Building bridges with rockets

The world’s highest bridge, the Siduhe Grand Bridge, is nearing completion in China’s Hubei province. The bridge is so high off the ground that the Empire State Building could fit under it with over 350 feet to spare. To get the initial cable from one tower to the next, the builders used precisely aimed rockets!

so you’ve erected the enormous towers on each side of the deep valley, deeper than any valley previously bridged. how do you get a pilot cable from one tower to the next? previous solutions have included: attaching the cable to a kite and flying it over (e.g. niagara falls suspension bridge), carrying one end by helicopter (e.g. akashi kaikyo bridge) and floating one end on a boat (e.g. brooklyn bridge). the brains behind the siduhe bridge decided to ignore all those options and break another record instead. they attached the 3200ft cables to rockets and accurately fired them over the valley, becoming the first people to do so.

• architecture
• China