, you know, we don't want the risk of everything exploding in the walls and the roof, so that we have taken these protective measures to avoid it and so far minor incidents have occurred, but not of any importance, actually, yes, Johan.

Bosch is the city's chief engineer. I would certainly be happy to see that he knows what is at stake. He is building for our National Heritage. Anyone putting this building together has a big problem. They are satisfied with the monitoring system, yes, the performance installed on a total of 54 prisms on the facade. from Central Station and they are being measured weekly to see what the settlements have been in the uh we have to be careful yeah you can see we are on the ground right now yeah obviously something went wrong in the process okay , there is no room for error, any mistake in the project will be closed, nothing can go wrong because when we damage this old city center, the project will stop and this would be a real shame for the men and women working on the other side of the street while construction workers dig, archaeologists sift. through the excavated soil a golden opportunity for the man in charge of preserving the history of Amsterdam this is just what emerged in the last hour let's not build material but those are individual fights that we select already by eye for example this is a clipping of the exterior Hull of a ship probably uh 14 from the 15th century we have a piece of early medieval pottery probably from the 13th century just a couple of finds Jersey Garonsky's team is collecting around 200 fines a day in a place that was once the medieval port from Amsterdam.

Until the year 1900, all these boats of course raced on the river bed itself and as we dig here we find hundreds and hundreds of tools related to maritime activities in the port of Amsterdam while construction workers dig deeper the artifacts. They get older, now they are working eight meters below the surface and most of what is emerging is medieval, this is the small caliber stone cannonball, so God is probably also medieval, let's say uh 1500, the archeology of the 16th century is the size of what I expected. We don't expect to find a cannonball where we find it, of course we can make predictions, but what we actually find each day we can't guess, so each day is a surprise.

Garonsky is reconstructing history by looking for clues to life dating back to the 12th century, when the first people moved to Amsterdam. Objects that will one day be displayed in a public exhibition that will integrate archaeology. Will the construction process have the advantage of two one-to-one outcomes? 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 building a tunnel in an ancient city. A perfect opportunity for a land in the past there in Singapore. Business as usual at the Serangoon metro station 25 minutes away. meters underground Engineers are dealing with one of their biggest challenges, however, they are digging a tunnel beneath an existing train station, to do so they have to remove the huge steel piles on which the station was built.

Doing it by hand will take them a year and a half to cover just 180 meters, this is exhausting and dangerous work, the ground is porous and full of water, which means that the collapsible ground is a serious threat to the train station that is located above gopali Krishan is one of the engineers paid to make sure there is no tragedy in making the station work. The tracks will obviously follow the station and be prohibited, so if there are settlements that exceed the uh of the maximum allowed, there is a possibility that the trains are real or close to having other problems and which is the one that will cause the biggest problems.

Disaster, this equipment constantly monitors the terrain to detect any signs of changing ground. That's great, okay Salman, the station has already settled to two millimeters, they will have to go in during the night and reset the tracks to their original level. Necessary measures to avoid derailment several kilometers away, another work that they are preparing to fly. 25 meters underground, they are building an escape shaft in case they have to evacuate trains. Between two subway stations they hit hard rock so they used dynamite. The man put the dynamite in previously drilled holes six meters deep. They are using 73 kilograms of dynamite right in the center of a residential neighborhood and next to a school Door-to-door warnings are given on the playground to ensure that no one ventures outside really unaware, the siren will sound for 30 seconds and then only an explosion okay we'll make sure I saw the kids aren't on the playground at that time yeah they're not okay thank you very much thank you bye you don't have any little kids in your house so it's okay just the dogs , but I think they behave quite well, okay, no, it's It's not going to be very loud, but you can definitely hear the sound.

The weather can change quickly in Singapore and there is a precarious situation for the men who plant the dynamite because the weather is receding. We're expecting a little bit of lightning that we're using. electrical charges so we have to bless it before the lightning hits, we don't want any interference with the lightning and electronic detonators right now with the storm approaching, the team is rushing to prepare the explosion in time if the schedules are missed of this window. You will be plunged into chaos. Expanding Singapore's subway system can be a dangerous business, especially when the construction team has to work in residential areas.

Neighbors, these men are making explosions right next to a school playground, they are building an escape shaft, an underground exit point between two subway stops. using dynamite, a dangerous game when the skies above could bring lightning, charges are placed and the site is evacuated, everyone appears to be inside and the storm appears to be holding out, removing the cover reveals a textbook explosion, missing five more explosions and this small part. of the Singapore Metro extension will be finished when it is completed. Singapore will have 29 news stations added to its state-of-the-art metro system. Many Singaporeans don't know it, but many of the stations are also built to be air raid shelters. foreign idea on the other side of the world in September 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 bombing raid was underway tens of thousands of people fled to the London Underground the oldest subway in the world the subway became the shelter a place to eat sleep and stay away from the bombs that fall on many of the 80 stations used as shelters will have two canteens each will consume tons of food every night delivering is the work of more than a thousand Over the many months that followed, the London Underground saved countless lives.

This inspiring story gave Singapore an idea. What we are looking at here is the blast resistant entry door closure. This is a sliding door and it is important for us to see many of the entire station before it can function as a civil defense shelter almost every new station that Singapore is building today can be transformed into a state-of-the-art defense shelter: with just flip a switch there are 20 tons of concrete in each door, nothing works through here, this will prevent our contaminants that may be outside in the external environment from entering the protected space. This will also prevent blood leakage from the outside from entering the shelter, so when the entrance armored doors are closed, the occupants of the shelter will have to pass through this path, if they are found to be contaminated, they will be told to enter. to our decontamination chamber and we have a series of showers to perform a decontamination procedure before they are told to join the rest of the shelters in the clean shelter area Singaporeans are master planners prepare for everything various stations are fully Once built the trains won't stop there for seven years they just like to be ready foreign vision for Singapore to have one of the most complete mass transportation systems in the world the world moves people quickly and you have a fast moving economy, it's one of the ways Singapore has managed to leapfrog from third world status to first space in a few decades, a huge achievement in fact, the International Space Station just 400 kilometers above Earth.

This is man's outpost in space if we ever want to go beyond the Moon it is this man made structure that will help us 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 the space station historically is the fact that this was the combined world that first left Earth. permanently. You are in a real international part of the International Space Station, an American robotic workstation inside a European docker that operates a Canadian arm and One of the things that the arm is going to do is deal with the Japanese transfer vehicle that will also supply logistics to the station with an estimated expenditure of $60 billion and, behind schedule, teams are working around the clock to procure essential components for the space station. ready for space only if NASA's shuttle runs regularly will it be possible to complete the largest structure ever built in outer space At more than 180,000 kilograms the International Space Station orbits the Earth every 92 minutes while traveling above us at 28,000 kilometers per hour For one 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 the Zapatero observation platform are being built in Italy and the Japanese experimental module under Frames are nearing completion at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the shuttle is the only means of transporting heavy equipment to the International Space Station, so if the ISS wants to grow it is essential that the shuttle runs as frequently as possible. possible.

Elena, the long wait may be over on behalf of the many millions of people who believe so deeply. what do we do good luck God Steve have some fun up there see the team and everyone in the shuttle program the crew goes to lunch start seven six five three engines on and start three two one and take off the space shuttle Discovery, starting America's new. The discoveries of the Journey to the Moon, Mars and beyond are underway at the International Space Station, now awaiting a depletion in the waste of the twin solid rockets. Discovery's discarded external fuel tank, the shuttle's destination is the International Space Station from the launch team down.

We have a lot of smiling, happy faces here now that the United States is back in the crew launch business. The task of providing the hardware and know-how to build the ISS falls to a global network of spaceflight experts and scientists. They dedicated their entire careers to making the International Space Station a reality. The combined manpower that has gone into building and launching a space station assembly into space to date represents the largest construction project in history, but it all comes down to this: Can they get the aim? Hardware and equipment are still needed to complete the station safely in space and at what cost it was on February 1, 2003 that the shuttle program suffered a catastrophic setback.

This is amazing, it's really getting pretty bright over there in Columbia, Houston, we see your tire. pressure messages and we do not copy your last communication. Communications with Columbia were lost around 8 a.m. central time, approximately 10 minutes ago. Flight director Lero Kane is nowinstructing controllers to publish their contingency procedures and begin following those that followed the ferry tragedy. The fleet was grounded indefinitely, leaving the fate of the International Space Station at stake. Trying to fly the shuttle again after a crash after it has killed people requires a lot of people working together, but it really takes a lot of courage.

Doing so too after a seemingly textbook launch, mission control was faced with a terrifying reality: the insulation disconnected from the fuel tank, no one knows the extent of the damage or even whether the shuttle and its crew will be able to return to home safe and sound. 2005. Earth weighs in as NASA prepares to inspect shuttle damage. The very future of the International Space Station is at stake. Billions of dollars in space. Hardware is on Earth awaiting a trip to space. Katie, honey, daddy has a main phone call. Can you be a little calm, darling? I think if they can't land in Florida they will end up landing in California.

Ian Christie and his team at neptec developed the laser scanning technology that is being used to locate damage in the belly of Space. Shuttle Discovery, the team just returned from Houston, where they conducted critical in-orbit scans of the shuttle. This is the first of a roughly 90-minute procedure that goes back and forth using the laser dynamic range imager, which is an infrared camera that ensures the nose was not damaged during the eight-and-a-half-minute discoveries. of ascent to orbit yesterday, but I bet there are a bunch of flight directors and people at mmt who were very happy to have 3D data and will be wondering where the next flight will be if they don't have it.

I have, the damaged nose cap piece actually had some laser camera data on it, so of all the things they were worried about, that one was presented there and that without having given much thought to how to get the date, I mean the next play. Learned lessons. They'll be waiting to do contingency stuff, yeah, it seems like every time they want to look at the tiles, they look at LCS. The Neptec laser camera is attached to a shuttle arm that maneuvers around the damaged ship, the scans were successful and the damage to the When the shuttle was located, the team discovered that some of the thermal insulation panels that protect the shuttle from the extreme heat on re-entry they broke off at launch.

It's funny to me because I've been working with Ian Christy for over 10 years. He supported me. on my first flight and seeing those first thoughts about the lasers and the cameras that we need to see them evolve and become something that made it possible to fly Discovery, those guys should really be very proud of the creativity of the inventions. Chris Hadfield knows everything about how mechanical arms work as head of robotics for NASA astronauts. He is responsible for the shuttle's largest arm, the Brother Canada arm, which is permanently attached to the space station. Canada's arm 2 weighs 1,800 kilos and is 17.5 meters long. and is capable of moving a mass of more than 100,000 kilos, when the main structural components of the station reach space, it will be the job of Canada's Arm 2 to move them into position, a job that requires detailed preparation and rehearsal, so once you have faced and the state in which the closing alarm has been activated, sure we are going to play a role well as such and then we are going to move it up, okay and we are actually going to say that you are going to connect to the station is fine so I'll still be on grip device number three here yeah and the other end will be down on the arm so that's a pretty good reach for the Canon arm to get this up there Yes, it is at its limits, right? having the spacewalking astronauts out there giving us some kind of guidance, okay so it's done purely in the robotic views, okay, I don't think people realize that even though they're in microgravity , things still have a mass and to be able to reach. something that moves still has to exert such force and at the same time to stop it still requires a huge amount of force and humans simply couldn't do that, yes, move something that is a huge 20 000 kilograms and try it. move and it's like pushing a sailboat parked next to the dock, even though it's enormously large, you can get it going, but if it goes fast it can still crush your leg against the dock while the Shuttle Discovery waits for repairs on the ground work continues.

To get the main components finished and ready for departure, the man who coordinates 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 the Kennedy Space Center. in Florida, Netherlands, he also leads the design and development of ATV, the European space agency's automated transfer vehicle. The ATV is an unmanned spacecraft that will ultimately be responsible for supplying the International Space Station and the astronauts who live there with everything they need. They need to survive in space.

This is the automotive transfer vehicle that will get there to load the better part of 20 tons of supplies. Add the most complicated spaceship we've ever built in Europe with a million lines of code. There are all kinds of subsystems that combine a human spacecraft with all the satellites and it is a very, very complicated vehicle, it may be complicated, but on the other side of the Atlantic, at the Kennedy Space Center, they have a complication in their own space that They have run out. taking advantage of it until we start flying more hardware and getting it out of the building space will be a real premium and then once we have a manifest and know when the beams will start flying and the building will start emptying then we can make a better plan on how We will accommodate the pressurized section and other external installations.

Billions of dollars in hardware sit and await a decision on the shuttle sitting on the upper bay floor of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. Florida, the Elenia facilities in Turin, Italy and here in the space transportation division in Bremen, Germany, abroad. The Columbus module is a fifteen-foot-long, 10-payload laboratory where, when completed, astronauts will be able to perform thousands of experiments in the weightlessness of space. Node 3 designed to carry life support systems for the ISS Note 3 will also provide valuable additional docking ports for new structures crucial to the growth of the International Space Station, but like the Columbus module, it won't go anywhere until Let the work here be complete, then what about today's planning?

Well, basically we have two activities. The first is to verify the problem we found yesterday. Yeah, in the rather beam and uh, when we move forward with the installation of the EMD valve, this means that overnight the installation of the RMS was completed, yeah, so they haven't found any problems for tonight, so still today we will continue with the change first. Yes again. a second shift again the third shift also again hardness Hopefully, if we solve this problem on the radial beam, we are back to normal in Italy, the Note 3 team is back to normal, but in Germany the Columbus module team is feeling the pressure, head of systems engineering. rudiger klezig and project director Gunther Branta delayed a conference call has been organized so that Bernardo Patty, Columbus project director for the European Space Agency, can get some answers.

There are weeks of delay for the reintegration of the Columbus and we have taken two more weeks of delay for the integration of the payload. That makes a great 11 weeks and, okay, if there is a lesson learned, we should not have any more delays, if we don't learn the lesson which is to control those open works, then we are going to extend this delay and I understand the ferry. is punished, I understand a lot of things, but I don't care at all, you know what we want, what our policy is, yes, I agree with what you say, yes, all the time, right now we are sitting with a list and the current schedule and see how you can include those activities in the schedule, thank you.

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 that the backbone of the ISS will support. A one-acre stretch of solar panels will provide its inhabitants with up to 110 kilowatts of power The external storage platform is filled with hardware that will be installed on the station in future shuttle assembly missions when large truss structure components are delivered to the station to expand the station's electrical capacity and to set the stage for the addition of other international modules, such as the European Columbus scientific laboratory and the Japanese kibo module.

Foreign managers David Bethy and Charles Hardison oversee final assembly work on Space Station components at the Kennedy Space Center processing facility in line 42 horsepower the nearest fire trucks to install electronic test bearings this morning, directed by lifting 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 is a delicate task that requires precision care and a lot of labor. This is a major modification that will allow for more experimental accessories on the truss. This payload weighs about four thousand pounds. do no metrology the goal is just Let's lift this payload about 12 inches, install the utas bearings that go on the south side of the payload, do a trend inspection, clean the entertainments, put it back in, tighten the caps and restore the roof, okay, let's have a John's confident lift increased to two.

John slowly moved up to four, as crews on Earth work three shifts a day to prepare equipment for transport in space. The repair of the Shuttle Discovery is of utmost importance in Houston. Do you want us to move on or could we break up? this is your decision now but working and living in space comes with its own set of rules there are things 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 like Suddenly I was 75 years old, I was aging like in some episode of Star Trek where suddenly my bones are falling out and I have osteoporosis.

It happens to me immediately in space and yet we don't understand why and when I come back it is reversed. I still don't understand the mechanism, here is this big laboratory where people and any other animals that we raise with us can study and maybe figure out 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. Overseas, the shuttles will be retired in 2010 as ordered by the President of the United States and will ultimately be replaced by unmanned craft as the Automated Transfer Vehicle is a well-proven docking system that the Russians have used. on the Soyuz and the progress over many years is a very reliable, good and robust system and we are very happy to have it on the ATV and here we see the end of the mission.

In reality, the ATV returns to Earth because it completely burns up in the atmosphere. Yes, all the garbage you generated in orbit goes to the ATV and we bring it back and burn it so the station doesn't arrive. It's full of trash, so the next project is to make one of these, but don't let it burn down so you can bring me back to Earth. The longest manned spacecraft in service in the world is Soyuz three two one, we have ignition and takeoff. The liftoff of the Soyuz rocket began the first expedition to the International Space Station and laid the foundation for permanent human presence in space after the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, the only remaining link between Earth and the space station where the Russian Soyuz rockets wait 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's partner is the unmanned progress cargo spacecraft for the last two. In years and a half, the Progress spacecraft has delivered all the life-sustaining supplies needed by the Polica space station. The only thing I can't do is hand over the nodes andmodules needed to complete the ISS, which only NASA's shuttle can do. Partners around the world are racing to prepare crucial hardware for the space station. Astronaut Steve Robinson and Sawichi Naguchi head out into the vastness of space to begin their important task of assessing first-hand the damage to the shuttle Discovery. Ah, here we go, August 2005, and the future of the International Space Station hangs in the balance.

Space agencies around the world can't be sure if their equipment will ever be transported to space with the damage and Discovery found that it depends. Astronauts Steve Robinson and Suichi Naguchi perform vital repair work Good view of Sawichi Naguchi at the end of Canadarm 2 which is being operated by Wendy Lawrence. She is maneuvering it toward the new control moment gyro near the payload's AFT bulkhead. Discovery Bay. Gucci's foreign work in the cold, dark vastness of space, fellow astronauts. Writer Thomas and Dan Taney's office is the pool in the neutral buoyancy laboratory, more than 200 feet long and 40 feet deep.

This pool takes more than a month to fill and contains life-size replicas of the space station components that simulate an experience so close to a spacewalk. As is possible on Earth, it also gives astronauts the opportunity to practice and rehearse difficult maintenance tasks on the replica submerged in more than 6 million gallons of water. Good morning, this morning we are going to run incremental crew 13 Thomas Ryder and Dan. Taney through the 12th Eva cleanse, a task to give you familiarity with those tasks, the main goal is to really get you as familiar as possible with the umbilicals, if you get anything beyond that, that's all extra sauce, so It's completely out of my way and I.

I can still access it, but you can put it back under El Salva. I actually wanted to bring my glasses. um, yeah, that's exactly right now. Astronaut Dan Tani trains with veteran writer Thomas. 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 astronauts need to do seven in the pool in Houston happy new alarms and good morning secretary this is Greg your test director had to remind me this morning 81 safety ev2 copying them to the backup and Dan and Thomas, I would remind you again today, make sure you use the descent line to go down, make sure you clear your ears well in advance, once you get it out to 90 degrees, you can reinsert the pin into the locking arm.

I could look out the lab window Hi guys, we are watching an amazing video and now Susan is looking at you over the lab window, but we also see the reflections of all the passing clouds reflected in the lab window, you know the great difference. between this and working underwater in the training pool is that even though you are floating in the water you are still weighted by gravity in the suit, but when you get to space you are weightless and the suit is weightless, so you are in the Floating like a ping-pong ball in a cage inside your spacewalk suit is the strangest feeling.

Overseas cattle have two pressing issues dealing with severe delays with the installation of essa's Columbus laboratory in Bremen, Germany, and closer to home, a critical testing deployment. of the ATV's solar panel in the Netherlands I think we shouldn't wait Jeff, you'll have to take the initiative this morning on the server where I'm conducting the test because I have a meeting with Danielle now that I have to attend on a 10 30, so which I'm not too sure about, but proceed without uh without me if necessary. I will join you as soon as I can. The testing being done on the billion dollar ATV is to make sure the solar panels deploy correctly.

There have been serious concerns about the stand's hinge system. Experts from Germany and France have flown in to work with the Dutch team. The solar panels will power the ATV on its trips to supply space station three. So, did you hear they're going to be delayed? the next shuttle flight until March next year, yes for us now because with Columbus and the nose that has to go up we are getting later and later and the scientists are getting a little upset because they are not getting there, they are working correctly the way they wanted. I really hope that NASA can fix things and get it up and fly again because it is still very, very necessary, the longer it is on the ground, the longer the ATV will be.

Necessary scientists around the world are awaiting the launch of sophisticated research modules such as the Japanese experimental module. It is the most advanced laboratory ever destined for space. The key design feature of the gem is an exposed platform that weighs more than four thousand kilos. It will be possible to create experiments in the vacuum of space using a 12-meter-long robotic arm manned by astronauts. It was called 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, this will also be the home of the Columbus module in Germany.

Discussions continue over American and European size discrepancies that are causing serious delays in the completion of Columbus. We can crimp the American size wires with Our European size pins are correct, although they are all the same AWG size according to the specification, they are the same but the tolerance is so large that we have had to develop a method to fix it on the pin and we do it inserting small thin wires. to fill the crimp and then we endemic them, but tomorrow in our telecon we have a suitable story for Aza, I think so, I think it's the delay of Plano and x and salt and now we can also commit to the test that we imagine here, yes, but Por On the other hand we can't compromise on the quality so we have to really fix it and I told you the other day that we do the voltage drop test on such a crimp and if the voltage drop is not correct or if it is in the specification that we can't accept tomorrow we tell the laser that the problem is solved, we solved it yes, sorry, we have the delay because they get material that is out of specifications sometimes why they can't meet the standards, eh, yes .

American consistency, how to do this one day in America, at Kennedy Space Center, work is almost finished on inserting the bearing into the truss, okay, if both shackles are loose, please, uh, no shackles, Lily , did you say the weight was four? thousand and of course, you know, we put the flight wing on the other main thing we had to do today was the lifting of the S5 load element to put that split heading. We have a group of vendors coming next week to get started. the work on P5 and S5 and we still had that feed work on S5 to get the split bearing raised should continue now, yeah, now you can check it out on this, let's take a look.

I think it's channel 47. stuff, VAB manager, yeah, that's where we are today, we're just lifting it up so it splits, so when they install the device inside the journal, if it expands we'll be able to remove the bearing, they wrap it. It's not really a successful job today, so we have to move very slowly as the International Space Station continues its 160 million mile a year journey. Sometimes a few feet on Earth can be difficult. The ATV supply vehicle is moving into position. For federal and position testing, to get to this point, nearly 150 international space experts analyzed more than 50,000 pages of technical documentation before the design was approved.

Good thank you. Meanwhile, in Germany, Columbus program director Gunter Brandt has been called into a conference call for an update Alan Thor Kettle good afternoon Ellen good afternoon uh Gunter well I just want to give you your opinion on the problems we had in our production of harness. I think we mentioned that there was a stupid discrepancy between these American Wire Gorges and the European ones. pin we did all these tests and all theseWell now the process is good and we proceed to crimp the harness and yesterday we checked the situation and I think we can now commit to our test day on the 14th.

Yeah, I'm not that worried with what can or No. have caused this slip gun, so what I'm worried about is the slip and the whole schedule that we're trying to work on is to make sure that we finish all the ignition activities on the flight hardware by the end of this year and we get it done. What I absolutely need from you is confirmation that you have solutions that will allow this to still happen in Italy. Another setback, progress on the Note 3 stops when the tape is secured. a heater protection pad has come loose, something as simple as this on Earth could cause a catastrophe in orbit if it comes loose, it could be dangerous to the people inside because you know these heaters are critical to the functioning of the north, especially when the Note is without power in orbit during the transfer from the shuttle to the ship towards the station, this is to avoid freezing and condensation.

Next, they need to install a vital valve to stabilize the pressure between the shuttle and node 3. It is about the possibility of reaching the same pressure before opening the door internally understanding that it will also have the hair change itself because we have a line of entry and an outline, they can then open the door and have actual access to the shuttle in addition to the race to complete the various nodes and modules over time, the team also faces the challenge of coordination and transportation between projects that cross international borders with a large value, there is the reason why the integration work and then is sent back in a different configuration.

I work but I'm not a major expert and I don't know how many laws I'll be bending or breaking if we change something, it's not really easy for us because then we have to go back to our government organization while flying in the frigid temperatures of space the ISS needs protection from the elements like the Kennedy Space Center a team from Swords put together thermal blankets that cover every part of the structure we will model the blankets that needed modifications they didn't want to take the blanket off again they wanted to leave it at the station so we basically had to go there and literally fix it which made hand sewing truly useful on a mission in 2001.

Dantani and Linda Godwin wrapped insulating blankets around the vulnerable Drive Motors solar panels for four years. Steve Robinson is about to embark on the most important spacewalk in NASA's recent history as he locates and attempts to remove the tail of discovery. Gap filler that came loose during launch. Yes, looking through Steve's eyes, here you have to shake your head while you're awake. there just to refocus on what you're doing because the images fill your mind completely, it's just overwhelming, it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your life constantly, like Niagara pouring into your head and somehow you have to do it.

Clear all that up and focus on fixing the space shuttle. Do they have training on how to stay on task and you don't know on Earth what's going on? It was the biggest surprise for me that I had been concentrating so much in the pool while I was being trained. Technically, but when I came out I had to stop for a minute and just honor the world and just by looking at it you couldn't ignore the beauty of what was happening around you. It is crucial that the person operating the arm has a constant and smooth ramp in and out, otherwise you induce oscillations in your robotic arm, of course, you don't want to bounce back and forth against the belly of the Orbiter, yes , especially if you have someone at the end. who can, can induce some arm swings, so it's very important that you have that steady, steady hand, controller inputs like a worm on a hook.

Steve Robinson recovered the loose slab. Shuttle belly space filler and to everyone's relief it was a simple procedure, it's a great song, comes out very easily, very nice, okay Steve DCA, they haven't backed down so they must be looking into what kind of things could to make one of these things come loose, well, it's a big mystery why. they came loose and why not, I mean, there are thousands of them, how come only two of them came loose, you know, and when Steve reached out to grab them on the spacewalk, I mean, he was just able to grab it and just slide it?

It's like taking a letter out of an envelope and we don't know why they come loose. The big question was whether or not we would have been allowed to enter the atmosphere safely with one of these sticking out so far from the belly, we probably would have. have been good, but since Colombiaprobably not good enough, you know Steve is the lead guitarist in the band I play in and that's why I really trusted him to have the finger picking skills to get this out of there, it seems so simple, yeah, and It really turned out to be simple, a big relief for everyone because if it had been difficult and I had to cut it or something, it would have been a lot less elegant, but it really showed through a lot of on-the-spot planning work.

You can do something that was impossible before, it's very simple with The Gap eliminated. NASA gives the go-ahead to return home. You know that what we are doing here is worth it and we know that there is a risk, but if we don't try it, we will never be able to overcome the risk. Steve Robinson successfully removed the damaged tile and Mission Control gave the shuttle the green light to begin its journey home to Earth, Houston and the station. We have physical separation. The two-week, 5.8 million mile journey has nearly surpassed everything NASA and its international partners hoped would be a safe shuttle mission to get the space station program back on track.

The landing gear is down and locked and Discovery is home with the shuttle safe. all about the future, the future of the International Space Station, so Frank, there's another thing I wanted to show you and it's a little element called the dome, it's the only part of the station that is designed specifically for astronauts, that's really cool , other areas are designed for the scientists and uh and to house all the intelligent systems and everything but the coupler is specifically for the astronauts is their window to the world the part of the vehicle that is designed for the astronauts exclusively for the astronauts so they can see Mother Earth will also control the robotic arm from inside the dome, yes, yes, the robotic workstation will go there.

Also, the interior design you mean will be very nice to look at, that's right, yes, we designed it like a Ferrari, but at the expense of a Ford or maybe. like a four, but at the expense of a Ferrari, my dad worked on the Apollo, he was the inspector who inspected the module and that kind of thing when we were doing the Apollo, everyone was between 25 and 28 years old, they didn't cut their goatee, they were very studious and it was just really different, you know, today has been a day, uh, yeah, that's all I can say, it's a typical day, but everything went well and that's what we try to do every day.

I have many good memories and many wonderful things. great work out there and that's in season right now. I make an effort every time I know I can see it when it flies overhead. I like to go outside early in the morning, go outside and watch it fly overhead. Knowing that that's my job there, I think we feel proud. I think the experience at MCC was really worth it. In fact, they were using our material to learn things about the shuttle. Not only was it an important contribution and it made a difference, we take the people who built the particular thing and we take the people who are going to fly it, you know, they take a chance and we sit and drink a bottle up and down, you're In a truly 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 grab the Japanese transfer vehicle that would also provide logistics to station.

It is a very good multicultural environment. It certainly is and we're in such early stages of space exploration that people take it for granted, but in the entire history of American space launched 145 times in total with people you know 145 times, you're just starting to understand something and, However, people think it's very mature and a lot of what we do in the space is the early stages of just trying to establish good and evil 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 further into space we have to have a place to test all those things without a place to test them we'd just be guessing when we leave foreign land