Page 43 - Best of STIL 2018 English
P. 43
The world’s largest vehicle
It’s a bucket excavator and naturally, it is made of steel: The MAN TAKRAF RB293, also affectionately known as digger 293, weighs 14,200 tons, is 96 meters in height, 293 meters long and 45 meters wide, making it the largest land-based vehi-
cle on the planet. This steel giant, built in 1995, can excavate
240,000 tons of material a day at the open-cast pit in Hambach. Each of its three motors boasts a whopping 2,253 PS, and together they consume around 20,000 liters of diesel a day. The monthly fuel bill doesn’t bear thinking about. The speed of this mechanical giant is a little less spectacular: 0.12 to 0.6 km/h.
A steel colossus on the ocean
floor
In January 1960, Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard and American Donald Walsh squeezed into a 2-meter-wide steel ball with walls 12 cm thick. The “Trieste”, which hung down from the belly of a submarine, was some 18 meters long and had 18 tons of iron scrap on board as ballast, ensuring that the ball and its crew sank to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. At a depth of 10,916 meters, the submarine floated around 4 meters off the sea bed – a feat that remains the deepest human dive in history. The “Trieste” was subject to a water column of some
40 million tons, exerting a pressure of 1,170 bar.
EXDTRIGEITMAEL STEEL 43
