Intel’s 916,000-pound shipment is a “cold box,” a self-standing air-processor structure that facilitates the cryogenic technology needed to fabricate semiconductors. The box is 23 feet tall, 20 feet wide, and 280 feet long, nearly the length of a football field. The immense scale of the cold box necessitates a transit process that moves at a “parade pace” of 5-10 miles per hour. Intel is taking over southern Ohio’s roads for the next several weeks and months as it builds its new Ohio One Campus, a $28 billion project to create a 1,000-acre campus with two chip factories and room for more. Calling it the new “Silicon Heartland,” the project will be the first leading-edge semiconductor fab in the American Midwest, and once operational, will get to work on the “Angstrom era” of Intel processes, 20A and beyond.
I don’t know why, but I’ve never thought of the transport logistics involved in building a semiconductor fabrication plant.
They did something similar with some transformers here in Australia, and unfortunately there were some possibly associated traffic incidents where people might have not been going the right speed and got rear-ended. One man died, even.
Please avoid the route, even when it is pulled over to “rest”, as your fellow motorists may not be able to resist rubbernecking.
Why didn’t the transformers just drive themselves? Or better yet turn into airplanes?
/s
More than meets the Eye.
As a wise man once said:
“Down in Ohio Swag like Ohio”
Have fun dealing with the damage to the infrastructure 👍
It’s Ohio. What infrastructure?
There is none. None they would have to avoid or drive around, at least. Imagine a thing like that in Manhattan. …
So…just another Tuesday.
I hope they’re paying huge fees to the local DOTs…
Their stock is basically on sale right now. And the feds are throwing billions at them…
🤑
I wonder why they don’t move this in chunks and assemble them locally. A transport like this must cost a gazillion.
This is moving it in chunks.
I’m assuming because they can’t.
Yeah if I had to guess a lot of components need to be assembled/put together in a clean room. Then to keep everything “clean”, mine as well just assemble it all in one place, which isn’t likely doable on site.
This is why ultrasized cargo airships need to be a thing. Just sling that bad boy underneath a kilometre long hydrogen dirigible and fly it to its destination.
if you look at the history of what happened to each Zeppelin airship you get a really good idea why it’s a bad idea.
LZ1: damaged during initial flight, repaired and flown two more times before investors backed out causing the ship to be sold for scrap.
LZ2: suffered double engine failure and crashed into a mountain. While anchored to the mountain awaiting repairs a storm destroyed it beyond repair.
LZ3: built from salvaged parts of LZ2. Severally damaged in storm. After LZ4’s destruction LZ3 was repaired and was accepted by the German military who eventually scrapped it.
LZ4: suffered from chronic engine failure. While repairing the engines a gust of wind blew the ship free of its mooring and struck a tree causing the ship to ignite and burn to the ground.
LZ5: destroyed in a storm.
LZ6: destroyed in its hanger by fire.
LZ7: destroyed after crashing in a thunderstorm.
LZ8: destroyed by wind.
LZ9: this one actually worked and survived for three years before being decommissioned.
LZ10: caught on fire and destroyed after a gust of wind blew its mooring line into itself.
LZ11: destroyed while attempting to move the ship into it’s hanger
LZ12 & LZ13: both flew successful careers before being decommissioned a few years later.
LZ14: destroyed in a thunderstorm.
LZ15: destroyed during an emergency landing.
LZ16: was stolen by the French. ***
LZ17: decommissioned after the war.
LZ18: exploded during its test flight.
LZ19: damaged beyond repair during an emergency landing.
LZ129: the Hindenburg.
LZ127: retired and scrapped after flying over a million miles.
LZ130: flew 30 flights before being dismantled for parts to aid in the war effort
The problem is with airships and aerostats in general is you need a massive balloon just to lift a small amount of weight but the larger you make it the more susceptible to weather it ends up being. With the amount of surface area a balloon that’s a 1km long has you would have to spend a considerable amount of energy just to stop it from blowing away in the wind, as inefficient as it is the truck may actually use less fuel because of this.
That said, the Zeppelin NT has, as far as I know, a perfect flight record.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT
We’ve made a lot of advances since the early 20th century, believe it or not. I don’t think using semirigid airships as both cargo transports and “satellites” needed for temporary communications purposes over a large area such as a disaster zone where cell communication has been lost would be out of the question now.
The biggest advancement they made was making it smaller. Zeppelin NTs are a fraction of the size of what Ferdinand von Zeppelin was designing in his day. Because of their smaller and the switch to helium Zeppelin NTs has a miniscule payload capacity at 4200 pounds. To put that into perspective that’s the same payload capacity as a Ford F250. Even with their reduced surface area and modern flight controllers controllers the Zeppelin NTs still haven’t solved the weather issue as they are restricted from flying in winds greater than 22MPH and when VFR is not available.
Because of their smaller and the switch to helium Zeppelin NTs has a miniscule payload capacity at 4200 pounds. To put that into perspective that’s the same payload capacity as a Ford F250.
And that’s only the bed capacity. An F250 can tow over 20,000 lbs depending on the trailer design. Most trucks and SUVs can tow >4200lbs.
Towing capacity isn’t really apples to apples which is why I used payload capacity which is more directly comparable. Don’t get me wrong though I’d love to see an airship towing a trailer.
You’re comparing a pickup truck to a zeppelin, there’s no way to make that apples to apples. If someone needs to move something big with a truck they’re probably going to tow it, not try to load it into the bed.
I am comparing payload weights because it’s directly comparable between all vehicles. I am not sure if you understand payload weight fully. This is the rating for everything you put in the vehicle (airship or not) and includes everything from people to the trailers tounge if you are towing. Just because your truck can tow 20Klb does not mean you can exceed the payload capacity. A lot of first time RV buyers learn this the hard way when they buy a 10Klb trailer to tow with their 2018 F150 only to find out there isn’t even enough payload capacity left over for the driver because the tounge weight is 1000lb. Air ships (and aircraft for that matter) use the same payload capacity calculations where again anything put inside the vehicle counts towards the payload including people. This is why we can directly compare the two vehicles payload capacity.
Yes because the 1920s-1940s are famously indicative of reliable hydrogen based airship transport
Sure, throw out a perfectly good idea because technology hasn’t advanced at all in the last 100 years.
They aren’t very good, and they probably can’t be. You’re limited by the laws of physics on what they can carry for their enormous size. The Hindenberg was the largest of them, but including passengers and crew together, it carried less than 100 people. They scale really, really poorly.
We can improve on old dirigibles somewhat with lighter weight materials and engines. We’re ultimately limited by the volume of the lifting gas, and we’re just not going to add that much more capacity. Even if someone figured out a vacuum dirigible (which would be very vulnerable to a puncture), it’d only improve things marginally. It’s an interesting engineering challenge, though.
One thing where dirigibles might be useful is windmill blades. Blades aren’t that heavy, but they can’t get much bigger while being transported on highways. Constructing the blades on site is another option, so we’ll see which one wins.
Science and engineering aren’t magic that makes everything better over time always, and people need to stop acting like it does. There are physical limits that we can’t breach. As another example, we haven’t significantly improved on the drag coefficient of designs by Porsche or the Chrysler Airflow back in the 1930s. There was a design Mercedes came up with a while back that’s based on the boxfish that did reduce it further, but its frontal cross section is so high that it doesn’t matter, anyway. (It’s also ugly as fuck, but that’s a different matter.)
Isn’t the more recent direction airships?
Or, historically, when you’re building a new factory, the first thing you do is build a rail connection right next to it
But how many football fields does it weigh?
About 4,000 washing machines.
Those are some incredibly heavy washing machines.
Metric or imperial?
Yes.
Cheeseburgers per freedom
Also known as about half of your mom
Well a football field is 57,600 sq ft, and a cubic foot of dirt weighs between 110-140 lbs depending on composition. That means that an average football field at a depth of one foot weighs around 6,912,000 lbs.
This thing weighs 916,000 lbs. So it is 0.1325231481 football fields.
Is Intel paying the state or country for this abuse of the logistics network? This feels like freeloading on a publicly funded piece of infrastructure.
We all pay. That’s how it works. Gas taxes and registration fees. The driver paid for a license. The truck had sales tax. It’s a distributed payment method. Not a pay as needed system. Unless they go on a toll road. But that’s a separate rant.
It’s Ohio
Intel will be paying people to build and work at the factory. Highly skilled labor that can’t be shipped overseas easily. It will also likely bring other companies to the area because of access to those highly skilled workers. The state will likely make more a lot more back in taxes and economic growth than the cost of the transports.
Intel also works with local community colleges to offer semiconductor specific training to be a manufacturing technician, and it’s not a huge jump to be a maintenance/repair tech or jump to IT within the fab and in my experience all those roles from technician to IT pay fairly good wages high 20’s to mid 30’s/hr and up depending on experience.
I hope truckers, pilot car drivers and dispatchers will be making crazy money off this parade as well. Ohio exists, might as well make the best of it. XD
The state will likely make more a lot more back in taxes and economic growth than the cost of the transports.
That’s a nice thought but what we’ve seen throughout history is the polar opposite.
Yup.
Without checking, I’m betting that Ohio gave them incredibly tax breaks that are nearly without end, meaning none of the money goes back into the local economy whatsoever
My states done it so many times now, and we don’t have income tax, so none of the money goes back into the local economy on the executive side, only on the workers side, putting all the issues it causes on workers! Woo!
The investment in public infrastructure is not only for you to use on your car. Part of it is enabling the industrial growth of the region.
If every company had to build its own infrastructure, why are they paying taxes?
It would be a huge waste to have that much one-time infrastructure.
I’m assuming the transport accommodations are part of the perk package (for lack of a better way to put it)
I have no insight into this particular plant, but in most big investments like this, the company is usually in talks with several locations negotiating for the best tax breaks, permitting accommodations, etc under the promise that it will bring skilled jobs to the area.
I’m a logistics professional with some project cargo experience. The transportation arrangements are almost certainly being made by a private company not related to Intel. There are only a handful of trailers in the country that can move something like this.
I want a 916,000 pound super load in my ass
Not even the Goatse guy…
The biggest news here is that semiconductor production is amping up in the states, which is good for national security and reduces reliance on Taiwan.
Slightly less good for the people of Taiwan.
Shouldn’t come as much surprise though. We’re not going to risk nuclear armageddon over nVidia’s stock price.
There’ll be lots of huffing and puffing, stern statements and red lines drawn, but if China decide they really want it, they’ll take it and the rest of the world won’t really do much.
Everyone has way too much of their infrastructure in China and they know it.
Ehhh. We are really just hedging our bets. As I understand it we are focusing on production of the older generations of chips. That frees up Taiwan to focus on the bleeding edge chips. Losing Taiwan would still be a massive blow to the global economy.
True. That’s definitely a fact / good thing that’s getting overlooked.
The bigger news here is something from his administration is coming to fruition that creates American jobs and reduces foreign dependency on a major commodity for both civilian and military applications.
Isn’t Angstrom 10^-10 meters? And nanometers 10^-9 meters? So 20A (assuming A = Angstrom) is just 2nm?
Are they trying to say that by moving to this new era, they’ll go single digit Angstrom i.e., 0.x nm?
Yes, but that is long past an actuall transistor size and just a marketing term.
