Original by Tim Newcomb
In the throwaway culture we live in, even some of the most massive machines are one-time-only. For the life of their design, these machines are custom-made for tricky locations, high-value jobs or special situations - they are the largest single-use machines in the world built for special tasks.
Large Hadron Collider
Buried 328 feet below CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, the LHC blasts protons or ions to near the speed of light through a 16.7-mile-long superconducting magnet. Emitting these particles requires 9,593 magnets cooled to -271.3°C, even cooler than outer space. Using liquid helium in the cooling process, the collider consumes 600 kilowatt-hours of energy per year.
Hughes Glomar exploration vessel
The 619-foot-long Hughes Glomar exploration vessel, built in the 1970s, is said to be for the Howard Hughes mission to extract magnesium nodules from the ocean floor. The fact is that the CIA commissioned this giant ship to salvage the sunken Soviet nuclear submarine K-129 and the information it obtained on the ocean floor of the Pacific Ocean.
The probe's width allows it to balance in waves, while internal hydraulics release robotic arms to grab the 14-million-pound submarine. But during the salvage, the lift broke 9,000 feet below the surface, making it difficult for the CIA to repair it. The ship was later dropped from the mission and used in the oil industry, eventually turning into a pile of scrap iron.
An-225 transport aircraft
Biggest, heaviest—these words describe the Antonov-designed An-225 transport plane, designed specifically for the former Soviet Union to carry the Blizzard space shuttle and energy rocket boosters. Two orders were scheduled, but only one was completed, in 1988. The transport aircraft was over 275 feet (84 meters) long and weighed 628,000 pounds (about 285 tons).
With a wingspan of 290 feet (about 88m), the transport aircraft is the largest aircraft ever built. The aircraft successfully completed a Soviet space mission, after which the aircraft was mothballed. However, due to its enormous load capacity, other uses were found and it was refurbished to transport oversized and heavy loads.
This plane was also mentioned before us: Dominate the skies - 12 monster planes
Trinity
We need to install concrete panels when building bridges, sometimes on site, and then drag the concrete panels onto the bridge with a Mobile Scaffolding System (MSS) , which also acts as a giant formwork.
Nicknamed "Trinity", the system was built using MSS Trinity on the Mersey Gateway bridge in Cheshire, UK. It was specially designed for the project and is 230 feet (70m) long, longer than conventional machines. Long, larger than any of the European ones. Trinity was built 2,300 feet (700m) from the bridge deck and was demolished in 2017. After demolition, some of its 1,200 components, 3,000 parts and more than 60,000 bolts were reused and others were recycled.
NASA Crawler Rocket Tractor
NASA's Type 1 and 2 tracked rocket tractors have been in service for over 50 years as purpose-built machines for special missions. The tractors, designed by Ohio-based Marion Excavator Company, weigh more than 6 million pounds (about 2,720 tons) each and were originally created as part of the Apollo program to take the space shuttle from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Move 4.2 miles to launch pad 39B. Each tractor—including those listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, is 131 feet long, 114 feet wide, has 8 wheels, and can move at 1 mph . With a specialized balancing system, multiple mount points and a range of roughly 2,000 miles each, CT-2 has recently been outfitted with Mars mission components that allow these machines to use their waste heat.
Bertha
When it came time to dig a 1.7-mile tunnel in downtown Seattle to replace the aging Alaska Road viaduct, Washington State Department of Transportation officials turned to Bertha , the world's largest tunnel boring machine .
The 57.5-foot (17.5m) diameter excavator was designed and built in Japan to tackle Seattle's soil. It weighs 8,000 tons and is 326 feet (about 100m) long. Despite serious failures and years of repairs, Bertha and the 700 cutting tools mounted on its cutterheads completed drilling in 2017 and were dismantled on site after the mission.
Otto and Lore
When the decision was made to place the world's largest ground-based telescope on the harsh Chilean plateau at 16,500 feet above sea level, Scheurerle needed to create the transporter Otto and Lore, a specially designed transporter designed just to transport the Atacama Large Millimeter The wave antenna array is pulled up the mountain.
The transporter weighs 130 tons, has 28 wheels, and requires a 700-horsepower (about 540kw) diesel engine to move the 65 feet long (about 20m), 33 feet (about 10m) wide and 20 feet (about 6m) high , transporting equipment at a speed of no more than 7 miles per hour.