Rockets help build Chinese bridge higher than Empire State Building | Hacker News Reader

Rockets help build Chinese bridge higher than Empire State Building

deputy-dog.com

61 pointsrobg19 comments

I constantly find the Chinese inspiring. Their construction seem to span an interesting divide between high tech and low tech. Their high availability of cheap labor being one of the primary factors enabling construction which would be considered prohibitive in the western world.

So if I lay a plank over the 300ft deep well on my property, it is "a bridge higher than a 30 story building"?

Yes.

the article says the bridghe is that high -above- the ground. The depth below is not factored in, at least as I read it.

the deck of the bridge has just recently been connected over the valley below and is so high above the ground that you could fit the empire state building underneath it, and still have 360ft spare.

No, they're referring to the distance from the lowest point in the valley... so, yes, the plank over the well would be on-par with this Chinese innovation.

Only if he used a rocket to lay the plank.

And only if his well diameter is some 1+ km across.

Touche. I read that 'and' as starting a new unrelated characteristic where 'ground' was bridge level. Reading it again, you are right.

This seems pretty innovative, but how do they stop the rockets when they get to the other side? Seems like a very dangerous method.

Giant catchers mitt ordered from ACME!

In all seriousness, the mountain takes care of that for them I suspect. It's probably burned all the fuel in flight and thus they just have to stand clear once it lands on the other side.

Tie the other end of the cable down, make sure it's the appropriate length?

This is a natural extension of an idea that dates back centuries. One old-fashioned way to build a suspension bridge is to use a bow-and-arrow to get an initial rope across. Once that's done, you can attach a stronger rope to the end of it and pull it across. This is the exact same solution in a more high-tech guise.

This really goes to show that the chinese can and do innovate, contrary to the preconception.

I saw a documentary on the building of the bypass bridge near the Hoover dam. They used a helicopter to fly the cable over, had to wait for it to be dead calm as it was carrying near its max capacity and it still took like two hours for them to do it. I think they almost lost the chopper too.

Using a rocket is probably much more cost effective and probably more akin to how bridges used to be made. I mean look at the rope bridges the Mayan's made, some are way too wide for someone to easily throw a rope across, so they probably tied a guide rope to an arrow and fired it across.

You can probably transfer a heavier cable using a rocket than a helicopter, allowing the real work to commence earlier. I mean imagine how long it takes to drag increasingly thicker cables over a couple of kilometers of ravine.

Yes, except that, as with the Beijing Olympics, I can't shake the knowledge that as they perform these marvelous feats, deep problems linger.

as with the 3 gorges dam, I have a bad feeling about any shortcuts or cost cutting methods taken...

seems that even with the threat of the death penalty for company officials, it still doesn't stop shady practices

Well, duh, they have Yao Ming.

That's really cool.

This looks like digg. What is happening to this site?

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