#3 Three Gorges Dam $ 25 billion
The Three Gorges dam was one of the major projects of China, to improve their economy and generate humongous amount of hydroelectric power for its residents. It is a concrete dam, the dam is 2,335m long and the height above the sea level is 185m. The project utilized 27,200,000m3 of concrete, 463,000 tons of steel and about 102,600,000m3 of earth was evacuated to create the room for dam. The depth of the dam is 181m. A huge amount of investment was done in order to create the humongous dam, initially it was estimated that the dam will cost the Chinese government about 22.5 billion dollars but the circumstances did not allow this and the cost reached up to 27 billion dollars. It was estimated that the whole revenue or the cost of the dam will be generated in first ten years of fully functional dam with generation of 1,000 Twh of electricity yielding 250 billion Yuan.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6ioHuJOm3I[/youtube]
2 Itaipu Dam $ 27 billion
The dam is the largest hydroelectric plant ever built on earth having a capacity to generate 94.7 TWh in year 2008 and 91.6 TWh in the year 2009. As compared to three Gorges dam it is second world’s largest hydroelectric power generator. The dam has the capacity to generate 14,000 MW of energy; it is located at border of Paraguay and Brazil and is a joint venture of both the countries. There are total 20 generators installed on it, ten generate at 50 Hz for Paraguay and ten generate for Brazil at 60 Hz. The construction started in the year 1971 and in the following month of April of the same year Brazil and Paraguay signed the Itaipu Treaty. On May 17, 1974, the Itaipu Binacional entity was created to administer the plant’s construction. The works began in January of the following year. In the year 1994 American Society of Civil Engineers elected Itaipu Dam as the wonders of the modern world. The Dam served a social impact because approximately 10,000 families living besides Parana River were displaced. The amount of concrete used to build single Itaipu Dam would be enough to build 210 football stadiums. The iron and steel used for the construction of Itaipu Dam was enough to build 380 Eiffel Towers. The construction of this dam provided huge employment opportunities about forty thousand people became a part in the execution of the project. The Itaipu dam is actually a conglomerate of four different types of Dams from the far left, an earth fill dam, a rock fill dam, a concrete buttress main dam, and a concrete wing dam to the right.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeXnMZDaH08[/youtube]
# 1 International Space Station $ 157 billion
According to the Memorandum of Understanding between NASA and RSA, the International Space Station was meant to be a laboratory, observatory and factory in space. It was also planned to provide transportation, servicing and act as a landing and takeoff area for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars and asteroids. In the 2010 United States National Space Policy, the ISS was given additional roles of serving commercial, diplomatic, and educational purposes.
The ISS is a long-term platform in the Space Environment where extended studies are conducted. The permanent crew affords the ability to monitor, complete, repair, and replace experiments and components of the spacecraft itself. The ISS provides a platform to conduct experiments that require one or more of the unusual conditions present on the station. The primary fields of research include human research, space medicine, life sciences, and meteorology. Scientists on Earth have access to the crew’s data and can modify experiments or launch new ones, while these benefits are generally not available on unmanned spacecraft. Crews fly on expeditions of several months duration, providing approximately 160 man-hours a week of labor with a crew of 6. Research on the ISS improves knowledge about the effects of long-term space exposure on the human body, including muscle atrophy, bone loss, and fluid shift. This data will be used to determine whether lengthy human spaceflight and space colonization are feasible The ISS provides a location in the relative safety of Low Earth Orbit to test spacecraft systems that will be required for long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgBgmw-2U8c[/youtube]
