![]() ![]() Even then, the Italia could only just squeeze into it. It took Norwegian engineer Joh Höver around seven days to even find a site large enough for it. About 27kms of wooden beams were used to build it. At 110m long (361ft), 34m wide (112ft) and 30m (98ft) high the hangar was narrower than an Airbus A380 but about one third longer and taller too. It was one of the largest structures of its kind in the world at that time. The hangar at Kings Bay was no exception. Constructions on a monumental scale, such as Hangar One at Moffett Field, California, the hangars at RAF Cardington in England and the CargoLifter hangar in Brandenburg, Germany. The need to construct hangars large enough to house these goliaths led to some of the most striking architecture of the 20th Century. Without the shelter from Arctic storms it provides, the expedition would be impossible. The alien-like building is the airship hangar at Kings Bay. The aviator thinks there is still an area about half the size of Canada where few – if any –humans have ever set foot. The airship Italia, under the command of its designer Arctic aviator and engineer Colonel Umberto Nobile, has just arrived at Kings Bay having completed the final leg of its flight from Rome. Nobile’s mission is to explore the last big blank space on the globe: the Arctic. The Norwegian archipelago, formerly known as Spitsbergen, is about halfway between Norway and the North Pole. The location is Kings Bay in the north of Svalbard, a group of islands known as the gateway to the North Pole. It has no roof, but two sides that look like the giant wooden trestle bridges that you see in Westerns movies. In front of the dirigible is a very large, strange-looking construction. A multitude of tiny stick-like figures await their orders below. In front of it is the sea, full of floating chunks of ice.Ĭables hang down from the sides of the craft like the antenna of an insect. Their glaciers glisten in the spring sunshine. The machine itself is dwarfed by the snow-covered mountains that surround it on three sides. On the sides of the airship are stamped in black capital letters, one word: ITALIA. In the photo, a huge silver airship floats over a large snowfield. It was great to have discovered the story about the hangar while writing my book. Read my recent piece about the hangar at the top of the world for BBC Future in full below or the original here. All the chords of the truss-arch are brace-connected to each other by diagonals (355 mm) and posts (273 mm), with the exception of the two bottom-chords these are connected by only straight members (355 mm) at 4.135 m, forming a Vierendeel-system.In the 1920s, a huge wooden hangar was built on a remote Norwegian island for a giant airship set to explore the frozen north – and there are still traces of it today. The top chords (diameter 559 mm) are at 3.441 m centres and the bottom chords (559 mm) at 2.0 m centre. The arches of the cylindrical part have a structural height of 8 m and span over 225 m. The structure has been designed using steel grade S355. In addition, this solution is suitable to avoid excessive wind turbulence. The shape of the building is oriented closely on the clearance diagram for two airships. Both doors form a semi-circle in plan and a quarter-segment of a circle in elevation. The central part is of a cylindrical shape consisting of five steel arches at 35 m centres – each of the four bays being covered with a textile fabric – and at both ends of the building are the doors which consist of two fixed and six moving elements. The structural concept distinguishes two main parts of the building. Currently, the detailed design is taking place and most of the building structure should be ready in 1999. With a span of 210 m, a height of 107 m and a length of 363 m it will be the largest hall in Germany. The site is an airfield in Brand, about 50 km south of Berlin. In the middle of 1997 the CargoLifter AG commissioned the design for an airship hangar in Germany to house two new airships. This airship allows transporting a pay-load of 160t over a distance of up to 10’000 km with a speed of 80-120 km/h. Currently, a new generation of airships (helium filled, carbon fibre structure, length 260 m), the CargoLifter CL-160 is prepared. But the global market and ecological needs require the search for new forms of transportation. Six decades ago the golden age for the airships – succeeded by airplanes – seemed to have died forever.
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