There are several countries in the world that have initiated megaprojects of such magnitudes that it is hard to believe such things are possible.
Some are standalone projects involving a single country
while others are international collaborations like the International Space Station which involve several different countries working together.
Check out some of the world’s most impressive and large megaprojects that continue even today.
8. Qatar's Lusail City Megaproject
Qatar has a population of only three million people
but it happens to be one of the wealthiest nations in the world.
Most of its population are rich businessmen
earning millions from its natural gas exports
that makes Qatar the largest exporter of natural gas in the world.
With an eye to the future and building a city that is better equipped for its business activities
the government has sanctioned an ambitious project called Lusail City that will be a mega city
complete with the best infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, housing,
and a massive luxury stadium
that is expected to cost 45$ billion.
Lusail will be one of the most advanced futuristic style cities in the Middle East
driven by wired and wireless communication and advanced technology as the major mode of functioning.
Amenities Lusail won’t just be a boring technological and business hub
but it will look beautiful as well.
The smart city will be a peaceful and inspiring one
with artistic elements incorporated into its architecture that will make it stand out among similar cities in the world.
Lusail will also be a major tourist hub given its location
spread across 3,500 hectares of waterfront land.
The world class city will have 200,000 residents
and will accommodate 160,000 employees and 90,000 visitors,
for a total estimated population of 450,000 people.
It will offer world class facilities such as premium accommodation,
deluxe hotels and resorts,
shopping hubs, entertainment,
and a category 1 airport.
7. China New Silk Route
hina is a fast-prospering nation and the country is forever implementing mega projects
in hopes to improve its infrastructure that cater to the world’s largest population.
In 2013 President Xi Jinping
announced the mega silk route project that will improve the country’s trade logistics with other countries.
The older silk route existed way back in the time of the Roman Empire
when trade carried on between China and European countries.
The mega project will construct a new silk route that will turn out to be one of the largest infrastructural projects in the country
which is expected to cost a staggering $900 billion.
The New Silk Route will not just include land routes but sea routes as well.
The Trans-Eurasian trade infrastructure is expected to improve trade and economy of
poorer countries to the south of China and rekindle a new era of globalization.
According to Beijing, the project will include plans to lend almost $8 trillion
to improve infrastructure in 8 countries. The main aim of China in developing the New Silk Route is to boost its own manufacturing industry
especially in transport, telecom, steel and heavy equipment.
Domestic regions will also benefit and new markets will open up to keep China’s national economy consistent.
6. The Large Hadron Collider
f there is one project in the world that could be called the mother of all scientific projects,
it is the Large Hadron Collider which is the world’s largest and highest energy particle collider built by CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research
between 1998 and 2008.
The LHC is a collaboration between a hundred countries and involved 10,000 scientists
and hundreds ofuniversities and laboratories from all over the world.
The Large Hadron Collider was set up at a cost of $4.75 billion
and is constructed within a tunnel 27 kilometers long
and 574 feet deep
beneath the France-Switzerland border near Geneva.
It was made for experiments
that collide proton beams and
heavy ions at superspeed
with the objective to allow physicists to test different theories of particle physics.
The majority of these experiments include searching for families of new particles as predicted by various theories
and other unsolved questions of physics. However,
the most famous and significant research of the LHC was to discover the elusive
Higgs Boson particle
or God particle which in plain English
is the fundamental particle or energy field that gives every object in the universe its mass.
It only existed in theory until in 2013 it was finally discovered and identified
by experiments in the Large Hadron Collider.
Today the LHC is still active
and currently scientists are studying experiments related
to anti-matter.
While activity was stopped for a brief period due to the pandemic,
operations are set to resume in May 2021.
5. The Panama Canal Expansion Project
The expansion of the Panama Canal was widely regarded as one of the most impressive megaprojects in the world. T
he extension of the already existing canal took almost eleven years to complete
and cost $5.25 billion to construct.
Also called the Third Set of Locks Project,
it went on to double the capacity of the Panama Canal
by adding a new lane of traffic that allowed several more ships to navigate the waterway.
The increased width and depth of the lanes even opened up the canal to larger ships
twice the size of vessels that could negotiate the canal earlier.
Larger ships defined as The New Panamax meant larger cargo and this made a huge difference to logistics worldwide.
The Panama Canal project turned out to be one of the world’s most important projects
with the primary objective to build two new sets of locks,
one each on the Atlantic and Pacific sides, and add excavated new channels to the new locks.
The construction projected inaugurated in 2006 generated more than 40,000 jobs.
It was finally opened to commercial shipping in June 2016.
4. Hyperloop Transport Maharashtra, India.
November 8th 2020 became an eventful date in transportation history
when two passengers successfully traveled in the world’s first hyperloop system
developed by Virgin Hyperloop,
an American transportation technology company that seeks to develop a feasible variant of the vacuum train.
While tests for the hyperloop system have been in full swing in the Virgin’s test facility in the Nevada Desert, miles away in India,
the company is busy working on what will turn out to be one of the most ambitious projects in the country.
The hyperloop works as a transportation pod or capsule
that runs through large tubes using magnets. Hyperloop technology utilizes electric propulsion and magnetic
levitation to move pods at unimaginable speed through transit tubes or tunnels.
It was designed with an aim to reach airline speeds at a fraction of the cost.
The system was successfully tested in November 2020
when Virgin Hyperloop executives Josh Giegel, its Co-founder and CEO, and Sara Luchian, Director of Passenger Experience,
as the first passengers at a speed of 172 km/h
The hyperloop system in India is being developed by Virgin Hyperloop in the Indian state of Maharashtra
and will make India the first country in the world to run the Hyperloop system.
When completed, it will link the two cities of Mumbai and Pune and cover the distance of 140 kms in under thirty minutes
traveling at speeds of 1000kmph
To put that in perspective, a nonstop flight currently takes one hour
while the same distance takes three hours by road. Simultaneously
a second hyperloop route will run in a corridor between Bangalore city to theKempegowda airport in South India.
Both projects are expected to be completed in 2029
at a cost of $10 billion dollars.
3. International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, France
The ITER or International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
is an ambitious megaproject that seeks to solve the world’s energy crisis
by replicating fusion reactions that occur within the sun
and utilizing the energy produced in the process for various purposes.
The ITER involves 35 countries
and is being built next to the Cadarache facility
in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, in Provence, southern France.
It is expected to be completed by 2025,
and will have incurred a project cost of a staggering $65 billion
making it the costliest science experiment in history.
Today the main resources of energy are carbon, coal, oil and natural gas
that make up 87 percent of the world’s energy consumption.
The dangers of blatant use of such resources
are making world leaders seek out renewable forms of alternate energy
because according to experts the earth’s oil wells will run dry within the century.
The ITER is a fission research and engineering project
that is also regarded as the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment.
The reactor when completed will create a plasma of 500 megawatts for 20 minutes.
During this time 50 megawatts of heating power will be injected into the tokamak
which is what the main machine is called. This will result in ten-fold gain of plasma heating power
similar to what happens in the sun.
The main objective of the ITER
is to demonstrate how fusion power can be harnessed and used without a negative impact on the earth.
2. The Al Maktoum International Airport, Dubai
here are several airports in the world that can qualify to be among world’s largest
like Beijing Daxing International Airport
that spans an area of 18 square miles.
Nicknamed Starfish it was built at a cost of $11 billion
and is expected to become the world’s busiest airport by 2040.
Yet, when the Al Maktoum International Airport in the United Arab Emirates will be completed,
it will cover an area of 54 miles
making it three times the size of the Beijing International Airport.
The Al Maktoum Airport, also to be called Dubai World Central
is being built in Jebel Ali 37 km southwest of Dubai
and is expected to be operational in 2027.
The airport besides being a logistics provider for air transport will also include manufacturing and assembly
and will be designed to handle an annual capacity of 12 million tonnes.
The total cost of the airport is estimated at $82 billion
making the cost of the Chinese airport seem like a small change.
The Al Maktoum airport will be a planned residential, commercial and logistics complex catering to 260 million people per year.
It will also include world class amenities
like Executive and royal jet centers,
hotels and shopping malls
and multiple food courts and concourses.
It will also be the only airport in the world where four jets can land and take off simultaneously.
1. International Space Station
As of 2010, the International Space Station has incurred $150 billion
and by 2021 will have incurred a bill of $1 trillion
making it the world’s largest, and most expensive project by far.
In fact, there will never be a limit to how much the ISS will incur over time.
It is the most expensive single item ever built
and circles the earth every 92 minutes.
The ISS has been created by a consortium of 15 countries and five space agencies.
In fact, NASA has now roped in privatecompanies like SpaceX and Blue Origins
to ferry astronauts and payloads to the ISS aboard the privately manufactured spacecraft.
The ISS was first constructed in 1998 and has been in orbit for the last 22 years.
It took 10 years and thirty missions to assemble
till it became a manned station in November 2000 when three astronauts
Bill Shepherd of the USA and Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev of Russia stayed aboard the ISS for several months.
The ISS is an international collaborative project that includes five space agencies
NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada)
and is jointly owned under intergovernmental treaties and agreements. Today the ISS is fully functional
and crews are repeatedly transported aboard
to conduct experiments in astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology, physics including research on long duration missions to the moon and mars.
In March 2001, NASA astronaut Susan Helms
finally became the first female crew member aboard the ISS
and stayed there from March to August 2001.
Which of these projects impressed you the most?
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