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Building the A380
Gavinsblog writes "The Independent has a report on the construction
of the Airbus A380. Amazingly, a ship is being custom-built to ferry parts
for assembly, a custom fleet of trucks are also to be used - with roads widened
to suit. Oh and the assembly building is the size of two soccer pitches, and the
height of an olympic swimming pool."
Last time I checked, olympic swimming pools weren't very high. In fact, they actually went down into the floor.
We gave you the mobile phone, and now the world's biggest/best passenger plane. So what have the Americans ever done for us?
Who measures things in soccer pitches olympic swimming pools? What sort of standards are these? I was just getting used to meters, had a basic understanding of fathoms, and had heard of rods, but what the heck are these new units?
30M ~= 1 olympic size swimming pool?, so is it 60 meters tall? ~190 feet tall?
And just how long exactly is a soccor (soccer!) pitch (field!). My reports show between 100 and 130 yards (Arph! yet another measurement!).
Let's all get together and use either metric or english systems please. Your preference, I don't care because I can translate easily enough between those two.
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When I first read th title it sounded strange that IBM had to build a new ship to manufacture a new computer.
But now that I've read the article, I see it's about building airplanes. However I thinks it's kind of amusing that the airplane parts get thier own rest stops on the highway.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Hopefully it'll have custom jumbo-size seats to accomodate today's wider, fatter traveller!
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Now the Eurpoeans are building something so ridiculously big that no Americans want it.
Talk about role-reversal.
Custom-built ships to ferry parts. Custom fleet of trucks. Roads widened for the trucks (custom set of roads).
Hate to say it, but sounds like a bunch of dot-com flunkies are on this project.
This report is riddled with holes. For example everyone knows that the standard unit for length in sensationalist reporting is the football field, not the soccer pitch. And the standard unit for height is the Empire State building, not the olympic swimming pool. Also conspicuously absent is any comparison to the width of a human hair, or to how many times we could go to and from the moon of we laid something-or-other end to end. Very disappointing...