EoW March 2013

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Transatlantic cable
March 2013 29
† But another battery expert, Donald Sadoway, a materials
chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, disagreed. He said that an older type of battery
instead of the lighter-weight lithium-ion battery would not
have made much of a di erence to the 787, adding only
about 40 pounds – or the equivalent of an extra suitcase
per battery. “So you will risk the plane for something that’s
tantamount to one guy’s suitcase?” Mr Sadoway said. “Who’s
making the calculation here? It’s absurd. It doesn’t add up.”
OneWorld Trade Center
Thousands, including President Barack Obama, signed their
names to a steel beam. Now, ‘FreedomTower’awaits only its spire.
On 31st January, a dozen or so workers from a New Jersey
steel fabrication and engineering rm were focused on the
approximately 50-foot “lighting mast” – the spire segment to
be installed last at One World Trade Center in New York City,
topping out the skyscraper informally known as Freedom Tower
at its planned 1,776 feet. Only a few hundred feet of steel, in
18 separate pieces weighing about 620 tons, remained to be
installed before the spire was in place and marking the highest
point of any man-made structure in the western hemisphere.
Writing in the Morristown (New Jersey) Daily Record 3rd February,
Mark Spivey did not have to explain the signi cance of the
building that would be “ lling in a gap in the Lower Manhattan
skyline that has existed since the twin towers fell 11th September,
2001.” Nor did David Floyd, the president of MRP LLC, need to
explain a ritual that had sprung up around the lighting mast
taking shape in an immense warehouse near the company’s
South Plain eld headquarters.
“A lot of people have touched it just to say ‘I touched it,’” said
Mr Floyd. He told the Record that the spire receiving nishing
touches in January was very di erent from the 360-foot
telecommunications antenna that once topped the World Trade
Center’s North Tower. The spire is taller by about 420 feet, and
it will contain far fewer communications components. Even so,
it will boast weather cameras, satellite equipment, and electric
supply lines running all the way to the cylindrical portion at the
top, which is only a few inches across.
Massive aircraft warning lights will be installed about 10 feet
from the pinnacle, with access by way solely of a combination of
ladders and struts. Some of these are nothing more than simple
steel steps on the exterior of spire sections 1,600 feet o the
ground. “I don’t want to be the guy changing this light bulb,” said
Mr Floyd. The bulbs, weighing 25 pounds apiece, typically stay
lit for about six years each. Shipment via atbed trailers to the
World Trade Center site of the 18 remaining spire segments
was expected to take two weeks; hoisting to the top of the
skyscraper and installation, another three weeks. But Mr Floyd
noted that the process would proceed at the pleasure of Mother
Nature. Winds at the top must be below 15 miles per hour for
work to go forward.
“One piece a day would be a great day,” said Mr Floyd.
‘Unique redundance’
The winning bid submitted by MRP in 2008 for a large portion
of the steel work at the World Trade Center site included
construction work from oors one to 104 at One World Trade
Center. One of many Manhattan-based projects for MRP over
the last decade, this one meant hundreds of jobs for local
construction workers during the worst parts of the economic
downturn that started late in 2007. Only about two dozen
remain.