r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/rapatakaz • 15h ago
Video China is completing the construction of the tallest bridge in the world, which runs through the Grand Huajiang Canyon. The 2,890-meter-long steel suspension bridge rises 625 meters above sea level
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u/Ruskih 14h ago
For anyone curious, it would take you 11.29 seconds to hit the ground if you were to jump.
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u/ScramJetMacky 14h ago
You're supposed to show your work. Haha.
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u/Ruskih 14h ago
d = 1/2 gt2
d= distance(625m) g=gravity(9.8m/s2)
t=time2d = gt2
2d/g = r2
t = √2d/g
t = √[2(625)/9.8]
t = 11.29
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u/ben_woah 14h ago
Would a persons weight make a difference?
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u/xX500_IQXx 14h ago
Weight makes no difference in the acceleration of an object downwards in an ideal, no air resistance scenario. however, it might make a difference for air resistance, along with size
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u/potato_and_nutella 14h ago
Nope, and he isn’t counting air resistance so size doesn’t matter either
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u/Appropriate-Battle32 15h ago
Going to be both a suicide and base jumping destination
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u/one_is_enough 15h ago
Instant execution for either
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u/Mindless-Sound8965 15h ago
Well, THAT takes the fun out of it!
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u/Lunar_Gato 14h ago
Waiting for the urbex YouTube video of some guy climbing to the top and maybe hanging off the side for fun.
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u/DammitDad420 14h ago
Is "suicide destination" a thing? I mean I love to travel and also hate people.....
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u/mercurial_dude 14h ago
They’ll install some of them Foxconn nettings underneath and all will be well.
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u/kirtash93 14h ago
Best view before the end?
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u/TheThirdHippo 15h ago
Given China’s reputation for safety, these could be the same thing
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u/space_______kat 14h ago
What reputation?
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u/TheThirdHippo 14h ago
They don’t have a good reputation for safety…
The cheapest BYD car is roughly €7500 to buy in China and to be able to sell the same car in the EU, it’s €15000. The main reason for the extra cost is to make it meet EU safety regulations
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u/pass_nthru 14h ago
knowing chinese QA on everything from steel to construction i’m guessing it’ll end up at the bottom of the canyon before too long
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u/Mammoth_Professor833 15h ago
100% needs a mission impossible stunt on this bad boy - awesome project
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u/Harpeski 15h ago
China is like the USA in the roaring 60's: massive infrastructure investment for the future welfare/citizens and industry.
Meanwhile in every western society the infrastructure starts to crumble, because its 80y old. And no investment are made, because of 'no money'
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u/Menkhal 14h ago
Not every western society. Here in Spain we have built one of the most extensive high-speed rail systems in the world during the last 30 years. Still being expanded. Same regarding highways.
Just like it's happening right now on eastern Europe using EU funded projects. Poland for example has made an amazing use of them. And in general public infrastructure is top notch in all of western europe.
I think the crumbling of infraestructure is mostly a US phenomenon. And the railroad in the UK is also in shambles. And i believe in both cases the root of that decay is in the neoliberalism wave both countries suffered with Thatcher and Reagan, with the damage they did still echoing today.
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u/SaltyWailord 15h ago
Nail on head.
You have to hand it to them, they seem to invest money in building a more efficient future. The development of high speed trains and high rises is nothing but astounding
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u/aronenark 14h ago edited 14h ago
China poured more concrete in 3 years from 2011 to 2013 than the United States did in the entire 20th century, and did it again in only 2 years from 2020 to 2021. The number of high rise buildings in Shanghai is estimated to have passed 10,000.
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u/HouseOf42 14h ago
Most of those buildings are empty, and just recently most of a ghost city was leveled because of half finished buildings.
They may pour a lot of concrete, and it's holding up nothing but empty promises and tofu dredge crutches.
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u/jml2422 14h ago
Half of them are empty. Communism never works.
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u/Valid-Nite 14h ago
A large part of that is due to very low safety, payment, no unions, no years of approvals through many levels. There’s a reason so many things collapse in china.
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u/deLamartine 14h ago
Because they have no social welfare whatsoever. Large parts of the population are still living in poverty. It’s easy to spend on megaprojects when you’re not spending on the welfare of your population at all.
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u/Voltthrower69 15h ago
The no money just follows straight up to the top 1% of wealthy people who just laugh as everyone is forced to accept declining standards of living.
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u/Citaku357 14h ago
China is like the USA in the roaring 60's: massive infrastructure investment for the future welfare/citizens and industry.
Isn't China investing more in infrastructure now than America did for all of its existence?
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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 14h ago
Except the infrastructure China is investing in now is shockingly wasteful. They've already built out more than enough infrastructure for their population and economy and now it's building for the sake of building, all the while facing down a future shrinking population instead of a growing one.
The first suspension bridge across a river adds enormous value to your economy. The second adds a little less. The eleventh probably wasn't worth the billions you borrowed to build it.
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u/AnorhiDemarche 14h ago
Only with lower safety and construction standards and a bribery problem so rampant any part if those might not be followed (ex. steel may be compromised) and the people down the line will have no idea. Just look how many videos of structural failure manage to make it beyond the great firewall even though chinese internet is highly censored and monitored.
"If you can make money, make money", and if you can get propaganda out of it build like crazy.
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u/Adam-Marshall 14h ago
And the trains ran on time in the USSR.
SMH. So many idiots cucking for totalitarian governments.
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u/arrius01 14h ago
Nobody in the United States calls it the roaring '60s, I don't know where you're getting this phrase. China does appear to imagine that spending large money on concrete will make it globally admired, it will be fun watching them learn otherwise.
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u/Savannah_Fires 15h ago
Here in America we're building too! Our potholes have never been larger!
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u/AliGoldsDayOff 15h ago
We're going to need to build bridges to drive over the holes in our bridges.
Who says this admin's policies won't create jobs?
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u/trailsman 14h ago edited 12h ago
Yea we're just letting our infrastructure turn to dust.
Other cool facts on bridges in this province: For reference, the highest bridge in the United States is the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge over the Colorado River between Arizona and Nevada at a pedestrian 890 feet. Guizhou has 17 bridges that are taller.
Guizhou (province where this bridge is) has 5 of the 10 tallest bridges in the world.
“China’s opening, say, 50 high bridges a year, and the whole of the rest of the world combined might be opening 10.” https://www.engineering.com/who-knew-the-10-tallest-bridges-on-earth-are-all-in-a-poor-chinese-province/
Edit: added a title to make clear second section not related to first sentence
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u/whatafuckinusername 14h ago
Hmm…perhaps the U.S. doesn’t need bridges that are so tall?
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u/trailsman 14h ago
Most certainly a result of the topography there. Just thought it was an interesting fact.
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u/whatafuckinusername 14h ago
Yes. But following up your first sentence with that fact comes across as you criticizing America for not having as many high bridges as China.
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u/gabacus_39 15h ago
What does height above sea level have to do with anything? Do you mean height above whatever it's going over?
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u/jwfacts 14h ago
Good question about a bad title.
From Wikipedia. “Upon completion, it will be the world’s highest bridge, measuring 625 metres (2,051 ft) from the bridge deck to the bottom of the gorge.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huajiang_Canyon_Bridge
The towers add another 200m in height.
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u/Babys_For_Breakfast 14h ago
That was my first thought. Sea level doesn’t matter, just tell me how far it is off the ground.
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u/Mitridate101 15h ago
It's a way of cheating the measurements just like they have their own inch.
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula 15h ago
Wait, what? China doesn't use inches. Only the UK and some former colonies use inches.
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u/Mitridate101 15h ago
They do , it's called the Cun. Nicknamed the Chinese inch. It's slightly longer than a standard inch.
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula 14h ago
Aha, OK. I see what you mean. That’s not actually an inch though, but they do have their own traditional measurements. In Korea they use pyeong for floorspace when buying a house.
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u/phoenix-force411 13h ago
Even the construction workers wouldn't want to fix any issues that come up after building it.
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u/alwaysfatigued8787 15h ago edited 13h ago
Some say that the bridge will actually lead to a lame version of Terabithia.
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u/Mediocre-Housing-131 14h ago
So like, at the risk of sounding stupid; what are the curved cables at the top of these style bridges for? They don’t appear to be under any amount of tension, just drooping slightly above the surface.
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u/masticatezeinfo 14h ago
I think the curve is about load distribution and material cost. I think the curve allows the load distribution to pull downwards on the supports rather than sideways. So strength would be improved.
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u/SolidusNastradamus 14h ago
I wish more tales were told of the workers. They're the ones building this world. They've earned their place in history.
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u/Xyberfoxi 15h ago
China engineering feats are just insane
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u/psh454 15h ago
Yeah so much copium on this shitty site whenever stuff like this gets posted. Most Americans are incapable of considering a rival country doing anything impressive.
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u/martian4x 14h ago
What I can't seem to understand is why the USA doesn't do these types of projects. The US has all the money, owns all kinds of tech, has enormous empty lands, all the experts (remember that homeless LA lady Dr with PHD of Math that couldn't find a job and many more), has all the IPs but US just doesn't do any project.
If you take into account the capability of the US, Vegas sphere project was supposed to be a local news coz trains, building, bridges projects news would have engulfed it so much.
But since there is nothing else the Sphere became the national news.
Now politicians and citizens compete on stopping the California High Spend train from completing. It's lawsuits, sabotaging, corruption etc..
Then rush to comment negatively on China's big projects, it's just sad 😢. Search for any China project, any of them and then check the comments. No wonder they block all western social media.
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u/Lakuriqidites 15h ago
The jealousy in the comments is funny to read.
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u/Valuable-Lie-1524 14h ago
So shit at it, they coined a term. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu-dreg_project
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u/Lakuriqidites 14h ago
I have been and lived there, they have amazing infrastructure.
You can cope as much as you want though, if it makes you feel better.
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u/Valuable-Lie-1524 14h ago
Not coping just stating facts.
Like the fact that they‘re actively committing a genocide.
Or the fact that they still disappear citizens who speak about the tiananmen massacre.
China has many things it does great, which is why i don‘t understand why people like you have to pretend that they do everything right. They don‘t. Noone does. China aint the exception. It‘s a de facto autocracy as well, as example.
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u/sarc-azam 15h ago
Why is it measured from sea level?
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u/MrZombieTheIV 15h ago
Its 625 meters from bottom to deck. They messed up the title by saying "sea level".
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u/AceAlex__ 15h ago
How else would you measure it? You need a reference point.
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u/MrZombieTheIV 15h ago
How else would you measure it?
Geez idk, maybe just telling us how tall it is?
If you ask how tall my house is, should I just tell you it sits a 449ft above sea level?... Or I could just tell you it's 30ft tall.
Also, the title is incorrect. The bottom of the Huajiang Canyon is already at 300-400 meters above sea level. What they mean to say is the bridge measures 625 meters tall (from lowest point to the deck).
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u/chowindown 15h ago
From the span down to the ground or water directly below it? That way it makes some kind of sense as to how high the bridge is rather than just what altitude the terrain is. Those ladder bridges they use on Everest to get across crevasses would be much higher than this bridge, but might only bridge a 10m deep gap.
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u/varegab 15h ago
As a European, I do not understand Chinese culture, they like huge things. I mean, I do not understand American culture as well, they also like huge things. Maybe they should be friends
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u/FixedLoad 15h ago
Right now, as I write this without the video in sight. Just imagining the concept of the idea of the video gives me vertigo.
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u/SmegmaYoghurt69 14h ago
Imagine being a passenger on the first bus that takes a free fall off that thing. Believe me it's china, there will be multiple busses going off that bridge the next few decades
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u/Mitridate101 15h ago
With their track record on collapsing buildings & bridges......
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u/aroundincircles 15h ago
100%. You couldn't pay me to drive over that bridge. Tofu city is all I have to say.
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u/AcediaWrath 15h ago
less than americas track record for it.
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u/Mitridate101 15h ago
Don't care, I'm not American but was it more than
"A total of 157 bridge collapses, not including the ones caused by earthquake, were collected from the public media report in China from January 2000 to March 2012."
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u/Worldly-Treat916 15h ago edited 15h ago
Cherrypicking, you're quoting a raw number from over a decade ago without any baseline or context. China has thousands more bridges than most countries so the absolute number of incidents will be higher. The real question is what’s the failure rate
A study analyzing bridge failures in China estimated an annual failure frequency of approximately 1 in 5,000 bridges, equating to a failure rate of 0.02%.
Estimated Annual Failures: Research indicates that the U.S. experiences approximately 87 to 222 bridge failures per year the US has 623,000 bridges. So the US has a failure rate of 0.014% to 0.036%
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula 15h ago
It's worth noting that China only really started getting reasonably wealthy 20 years ago, so any bridges built before then would have been done when China was much less advanced.
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u/M4K4SURO 15h ago
So basically China is surpassing us in everything. Got it.
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u/psh454 15h ago edited 15h ago
Helps that "we" (assuming you mean the states and canada) stopped giving a flying fuck about building or maintaining any infrastructure outside of highways. The ability/experience needed to complete large coordinated construction projects has atrophied, now 1000 consulting firms need to be given millions of dollars to evaluate any small decision and everything costs 3x what it should. Instead all that money and effort is now going to AI and fintech for questionable benefit returns.
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u/bran_the_man93 15h ago
I mean, is there a need for a bridge this high somewhere in the US?
It's not like we're out there building bridges for the sake of building bridges....
(Though our bridges are crumbling...)
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u/Relevant_Flatworm_13 14h ago
When you look at it's position on google maps it appears to be in the middle of nowhere as well.
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u/adjckjakdlabd 15h ago
Waiting for the video were it turns out the contractor cheaped out and it collapses
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u/Lakuriqidites 15h ago
I don't know what kind of copium you are inhaling but they have amazing infrastructure
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u/syn_vamp 14h ago
they have new infrastructure. and they also have a well earned reputation for quality. so we'll just have to wait and see how well things hold up after 10 or 20 years.
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u/GeniusEE 15h ago
We can't even get a new I5 bridge to cross the Columbia River at 1/10th the height...
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u/ZamboniJ 15h ago
Have to say it, the Chinese are definitely amazing at engineering, kicking our butts.
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u/Conscious_Bed1023 14h ago
There's a reason I've been learning mandarin for the last 5 years. America is not the future.
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u/Sarcastic_Backpack 14h ago
But how high over the surrounding terrain? It looks like it's in a mountainous area, not near the ocean.
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u/Unclebiscuits79 14h ago
lol no way this bridge lasts more than 10 years after opening, given that it's being built in China.
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u/Cidraque 14h ago
Impossible, the patriots told me chinese only copy things and produce cheap trash.
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u/syn_vamp 14h ago
it certainly looks like every other suspension bridge and i guess we'll just have to see how it handles its first hurricane.
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u/Teaboy1 14h ago
I'm not even scared of heights but jesus that makes me feel uneasy just looking at it.