Big vehicles

The largest vehicle in the world is the Bagger 288 excavator:

Bagger 288

Bagger 288

The excavator can shift 240 million kilograms of coal every day and is so big that it is easily visible from the air and can quite easily chew up a bulldozer:

Bagger 288 Eats Bulldozer

Before the Bagger 288 came along the world’s largest vehicle was the crawler-transporter used to move the Space Shuttle from NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39.

Crawler-transporter

With a maximum speed of one mile per hour it takes almost five hours to complete the four mile journey.

Crawler-transporter in use.

Last, but certainly not least, at 7.8 metres tall and the same mass as a blue whale (190,000kg) the Liebherr T 282 B is the world’s largest truck:

Liebherr T 282 B

Liebherr T 282 B

6 thoughts on “Big vehicles

  1. The crawler-transporter slides underneath the Mobile Launch Platform which the shuttle is assembled on and picks it up.

  2. how do they make sure that the shuttle doesn’t fall off – surely the height would make it very unstable

  3. That’s one of the reasons it travels so slowly. Plus of course it’s bolted to the crawler-transporter – it would take a pretty big force to make the whole lot fall over!

Leave a Reply