Six Sights to See (Once They Arrive)
While you’re busy getting to those Six Sights to See Before They’re Gone, you can start planning future vacations to see some sights that aren’t quite here yet, but promise to be spectacular when they arrive…
Burj Dubai
In February 2007, the United Arab Emirates’ Burj Dubai passed the USA’s Sears Tower as the building with the most floors. By September, it will likely pass Taiwan’s Taipei 101 Tower as the tallest building in the world.
Currently, construction on Burj Dubai has reached over 1,500 feet and 130 floors. But, due to competition, the final height is being kept secret.
At a minimum, plans call for the structure to reach 2,651 feet with 162 floors. But, several inside sources have placed the final height between 3,000 and 3,300 feet, with over 216 floors.
When completed in 2008, a hotel decorated by Giorgio Armani will occupy the bottom 37 floors. The next 64 floors will contain 700 private apartments (which sold out within 8 hours of going on sale), and the rest of the floors will house corporate offices.
Add an indoor/outdoor observation deck on the 124th floor, an outdoor swimming pool on the 78th floor, and the world’s fastest elevator (a double-decker that can go 40 mph), and you’ve got a fun skyscraper!
Intercontinental Bering Strait Link
The continents of Asia and North America haven’t been connected since the end of the last ice age. That’s when the Bering Land Bridge disappeared beneath an ocean rising with glacial melt off — about 11,000 years ago. But soon, the continents may get joined again…
Engineers and architects have dreamed about connecting earth’s two largest landmasses for over a century. But, the Bering Strait has some of the worst weather on Earth. And in addition to strong winds and arctic temperatures, some very large icebergs float through the region. So, the challenges of building a 55-mile Bering Straight Bridge are formidable.
That’s why some are suggesting a Bering Strait Tunnel instead of a bridge.
The proposed 64-mile tunnel would be twice as long as Europe’s Chunnel, and it would take 10-15 years to complete. In addition to a transportation link, the tunnel would double as a pipeline for supplying the U.S. with oil, natural gas, and electricity from Siberia.
Although the cost of the total project would be $65 billion, it would save North America and Russia $20 billion a year in electricity costs, in part due to Hydro OGK’s plans to build two 10-gigawatt tidal plants in the Okhotsk Sea by 2020.
London Array Offshore Wind Farm
The London Array is expected to become the world’s largest offshore wind farm when it’s complete in 2010.
A consortium of energy companies is building the farm about 12 miles from the Kent and Essex coasts in the outer Thames Estuary. Up to 271 turbines are planned, arranged in a grid covering 94 square miles. Undersea cables will connect the wind farm with an onshore substation on the North Kent Coast.
The wind farm will provide enough energy to power a quarter of the homes in Greater London. By comparison, a fossil fuelled power station would expel an extra 1.9 million tonnes of CO2 per year to produce the same electricity.
The World Archipelago
Off the shore of Dubai, another construction project is taking shape: The World. The project is a man-made archipelago of 300 islands in the shape of a world map.
The World is the brainchild of Sheikh Mohammed, Dubai’s ruler. Mohammed, no stranger to building islands, has already commissioned the Palm Islands…the three largest artificial islands in the world.
Each of The World’s 300 islands ranges in size from 5 to 21 acres, and is being built with sand dredged from the sea. The entire World project will cover an area of about 20 square miles.
As of March 2007, The World was about 90 percent complete. Average price for an island? $25 million.
Aeroscraft Flying Luxury Cruise Ship
It’s not a Blimp, and it’s not a plane. It’s the Aeroscraft — a flying 650-foot-long cruise ship that’s kept in the air with lift from an aerodynamic body, huge rear propellers, and 14 million cubic feet of helium.
With an acre-sized cabin, passengers will have roomy staterooms and plenty of room to stroll around the deck. And with a top speed of 174 miles per hour, and a flight ceiling of 8000 feet, they’ll find their spot in the sky perfect for sight seeing as they sail around the world.
Unlike conventional aircraft, the Aeroscraft doesn’t need a runway. The ship can take off and land vertically, so it can fly to areas lacking extensive transportation facilities or large ground crews.
The Aeroscraft can also be configured as a freight ship. Using less fuel than a plane, and flying much more quietly, it will be able to haul 400 tons of cargo from Japan to California in a day and a half.
A prototype, built by California’s Worldwide Aeros Corporation, should be complete by 2010.
Space Hotels
Las Vegas company Bigelow Aerospace may be the first company to put a private space hotel in orbit. Pioneering work in expandable space station modules with flexible outer shells (conserving space while being launched), the space technology startup company has tentative plans to launch an orbital resort.
The working name is CSS (Commercial Space Station) Skywalker, and the expected price for a night’s stay will be around $1 million. But it could be in orbit by 2015.
And if you want to travel even further, plans for hotels on the moon are already taking shape. But, completion date is 2050, so you’ve still got a little time to pack and save for the trip…
Read More: Burj Dubai, London Array, Bering Strait Bridge, The World Islands, Aeroscraft, CSS Skywalker, Bigelow Aerospace
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Isn’t it amazing the things that can be accomplished with money that isn’t being spent on war. The funnny part is, profits are being made, maybe not as blatant as with a war, but still profits.
Nothing against profits, Pelmo. The problem is that these large firms travel the world dreaming up and selling to despotic leaders (ours included) over inflated projects no one needs. Then they low ball the cost to get the deal inked, then the cost doubles, triples, etc.
Did you see the piece on lobbyist reform being scaled back from 2 years to 1 year…because it would be an “undue hardship” to make public servants wait two years to cash in on their “wink, nod, backroom” deals.
Please forgive me if I’m conditioned to see big bullseyes on some of these projects. I imagine there are those already looking at the next target…like a cessna into a slow flying airship, etc.
All that negative stuff said, they are grand projects!
Wow! What a location for the world championship of “running the stairs”!
Xman, great comment until you got to the “running the stairs”.
You may have missed the part about the “elevator”. I will have a cocktail or two waiting for you when you reach the top.
Dubai, to me, is pretty interesting. There’ve been scandals about the mistreatment of cheap labor, etc., but Sheikh Mohammed is sinking a ton of his oil profits into making Dubai a sustainable tourist destination when the oil runs out. Yep, he has the forsight to know that their oil will run out, and instead of spending all those profits today, he’s setting up infrastructure that will support the country for his grandkids. He’s using his money and ideas to add value to the profits.
Now compare with Bush who is throwing money at military contractors and Corporate CEOs who aren’t giving much of any sustainable value back, and instead of infrastructure for the future, he’s leaving our grandkids the largest debt in the world to pay off, and he’s leaving them with less resources with which to pay it off, and killing our own tourist industry with draconian security measures and terrorist fear-mongering. If instead of invading Iraq those hundreds of billions had been spent on big ideas and infrastructure, what a difference the world would be today…
I agree, Joe.
A sure method for real security is to make sure your people are happy. Glad to hear at least in Dubai, the people have a future.
Hey Pelmo,
My stair running days are probably over…except for the re-tellings.
I knew it when I last ran the Takara Cable Car Chase in SF and fell over in a faint into the gutter half way up the hill.
Now, I seem to be particularly interested in fermenting/distilling the perfect wild black berry liquers…or any other wild fruit I can find.
But, back to your Margarita’s:
The other night at a bbq where the beer was flowing properly, a guy brought over a tattooed pig. He had cheneys face tattooed on both sides in that perpetual sneer. Someone suggested doing Romney too and pretty soon Guilinai and the rest of both parties were being planned for the sides of more pigs. Then we decided it would make a great youtube video. You know, 20 pigs and a trough only big enough to accommodate 10. With color commentary, snorting, squeeling, fornicating, etc.
Like I said, the drinks were good.
But, a few of the guys said they were real serious about the plan.
Joe, what a novel concept, taking all that money and investing in the future, not like here, where supposedly all the rich seem to want more so they can spend it on bigger and bigger blings. If they took only a part of what they spend on these overpaid athletes and teams and reinvested it into social problems, how quickly we would go back on track and join the rest of the world and advance forward and not stagnate as we are now.
Xman, my dad would buy a bottle of 180 proof grain alcohol, and cut it with distilled water, so the proof would be about 110 or so.
He would then add heavy berry syrup for flavoring and wow what a kick when you drank down a shot of it. First the sweet berry flavor filled your mouth, and it did go down smooth. But then that little bead of sweat on your brown as it kicked in.
“The other night at a bbq where the beer was flowing properly, a guy brought over a tattooed pig. He had cheneys face tattooed on both sides in that perpetual sneer. Someone suggested doing Romney too and pretty soon Guilinai and the rest of both parties were being planned for the sides of more pigs. Then we decided it would make a great youtube video. You know, 20 pigs and a trough only big enough to accommodate 10. With color commentary, snorting, squeeling, fornicating, etc.
Like I said, the drinks were good.
But, a few of the guys said they were real serious about the plan.”
I know an actual Pig, Quincy (a frequent guest blogger at Losing The War On Humor) who would be interested in reporting on this story providing, of course, that the camera crew is snookered and that the pigs are only served sushi.
Joe, Taipei 101 is not in China. It is in Taipei City, Taiwan, Republic of China.
Dohhhhhhh! Thanks for the catch, Devil. Correction has been made!
The Burj Dubai is a modern marvel of engineering it stands at 818 metres tall. The Burj Dubai will have its grand opening on the 1st of December this year.