In the 1990s, the government of Hong Kong undertook the largest civil engineering project in history: building a new international airport 16 miles out to sea. They had no other choice. The old airport, Kai Tak, was stuck in the middle of downtown Hong Kong. Air cargo and traffic is the economic lifeblood of this island territory, and with no room to grow, the old airport had to be replaced. A site was selected off the coast of a rocky island, and a gigantic platform was built by leveling two small islands and reclaiming the rest from the ocean floor. A huge terminal was built on top of the new island, the largest enclosed space in the world. To reach the new airport, a completely new transportation infrastructure had to be built, including a series of world-class highways, bridges, tunnels, and railways. And everything was completed in record time, as engineers raced against a formidable deadline -- Britain's return of Hong Kong to the Chinese. Finished on time and under budget, the p
Paid | Amazon Video on Demand
Length: 44:00
Aired: 5/14/2003
Every day ships the size of a city block transport goods through the Panama Canal, one of the world's most vital waterways. For almost a century, it has permitted almost every type of ship imaginable to make the fifty mile shortcut to sail between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But today ships are being turned away because they're just too big. So Panama has asked a team of European and American engineers to compete for a winning lock design. If the Canal is built anew, what are the dangers and what are the costs? Panama needs a larger canal. The risks of transiting the existing one are becoming too high. The maximum size ships have only inches to spare in the aging lock chambers. The route through the mountains is fraught with hazardous twists and turns. Landslides are a constant threat. If a ship had an accident in the Canal it could stop world trade. A new Panama Canal will once again make Panama the maritime center for world shipping.
Paid | Amazon Video on Demand
Length: 44:00
Aired: 6/4/2003
Most of Holland is below sea level, a drainage basin for three major rivers. In the Middle Ages, people started building dikes to keep the sea out, and today there are about 1000 miles of them. But in 1953, a sea surge inundated 800 square miles of land, killed 1800 people, destroyed 47,000 homes, 200,000 animals and 300 miles of dikes. That and the hurricanes of '93 and '95 spawned the design and construction of one of the engineering wonders of the world, the Delta Works and Measlandkering. The Delta Works is a series of massive, computer-controlled sea barriers and dams that straddle each of the major rivers emptying into the delta. The Measlandkering is a gigantic and beautiful sea surge barrier a quarter-of-a-mile wide that consists of two horizontal, curved hydraulically-run walls, each of whose giant sea "arms" is 1000 feet long. Powered by water and electrically-driven windmills, it has over 60 75-foot-high floodgates that remain up in good weather, allowing the three rivers to
Paid | Amazon Video on Demand
Length: 44:00
Aired: 5/21/2003
It is one of the largest, most technically and environmentally challenging infrastructure projects in American history. It contains possibly more "engineering marvels" than any other single construction project attempted by man. It includes an 8 to 10-lane-wide highway winding underground 120 feet deep through downtown Boston, a new tunnel beneath the city's harbor, and the widest cable-stayed bridge in the world. The project spans only 8 miles, but has taken 30 years to plan, 12 years to build, and cost $14.6 billion, and it still has three more years to go! The budget, even after adjusting for inflation, is larger than the budget of the Panama Canal. At the peak of construction, the project employed 5,000 workers and used 150 giant cranes every day. When the Big Dig is finally done, it will have excavated 16 million cubic yards of dirt -- enough to fill up fifteen professional football stadiums. It will have used 4 million cubic yards of concrete, enough to build a sidewalk 3-feet wi
Paid | Amazon Video on Demand
Length: 44:00
Aired: 5/28/2003
