ALMA: Gentle Giants in the Desert
Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2013 4:47 pm
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
For our newest ESOcast, we pose this puzzle: how do you move a 100-tonne giant ALMA antenna 30 kilometres up onto the oxygen-starved Chajnantor Plateau, 5000 metres above sea level and finish the job with millimetre precision?
Thankfully we have Otto and Lore, the cutting-edge ALMA transporters. The numbers are staggering: 20 metres long, 10 metres wide, weighing 130 tonnes each, housing two blistering 700-horsepower engines and capable of reaching 20 kilometres/hour; Otto and Lore are moving megastructures.
More than just gigantic workhorses, Otto and Lore are also triumphs of precision — gently moving parts of the world’s largest astronomical project into place to a hair’s breadth precision.