For the last several weeks I have been watching with growing pleasure, every Monday night from 8 pm to 9 pm, two episodes at a time, one of those Channel 5 TV series that tend to pass without much comment or many claims of significance, called Massive Engines.
Last night saw the airing of the final two episodes, number 9 about massive pumps, and number 10 and finally, about the massive jet engines that enable modern airliners to ply their trade. The presenter was Chris Barrie, who is probably best know for comedy-of-embarrassment characterisations like Rimmer in Red Dwarf, or Brittas in The Brittas Empire, and in Massive Engines there are occasional Rimmer/Brittas style, self-send-up moments of leaden humour. The impression you get is that Barrie is not as sure as he would like to be that he is keeping his audience’s attention.
For myself, I absolutely do not think Barrie need have worried. Whenever, which was most of the time, he forgot about being comical and concentrated on explaining the whys and wherefores of his various massive engines, often while himself operating them and with every sign of knowing pretty much what he was doing, I was held, and fascinated.
I learned all kinds of things I never knew. For instance, in the last show, about aircraft engines, I learned that on an early aircraft engine, not only did the propeller rotate, but the cylinders also, firmly attached to the same bit of the engine as the propeller, and rotating along with the propeller. To keep them cool. Amazing. Well, you probably knew that, but I had no idea. You probably also know that whereas petrol engines work with regular explosions, diesel engines (names after a German bloke called Diesel) do not feature externally induced explosions. The pressure caused by the cylinder coming back up again is enough to set fire to the next lot of fuel. Well, I sort of vaguely did know that. But now I know it a little better.
In general, throughout the run of the show, Barrie’s quick and clear explanations of the principles behind all the mechanisms he was describing were, well, amazingly quick, and amazingly clear.
The only episode which I found a bit weak was the one about motorbikes, which featured rather too much footage of Barrie trundling about rather pointlessly on a motorbike, in between the serious explanatory stuff. The trouble with motorbikes is that frankly, they are not massive. They got as big as they will ever be many decades ago, and anyway, the point of them is speed, plain and simple, rather than speed (or anything else for that matter) achieved through massiveness.
That episode aside, all the engines on show got steadily bigger and more effective throughout their history. They are not necessarily massive any more. The pumps, for instances, that shift water hither and thither used to be a lot bigger, when they were steam engines, than they are now, now that they are diesel or electrical engines or whatever. But a good few of the engines Barrie talked about with such enthusiasm are huge right now, and getting ever huger.
The earth moving kit they now use is unbelievably huge, as was proved with a trip to a massive open cast coal mine in Germany, where there were also earth-shifting lorries with wheels the size of terrace houses. The machines used to dig tunnels are now as massive as they have ever been. As are those aircraft engines of course.
I expected the airplane episode with which the show ended to be a commercial for the Airbus A380, but actually it was a commercial for the Rolls Royce Trent Alphabetsoup engine. No Airbuses were mentioned, but a Boeing was, the two engine 777, which is apparently almost as huge as the four engine 747.
I recall no mention whatsoever of the wickedness of massive engines from the environmental point of view, which was most refreshing. On the contrary, massive engines got massive because they were used, again and again, to solve massive environmental problems, such as the environmental mess that the London sewage system had become towards the end of the nineteenth century, or the massive problem of travelling vast distances across the damn environment, most especially the sea. (There was an episode devoted to massive ships.) The entire show was a continuous hymn of praise to the God of the Technical Fix. You have a problem? Building a massive engine to solve it.
I cannot claim to remember all the technical details that were laid out before me on Massive Engines, but when they were being laid out I recall very, very clearly that they did make perfect sense, at the time. Had I written the stuff down, I am confident that only my own handwriting would have then stopped it making perfect sense now.
What I am really saying is, if I come across DVDs of this show at a suitably miserly price, I would definitely consider buying them, and watching the whole show again, repeating the quick and clear explanations and fast forwarding through the motorbike trundling.
As a potential interester of intelligent and intellectual curious children, boys especially of course, these shows would, I feel sure, prove excellent.
And Chris Barrie’s Rimmerisms might even help from that point of view. By the end, even I was enjoying the rest of it so much that I found myself smiling instead of wincing when Barrie started up yet another massive engine not with a “right let’s start this thing up”, but instead by shouting rather self-consciously: “let’s rock”. Very embarrassing dad. But when you really like the serious work that someone is doing, you can put up with mannerisms and foolishnesses that would drive you insane if it was just another pointless idiot doing them. And when they are gone, you even find you miss them.
So, an outstanding show, and particular proof of the value of having lots of different TV channels, allowing lots of different points of view besides the official one, which as far as massive engines is concerned is now that massive engines are, at best, a necessary evil, and at worst, just plain evil.
Hmmm.
What you’re describing are the kinds of shows being displayed on the Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel and the History Channel. Oh and the new Military Channel. Hmmm. Plus a couple other specific purpose channels dedicated to fighting aircraft and whatnot.
Yeah. I love these shows too. You learn some fairly bizzare stuff and there’s always something new around the corner.
Stuff on tonight: Modern Marvels (Guns of the Civil War), Wild West Tech, and Engineering Disasters 3.
A good night for a double scotch and some popcorn.
Actually, motorbikes can also be massive. I am assuming that by motorbike you are being generic and not referring only to things like mopeds and scooters.
I understand that this monster was put together as a publicity exhibit for the auto shows (they could do it, so they did). Then Chrysler was astonished to find that there were people who were actually interested in buying them!
You may have seen this one before…It’s amazing how well these things can
scale.
Keep an eye out for a similar series with Robbie Coltrane in the seat that’s been shown of Discovery in the last couple of years. He even gets to admire some American muscle car engines.
All good wholesome viewing.
I disagree about motorbikes, They are still getting bigger, look at the BMW K1200LT. While some may be fast, speed is not the point, the point is being exposed rather than cocooned. However one looks at them though, motorcycles don’t count as massive, and if they were they’d probably cease to be functional as motorbikes, so they don’t seem to have a valid place in this series.
My favourite factoid about the 777 engines is that their diameter is greater than that of the body of Boeing’s narrow body aircraft such as the 737.
In effect, much of the modern world is based on the idea of having giant engines (ie power stations) in remote places, and an electrical grid with the purpose of transporting the energy produced by those engines to less remote places. But this is inconvenient, and lots of problems are solved by engines getting smaller rather than bigger. One clear technological advance that we are seeing is that it is becoming possible to build equivalent engines that are much smaller, less polluting and at least as efficient that can be deployed locally. (This is another aspect of the same story told in the TV program, too. One type of smaller power station is a “gas turbine”, which is simply one of those 777 engines being used to generate electricity rather than propel an aircraft). This trend has a lot further to go, of course. It is horribly difficult to design batteries that can power many of today’s portable electrical devices for very long, and part of this comes from the sheer unwieldiness and inefficiency of what you are doing. (Power station in Somerset produces electricity that is transferred to me in London that I store in a battery by plugging the battery into the mains, and I then allow this battery to discharge and power the device). The only way anybody is going to fix this is by removing that whole chain and putting the device than generates the electricity actually in the portable device. In effect, do away with the battery and give the laptop computer an engine instead. (Whether a fuel cell without any moving parts can be called an engine is another question of course – I am perhaps pushing my metaphor a bit here).
And then of course once you keep reducing the size of engines until they reach the molecular level, things get really interesting.
The series has been a joy to watch and I got the distinct impression that Rimmer does indeed have a passion for the subject.
JohnJo, Chris Barrie is a bit of a vintage petrol-head.
I think that the main feature of moteybike engines is their power output for their size. compared to car engines. Over 100 horsepower (metric horses probably) from a 600cc engine with no turbo. Even fuel injection is relatively recent.
“In the mid-1990s, fuel injection was available on only a handful of exotic, high-buck European motorcycles. Today it is the predominant motorcycle technology.” from the Motorcycle Fuel Injection Handbook. In 1978 Kawasaki sort of started selling Z1s with turbos. Honda in ’82. Neither is having more than two valves per cylinder an automobile first trait. I remember grinding all 20 valves of an FZR1000 in my mechanics course – and that was over 15 years ago [bloody hell I’m getting old]. Cars sporting 16V stick-ons were years behind bikes.
Some interesting facts about the Trent aero engines. Each high pressure turbine blade is about the length of a man’s middle finger. They operate in a temperature higher than the metal’s melting point. The force trying to pull each blade apart is like two Mack trucks pulling on either end. Each blade generates more power than an F1 engine. And they cost a lot of money !!
Nuff said me thinks.
Hopefully, the series will make it to the antipodes. I was intrigued by the mention of pumps as that would cover my personal favorite engine – the fuel pumps for the Space Shuttle main engines. Each of these are equipped with pumps for the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that fuel them. The liquid hydrogen one is the size of a typical car engine, weighs a little more, but generates 75,000 horsepower, the liquid oxygen one is similar and generates 25,000 hp. That’s 100,000 hp just to pump fuel into the rocket engine – which then produces the equivalent of 15,000,000 hp! Absolutely amazing – and it’s 1970’s technology to boot!