Explore The Earth

Fire Under the Water

To cut steel, and under the water at that! No lie at Dnieprostroy knew how to do it. Autogenic Elders were imported from Leningrad. The autogenic welder cuts, not with a knife and not with a fir, but with a gas flame. This flame is most remarkable: it burns through steel and is not extinguished by water.

Divers descended to the bottom of the Dnieper with lighted burners and set to work cutting the Eel wall. This work took several days. Cables were then attached to the piles and eleven capstans Ire placed on the rim of the basin. Thus in pieces the wall was dragged out of the river.

Minis work required fully two months. Not until the 10th of September was the steel wall again position so that the water could be pumped out the enclosure.

But a yet larger misfortune occurred on the 12th of July. Work was proceeding on the dike of the right basin: a wall of steel rails was being erected next to the wooden dike. Two large cranes were at work. They worked with the speed and the precision of two giant men. A crane would pick up single pile, lift it high into the air, lower it in place, and drive it down with a steam hammer. Then it would turn back for the next pile. About one o’clock only the pile for the last corner remained.

‘And suddenly,’ one of the engineers relates, part of the steel wall gave way and began to fit into the water, snapping steel cables, pulling bear out of the dike, and dragging a railway with it. ] the course of two minutes 170 meters of the we collapsed. With terror the workers and engines looked on, not knowing what to do. Fortunate the entire wall did not fall; it was supported on side by cables with which it was fastened to the dike. But on the other side the wall broke throughout almost its entire length.

Five hundred and twenty-seven piles fell into to water five hundred tons of steel!

And how much labor was lost!

Why did this happen?

Because the steel piles stood on a sharp incline and not on a flat surface, on the bed of the river to push them off this incline was not difficult for the power of the water.

‘And suddenly,’ one of the engineers relates, a part of the steel wall gave way and began to fall into the water, snapping steel cables, pulling bean out of the dike, and dragging a railway with it. In the course of two minutes 170 meters of the wall collapsed. With terror the workers and engines looked on, not knowing what to do. Fortunate the entire wall did not fall; it was supported on one side by cables with which it was fastened to the dike. But on the other side the wall broke throughout almost its entire length.

Five hundred and twenty-seven piles fell into to water - five hundred tons of steel!

And how much labor was lost!

Why did this happen?

Because the steel piles stood on a sharp incline and not on a flat surface, on the bed of the river. To push them off this incline was slot difficult for the power of the water.

Men endeavored to fence themselves from to the river by a steel wall, but the river pushed this wall as if it had been an old fence.

To repair what the river had done this time was much more difficult than before. The submerged eel wall had to be raised from the bottom of the river. But it weighed five hundred tons. How could Ah a weight be lifted? It was decided to cut the all into pieces under the water and to take it out parts.

At Dnieprostroy operations are being conduction on solid ground on the naked bottom of the river. How, then, did the workers force the Dnieper stand back? For only in a fairy story does this happen: River, stand back!

This is how they did it: they first fenced off a part of the river with temporary wooden dikes, then with powerful pumps they removed the water from the enclosure. The bottom being laid bare, they could work on the bed of the river as on land! But the river is furious. The dike is like a bone in fib throat. It is determined to wash out this obstruction, to dash into the artificial basin, to drown both people and machines! And on one occasion the river did succeed in breaking through. On the 24th of June, 1928, it suddenly demolished the lower dike. The water rushed in, and in about an hour the great basin was filled with water. The workmen had barely time to save themselves and their machines. Divers were lowered to discover what the matter was. They found that the river had washed a great hole ten meters square under the dike. With difficulty they filled this hole with sacks of straw and rubbish. Then they began to pump out the water. And this task required twenty-seven days. Twenty seven days to repair what the water had done in one hour!

In Moscow on Voznesensky Street may be seen a peculiar building. It would not seem so queer except for a tall tower adjoining the building on the right side. This tower is square and almost windowless. On it stands another tower made of glass with a steel frame. And on the very top of the second tower like a weather-cock turns a strange contraption resembling a flying machine of unusual design. This is a department of the Central Aero-Hydraulic Institute where wind motors are invented. And what you see turning on the top of the second tower is a new windmill being tested by the Institute.

If we should build such windmills throughout the country, we would capture more energy than the whole world requires today. In time, of course, the need will greatly increase. Then, wherever strong winds blow, windmills will be established. The entire country will be covered with a net of electrical wires. And all wind electric stations, as well others, will work in this net. Windmills will placed in regular order like figures on a chessboard. They must be placed so that one tower will not interfere with another. For wind, even as light, may car its shadows. And if one windmill falls into the wind shadow of another, it cannot work. Special static will be constructed to collect and conserve t energy of the wind in order that it may be US during calm weather.

But all of this is a task of future Five-Year Plan. The present plan sets the following task: to reply the old inefficient village windmills with the wit mills of the Central Aero-Hydraulic Institute. A during these five years to raise the strength of all our wind motors to 500 thousand horsepower.

What do We Need Most of  All?

Most of all we need machines.

For every undertaking, for every factory we net machines.

But in order to make a machine, we must ha metal.

- And in order to make a machine go, we must have energy. What is energy, and whence does it come?

It is all around us in abundance. The force of the rewind is energy. The waterfall is energy. A piece anthracite coal is energy. A log which we throw into the stove is energy.

Wind, water, coal, wood, may not be alive, but they can be forced to work. They can be compelled turn the wheels of machines. In Baku the wind flaps the wings of a windmill, and the windmill pump oil from beneath the earth.

In Volkhovstroy water turns the wheels of water engines. - turbines; and the turbines drive machine produce electrical current.

In every locomotive coal boils water and transforms it into steam, and the steam drives the piston of the engine.

This means that our first task is to get energy for our machines.

Conquerors of Their Own Country

Following the troops of scouts goes army conquerors, an army of workers.

What are they going to conquer?

They go to conquer their own country.

But really must it be conquered? Is not the la] i n which we live our own?

No, it is not ours. Ask informed people and the Thrill tell you that we yet have a great deal of u Clowned land, un owned forest, and unowned step but what does ‘unowned’ mean? It means not a Learn.

In Yakut there are also coal, and iron, and silver, and lead, and gold.

But the coal which lies untouched beneath the soil is as yet nobody’s coal. And the forest which we do not cut and which we do not protect is as yet nobody’s forest. All of this will be ours, if we will it so, but as yet it belongs to no one.

Our steppes will truly become ours only when we come with columns of tractors and ploughs and break the thousand-year-old virgin soil. Then these steppes will be ours. But until then they will belong to no one.

We must discover and conquer the country in which we live. It is a tremendous country. Nine thousand kilometers from west to east, four and one half thousand from north to south. The world’s coldest region is in Verkhoyansk there it is sometimes seventy degrees below zero! And tropical heat is in Samarkand there in the summer it is as hot as in Africa near the sources of the Nile. Snow and ice in the north palms in the south.

On such a far-flung front we must wage war.

And the Five-Year Plan is one of the first great battles in the war. We must burrow into the earth, break rocks, dig mines, and construct houses. We must take from the earth, lift, and transport millions of tons of ore, of coal, of peat, of building materials.

But are we to do all of this with our hands? With shovel, spade, and pick?

No, other weapons are needed here.

We must have a shovel which can raise a waged load of earth at once. We must have a pick which can break huge boulders into bits.

But even if we should make such a shovel or suck a pick, who would wield it? Obviously giant women are needed.

But are there such giant workmen? There are.

Giant Workmen

There is a giant excavator. It has only one arm, at this arm is twenty meters in length. In its hand holds a shovel. This is not really a shovel, but an electric excavator. In the little cabin there are seven motors. They move the different parts of the machine. One man operates them all scoop or bucket with a long handle. In the title cabin at the base of the arm sits one man, a mechanic, with seven electrical motors. For each ~ ovement of the excavator there is a special motor like a special muscle. The mechanic first turns on one motor. The scoop puts into the ground with teeth made of forged steel and is filled with earth. Then he starts another motor. The great arm slowly moves upward, raising huge bucket of earth. Stop! The third mote begins its work. The giant excavator turns to t left in a circle, as a soldier at drill. And there are, is already prepared to receive its burden. The operator pulls a chain, the bottom of the bucket open and the earth rushes like a waterfall into the ire box of the car.

There is another giant loader which resembles i comrade, the excavator. It also has a huge but with this arm it holds not a shovel, but a cab with a hook at the end. If a load is to be raised, to giant grabs the load with the hook and drags wherever is necessary.

Then there is a mast forty meters high, which is giant stonemason. If, let us suppose, the foundatian for a bridge or dam is to be laid, wooden forms a first built and then into these forms liquid cement poured. And it is here that we make use of the gin stonemason. At the bottom of the mast liquid cement is poured into a container. A mechanic star the engine, and the container flies upward along to mast. Stop! It reaches the top and empties to cement into a trough. And along the trough to cement, like a stream of water, runs directly into to form. A stream of liquid stone! And where is it? In the air high above our heads!

Men have invented many giant machines. There are machines that burrow into the earth; there are machines that gnaw through a bed of coal; there are machines that suck slime and sand from the bottom of a river. One machine stretches itself upward in order to raise loads aloft; another contracts itself into a little cake in order to creep and crawl under the ground.

One machine has teeth, another trunk, a third a fist. The first gnaws, the second sucks, the third strikes. And each one has its own name. The earth digger is called an excavator; the loader, a lifting crane; the stonemason, a pouring mast; the borer, a drilling lathe; the coal-digger, a hewing machine. Innumerable machines have been invented and we shall need them all in our great work.

It is easy to say, ‘We will build hundreds of new cities, thousands of new factories.’ But out of what are we to construct them? Certainly not out of air. Do we have enough brick, cement, and glass for construction? Do we have enough iron for machines? Of finished goods we have little, but of raw materials we have as much as you wish. If from a car window you see only waste land; forests, and swamps, you see nothing. Waste lands are clay, sand, and stone. Forests are beams, rafters, staves, and ties. Peat swamps are electric current. Out of clay and sand we make bricks; out of clay and lime, cement; out of iron ore, steel. We must find raw materials. Our first task, therefore, is exploration. One should never begin a battle before the work of scouting has been done. Every year we send expeditions to the most distant regions beyond the polar circle, to the deserts of Kazakhstan, into the mountains of Altai and Pamir. SCOUTS OF THE FIVE YEAR PLAN One troop of scouts makes its way over the mar tundra of Siberia. It goes without maps, almost o guess. Its members wear black masks of netting. Otherwise they would be devoured by mosquito and gnats. As the troop proceeds, accompanying and not lagging a single step, moves an expedite of flying insects. The tundra is like a flat ply without a single hill. A troop of scouts in the Pamir At the same time far to the south goes another troop of scouts. It proceeds up a mountain right as up the cornice of a giant wall. Below are hundreds of meters of empty space. If you should 1 come frightened, you would fall into a crevasse a even your bones would never be seen again. But 1 scout must not know fear. So he moves on, lean with his entire body against the stony wall and consciously feeling his way around projections with feet. During the ten years following 1919 the Academy of Science alone organized three hundred and seventy-one expeditions! And how many scouts did our other scientific institutions send out! How many persons have been commissioned to explore those places where we have decided to build railroads, to dig canals, to put down coal mines, to construct factories! Throughout the entire country-our scouts are at work.