Engineering – Page 86 – Take off with Natarajan

Here is what a Pilot Thinks When the Aircraft loses all of its Engines in the Mid Air….

May 30, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Last weekend, Singapore Airlines Flight 836 was traveling from Singapore to Shanghai when the twin-engine Airbus A330-343 lost power on both engines over the South China Sea.

Image of Airbus330-343

Fortunately, the pilots were able to restore power to the engines, and the flight was able to continue on to its destination.

No injuries have been reported.

Modern turbofan engines are very robust pieces of engineering and tend to be incredibly reliable.

That makes last weekend’s incident an exceedingly rare event.

In fact, experienced A330 pilot Karlene Petitt told Business Insider that in her years flying the popular jet, she has never encountered, in pilot parlance, a “dual flameout.”

So what is an airline pilot thinking when the engines on his or her plane inexplicably lose power?

“What would go through my mind is fly the plane and do everything I can to get the engines started,” Petitt said in an email. “That would be the only thing to think about.”

In the cockpit, pilots are equipped with reference guides which provides guidance and checklists for a wide variety of operational situations – including the loss of power on all engines.

At cruising altitudes – 39,000 ft. in the case of the Singapore jet – the air is very thin and there may not be enough oxygen to get the engines to relight.

However, according to Petitt, “Normally when you get down around 24,000 feet you should be able to get one started because of the denser air at that altitude.”

In the case of Singapore Flight 836, the airliner lost 13,000 feet of altitude before the pilots were able to get the engines going again.

According to Petitt, she would only think about looking for a landing location after realizing she wouldn’t be able to get the engines going.

Depending on how high and how far the airplane is from an airport, the pilot would then determine what would be the appropriate course of action

In past incidents, pilots have chosen a variety of strategies.

In 1983, Air Canada Flight 143 going from Montreal to Edmonton ran out of fuel midway through the flight after the ground crew miscalculated the amount needed for the trip. The pilots were able to glide the twin-engine Boeing 767-200 jet to safety at a retired Canadian military runway that had been turned into a race track.

In 2001, an Air Transat Airbus A330 traveling from Toronto to Lisbon developed a fuel leak while flying over the Atlantic Ocean. The widebody jet lost all power, but the pilots were able to glide to an airport in the Azores Islands.

Miracle on the Hudson

Most famously, US Airways flight 1549 lost both of its engines after colliding with a flock of geese while taking off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Due to the low altitude, the pilots didn’t have time to complete the engine restart procedure. Miraculously, Captain Sully Sullenberger was able to successfully guide the Airbus A320 down in the middle of the Hudson River.

In these instances, the pilots were able to safely land their planes with few injuries to the passengers and crew.

“Pilots never stop flying the plane,” Petitt reiterated. “No matter what, we will do what it takes.”

Source….BENJAMIN ZHANG in www.businessinsider.in

Natarajan

Few Accidental Discoveries that Changed the world….

May 29, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

In many ways, modernity can be viewed as little more than the the product of centuries of dumb luck. As you are about to see, some of the world’s most significant milestones were the result of nothing more than happy accidents.

Accidental Discoveries: Penicillin

Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming changed modern medicine and saved countless lives by not being a very tidy man. Fleming left for vacation in 1928, failing to clean up his lab beforehand. When he returned, he noticed that some of his Petri dishes had developed mold that prevented bacteria to grow on them.

Accidental Discoveries Penicillin

Correctly guessing that the mold had antibacterial properties, Fleming went to work on identifying the culture – Penicillium notatum. From that, the scientist was able to extract penicillin and revolutionize the world of antibiotics.

Accidental Discoveries Penicillin Advertising

It should be noted that it took another decade before other scientists found a way to create a stable strain of penicillin that could be mass-produced. Likewise, Fleming wasn’t the first person to see the potential of moldy cultures. Other prominent scientists such as Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister also realized that certain molds could inhibit bacteria growth, not to mention the fact that moldy bread was a traditional infection remedy since ancient times.

The Big Bang Theory

Accidental Discoveries Big Bang

We aren’t actually talking about the discovery of the Big Bang theory itself, but rather of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), or the radiation that the Big Bang left behind. George Gamow predicted its existence in the 1940s but it wasn’t until 1964 that two radio astronomers, Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, discovered it completely by chance.

Accidental Discoveries Big Bang Astronomers

For their work, Wilson and Penzias won the Nobel Prize in 1978 Source: One Minute Astronomer

Penzias and Wilson were working at Bell Labs in New Jersey and experimenting with a state-of-the-art horn antenna when they picked up some weird interference. At first, they thought this was due to something way less exciting than the CMB – pigeons. However, once they cleared the nest, they noticed that the interference remained. It could only be CMB.

And thus the two astronomers discovered the first compelling evidence for the veracity of the Big Bang theory. At that time, the origins of the universe were in even hotter debate than today, with camps divided primarily by those who believed in an expanding universe (first put forward by Belgian priest/scientist Georges Lemaitre and later supported by Russian physicist George Gamow) or steady-state theory, the idea of a universe that always was and always will be. The discovery of the CMB tipped the scales in the Big Bang’s favor.

X-Rays

X Ray Hands

In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen was doing some simple experiments with a cathode ray tube. At one point, he noticed that the tube was lighting a piece of fluorescent cardboard in the room even though there was a screen between them. Röntgen unsuccessfully tried to block the rays and eventually thought of sticking his hand in front of the tube, revealing the bones inside it. He had just discovered X-rays.

X Ray Rontgen

To be fair, others were aware of the effects of X-rays before Röntgen, but he was the one to study them systematically. He also gave them their name, even though they were referred to as Röntgen rays for decades following his discovery.

Accidental Discoveries X Ray

Röntgen went to work on improving the imaging process by replacing the screen with a photographic plate so the images would be clearer. The first medical x-ray ever taken was of his wife’s hand, which Röntgen presented to the scientific community. Pretty soon x-ray technology became an international medicinal staple.

Radioactivity

Accidental Discoveries Radioactivity Sign

One happy accident often leads to another. That was the case with French scientist Henri Becquerel, who, after being inspired by Röntgen’s work, started researching phosphorescence in 1896. Becquerel thought that phosphorescence was responsible for the x-ray effect so he tried exposing some photographic plates to phosphorescent salts in order to confirm it.

Accidental Discoveries Radioactivity Becquerel

None of the materials used ended up having an effect, save for one: uranium salts. And even still, that discovery was made completely by chance. Becquerel considered sunlight to be essential to the experiment, and it was cloudy on the day he planned to test the uranium salts. Becquerel stuck everything in a drawer and waited to experiment another day, only to find days later that the uranium salts caused the photographic plate to blacken in spite of the darkness.

Accidental Discoveries Radioactivity Plate

Becquerel had wrapped the plates in paper so they were never in direct contact with the uranium salts, which meant that some unknown form of radiation capable of passing through solid objects was responsible for this event, not phosphorescence. Becquerel had stumbled upon radioactive decay or, as more know it, radioactivity.

Wearable Pacemaker

With over 350 patents to his name, it’s a wonder that Wilson Greatbatch is not a household name. But of all his innovations, the wearable pacemaker is undoubtedly the most highly acclaimed.

Accidental Discoveries Pacemaker

In 1956, Greatbatch was an electrical engineer working to build a heart rhythm-recording device. In a serendipitous moment of inattention, he reached into a box of spare parts for a resistor, but grabbed the wrong size. Greatbatch realized this after installing it, but he also noticed that the completed circuit produced an electric pulse at a speed of 1.8 times per second.

That’s roughly as fast as the heart beats, something Greatbatch immediately picked up on. He realized that the electrical stimuli could be used to assist a weak heart and went to work on shrinking down his device. In 1958 he successfully inserted a pacemaker into a dog, but it was left to a Minneapolis medical company to develop wearable pacemaker for humans that same year.

Source…..www.all-that-is-interesting.com

Natarajan

Image of the Day….FireFlies over Sky…!!!

May 29, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Fireflies are back, upstate New York

Photo and report from an EarthSky friend who regularly watches for them.

Here’s the first firefly photo we’ve seen so far this year. Matt Pollock in the town of Brunswick in upstate New York posted it at EarthSky Facebook this week (May 27, 2015). He wrote:

Each year as part of my planned outings I include the return of the fireflies. It seems they have come early this year and in great abundance. Last night it never dropped much below 70 degrees F and hot nights in deep grass is their favorite breeding time and place. Typically, the females climb up on the tips of the grass and signal to the males who search around in roving packs from above. I think I learned something interesting last night. When its windy, The males fly low when going upwind, then climb rapidly and let the wind cast them over the grass tops as they search for their mates. If they see one flashing, they drop like a meteor then hover (often in groups) and signal to the ladies below.

I set up my camera low to the ground, just above the grass tops and ran a time lapse. Each time the camera took a picture, the green LED would flash a few times indicating it was taking another photograph. At one point, I think a group saw this and decided to check it out. As I sat in the grass a few feet away, a cluster of them upwind from the setup suddenly rose and dive bombed the camera. Some of them actually came within inches of the lens.

I had the Fstop set for F/2.8 and focused at infinity at a focal length of 24mm with the hopes of catching the core of the Milky Way so the depth of field was fairly narrow and and field of view fairly wide. As can be seen they came in close enough to be pretty blurry and large considering that even something close to the lens is smaller than normal.

As is often the case, the cloud cover prevented any capture of galactic core, but for a brief interval you could see Sagittarius and the “Teapot” asterism which looked almost like lightning bolts coming out of its center. Next time I will pick the midpoint for focus but overall I am pleased with what I got. I thoroughly enjoyed being out there and watching the annual show and will be looking for more of them until the fields are cut and they move on again until next year.

By the way, fireflies have an organic compound in their abdomens called luciferin. As air rushes into the abdomen, a chemical reaction gives off the firefly’s familiar glow. Read more: Why do fireflies light up?

Bottom line: First firefly photo we’ve seen this year, from Matt Pollock in upstate New York.

Source….www.earthsky.org

Natarajan

image of the Day… Sunset Sequence in Mars…!!!

May 29, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover recorded this sequence of views of the sun setting at the close of the mission’s 956th Martian day, or sol (April 15, 2015), from the rover’s location in Gale Crater.

The four images shown in sequence here were taken over a span of 6 minutes, 51 seconds.

This was the first sunset observed in color by Curiosity. The images come from the left-eye camera of the rover’s Mast Camera (Mastcam). The color has been calibrated and white-balanced to remove camera artifacts. Mastcam sees color very similarly to what human eyes see, although it is actually a little less sensitive to blue than people are.

Dust in the Martian atmosphere has fine particles that permit blue light to penetrate the atmosphere more efficiently than longer-wavelength colors. That causes the blue colors in the mixed light coming from the sun to stay closer to sun’s part of the sky, compared to the wider scattering of yellow and red colors. The effect is most pronounced near sunset, when light from the sun passes through a longer path in the atmosphere than it does at mid-day.

Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates the rover’s Mastcam. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project’s Curiosity rover. For more information about Curiosity, visit http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M Univ.

Source……www.nasa.gov

Leaf People…Branch People….and Root People….

May 29, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

—

A beautiful analogy

I have this tree analogy when

I think of people in my life, be it friends , family, acquaintances, employees, co-workers, whomever… They are all placed inside what I call my tree test.

It goes like this:

LEAF PEOPLE
Some people come into your life and they are like leaves on a tree. They are only there for a season. You can’t depend on them or count on them because they are weak and only there to give you shade. Like leaves, they are there to take what they need and as soon as it gets cold or a wind blows in your life they are gone. You can’t be angry at them, it’s just who they are.

BRANCH PEOPLE
There are some people who come into your life and they are like branches on a tree. They are stronger than leaves, but you have to be careful with them. They will stick around through most seasons, but if you go through a storm or two in your life it’s possible that you could lose them. Most times they break away when it’s tough. Although they are stronger than leaves, you have to test them out before you run out there and put all your weight on them. In most cases they can’t handle too much weight. But again, you can’t be mad with them, it’s just who they are.

ROOT PEOPLE
If you can find some people in your life who are like the roots of a tree then you have found something special. Like the roots of a tree, they are hard to find because they are not trying to be seen. Their only job is to hold you up and help you live a strong and healthy life. If you thrive, they are happy. They stay low key and don’t let the world know that they are there. And if you go through an awful storm they will hold you up. Their job is to hold you up, come what may, and to nourish you, feed you and water you.

Source……input from a friend of mine

Natarajan

New “Malaysia Airlines ” set to Fly From September 1….

May 29, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

The state-run airline’s sole shareholder, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, has this week appointed an Administrator to facilitate the transfer of selected assets and liabilities from the existing Malaysian Airline System Berhad to new company Malaysia Airlines Berhad. The current business will continue to operate through to August 31, 2015, with the new operator, effectively a start-up, taking to the air from September 1, 2015.

Troubled Asian national carrier Malaysia Airlines will be completely revamped as a business through the remainder of the year as its new boss takes drastic action to return the loss-making operator to profitability. Christoph Mueller, who recently joined as chief executive officer from Aer Lingus has played important roles in the restructuring the Irish carrier and other European flag carriers.

The voluntary administration follows the passing of a special Malaysia Airlines administration act by both houses of the Malaysian Parliament last year to provide for “an effective, efficient and seamless means to transition the business, property, rights, liabilities and affairs”.

The transition of the business is a key component of the 12-point MAS Recovery Plan, which was announced on in August last year to restructure the national carrier and set it on a path towards sustainable profitability. The process also includes conditional investment funding by Khazanah of up to RM6 billion ($1.66 billion), disbursed on a staggered basis and subject to the fullfillment of strict conditions.

Christoph Mueller, Chief Executive Officer Designate of the new airline, said: “This appointment does not affect our daily operations or existing reservations. All Malaysia Airlines flights, schedules, and reservations continue to operate as normal. I assure you our operations are very much business as usual.”

The ‘new’ Malaysia Airlines is expected to operate under a new brand and livery and there are certain to be changes to its network and fleet strategies, including the departure of some, if not all, the Airbus A380s in its fleet and which are used on its routes to London and Paris from Kuala Lumpur.

In this first official interview since taking over at Malaysia Airlines on May 1, 2015, Mueller has outlined more details of his management brief to Reuters. He said the ‘new’ Malaysia Airlines will operate like a “start-up” and would not be “a continuation of the old company in a new disguise,” but that “everything is new”.

“I’m hired to run the new company entirely on commercial terms and there’s very little margin for error,” he told Reuters in this week’s interview in the downtown Kuala Lumpur office of Malaysian state investor Khazanah. The airline is expected to cut its 20,000 workforce by around a third through the switch of airlines, with all those keeping employment with the state-run business doing so on revised contracts. .

Source….Richard Maslen in http://www.routesonline.com

Natarajan

Why We Say ” O’ Clock ” ….?

May 28, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

The practice of saying “o’clock” is simply a remnant of simpler times when clocks weren’t very prevalent and people told time by a variety of means, depending on where they were and what references were available.

Generally, of course, the Sun was used as a reference point, with solar time being slightly different than clock time. Clocks divide the time evenly, whereas, by solar time, hour lengths vary somewhat based on a variety of factors, like what season it is.

Thus, to distinguish the fact that one was referencing a clock’s time, rather than something like a sundial, as early as the fourteenth century one would say something like, “It is six of the clock,” which later got slurred down to “six o’clock” sometime around the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. In those centuries, it was also somewhat common to just drop the “o’” altogether and just say something like “six clock.”

Using the form of “o’clock” particularly increased in popularity around the eighteenth century when it became common to do a similar slurring in the names of many things such as “Will-o’-the wisp” from “Will of the wisp” (stemming from a legend of an evil blacksmith named Will Smith, with “wisp” meaning “torch”) and “Jack-o’-lantern” from “Jack of the lantern” (which originally just meant “man of the lantern” with “Jack,” at the time, being the generic “any man” name. Later, either this or the Irish legend of “Stingy Jack” got this name transferred to referring to carved pumpkins with lit candles inside).

While today with clocks being ubiquitous and few people, if anybody, telling direct time by the Sun, it isn’t necessary in most cases to specify we are referencing time from clocks, but the practice of saying “o’clock” has stuck around anyway.

Source….www.today i foundout.com

Natarajan

” Stunning Paper Birds…” See it to Believe …!!!

May 28, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Zack Mclaughlin’s Stunning Paper Birds

Zack Mclaughlin is an artist inspired by the beauty and colors of birds. He makes his stunning scultptures from paper, wood and other mixes. He started making these paper birds a few years ago, with the designs becoming more and more lifelike, staying true to what he found so beautiful while also maintaining relism in his sculptures.

You can find more of Zack’s beautiful works on his Etsy page.

Birds are so vesatile, says Zack. Their colors, sizes, shapes – a huge variety of beauty.

Making these birds takes a lot of time and patience, but he loves working on them.

Zack cuts every individual feather with his scissors, from the big wing feathers to the tiny tail feathers.

A snow owl.

This owl was created out of book pages

These birds seem to just pause for a moment before taking off, they’re so lifelike.

Goldfinch in bell jar with light

Paper cut hummingbird feather

Paper and wood robin, with the cutter used to make it.

Source….www.ba-bamail.com

Natarajan

Meet Abhishek Singhania …an IIT Madras Graduate who works with Farmers…

May 27, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Indrani Roy/Rediff.com meets Abhishek Singhania who left a bright career at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mumbai, to work in a food security project at Khentia village in Bengal, as a research fellow.

Image: Abhishek Singhania (standing extreme right clockwise). Photograph: Dipak Chakraborty/Rediff.com

Abhishek Singhania is a strange young man. Graduating in metallurgy from Indian Institute of Technology – Madras in 2012, he got himself a dream job of a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mumbai. But unlike the youngsters of his age, the cushy job that fetched him Rs 90K per month failed to satisfy him.

Instead, he wanted to dedicate his time to a job more meaningful, an endeavour that would have a direct and positive impact on the growth of India.

“I should be working with farmers instead,” Abhishek told himself.

A few months into his job at PwC, he was sent to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for six months on an assignment.

“There was no problem with the consultant’s job as such but an inner voice kept pestering me that I was not meant for this. I needed to do something else,” Abhishek told rediff.com.

“I started thinking deeply about my career and my future.

“I was not sure if I would continue with my job at PwC or join the automobile sector (I am passionate about cars) or agriculture,” Abhishek said.

“It was around this time that I started preparing for Graduate Record Examinations but soon lost interest.

“For some time, I have been reading reports of farmers’ suicides and they have perturbed me a lot,” Abhishek said.

“I thought if technical people like us can train these farmers, it can lead to better production and lesser suicides”.

Abhishek returned to India from Jeddah in June 2014.

He took a break from office and visited Temathani village near Kharagpur.

“I met the farmers there and discussed the problems that they face,” Abhishek said.

“I was taken aback by their sheer lack of knowledge,” he said.

“I could understand that they did not know how to treat the soil with right kind of fertilisers for higher production.

“I also realised that the farmers did not know how to save their crops from pests.

Abhishek Singhania (standing extreme right clockwise) experimenting with biochar. Photograph: Kind courtesy, Abhishek Singhania

“I came to know that they were often using the wrong pesticides that caused more harm to the soil than good.

One fine morning, Abhishek came to IIT Kharagpur from Temathani.

“I knew that this IIT alone has an agriculture department and food technology schools.

“I heard from a cousin of mine, who is a student here, that Dr PBS Bhadoria and Dr Dilip Kumar Swain, were doing a food security project here.

“When I met them they said a project is expected to take off soon in a village nearby.

They, however, could not give me a timeline. ”

In December, Abhishek resigned from PwC and went to Pondicherry to take a look at some organic farms and startups there.

Image: The biochar is made. Photograph: Kind courtesy, Abhishek Singhania

“I was integrating within me all the necessary information about agriculture,” Abhishek said.

He revisited Kharagpur IIT in February end and after a second round of discussion with Bhadoria and Swain, he decided to join, as a research fellow, the duo’s Food Security Project at Khentia village located 10 km from the institute.

The fact that his stipend would now be a meagre 15K a month did not deter Abhishek even once.

“Rather, I was happy to have finally made up my mind”, he told rediff.com.

Now, Abhishek spends hours with farmers of Khentia village, teaching them essential skills of farming.

Under this project, a barren 14 acres of land has been ‘adopted’ from 14 farmers by the IIT team.

In a collaborative approach, wherein the farmers give free labour and the IIT team the technical knowhow, the land has been treated and made ready for cultivation.

Irrigation system has been revamped and the farmers can now produce rice for their own consumption (earlier they needed to buy rice from the market).

Riding on the success of abundant production of rice, Abhishek’s team has taught the Khentia farmers to produce soyabean, sweet corn, peanut and sesame.

“Target of our project is to make these farmers self-sufficent so that apart from growing their food themselves, they can enhance their income by selling the cash crops to the retail market.

The IIT team plans to give hands on training to the farmers only for a year and once the team feels that the farmers are confident and skilled enough to run the show themselves, the team will move out to other villages of Kharagpur to replicate the same project there.

Abhishek Singhania poses with a dhenki, machine used by rural folks to produce rice from paddy. Photograph: Dipak Chakraborty/Rediff.com

Abhishek leads the team of trainers from the IIT that keeps visiting the farmers regularly.

At present, he has his hands full making a sustainable farming-cum-marketing model so that once the IIT team leaves Khentia, the farmers there can do everything on their own.

“We want the farmers to form a cooperative that will work towards their interests and well being,” Abhishek told rediff.com.

Abhishek is also making environment-friendly biochar and biogas for the Khentia farmers.

“Generally the farmers burn the plant residue on the field after harvesting. In the process, most of the carbon from the plants get transferred back to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, etc thereby increasing global warming,” Abhishek said.

“Instead, if we do pyrolysis in controlled conditions, we can retain a substantial amount of the carbon in the final product (biochar).

“Biochar increases soil fertility and has many other advantages.

“Our primary aim is to develop an ideal setup for producing biochar which should be simple so that farmers can operate it, it should be inexpensive and should have high efficiency.

“Till now we have done five experiments with 3 different set ups.”

“If my experiments on these products is successful here, I’ll carry them to other villages as well,” he told rediff.com.

As he guided us around the Khentia village in the scorching May heat, sweats covered Abhishek’s forehead.

But his smile spoke for itself how much he enjoyed this new assignment of his.

Isn’t this rigorous farm work tiring?

“Na didi, it’s fun. I had always dreamt about doing something meaningful in life. After a long wait, I have got an opportunity to follow my dream,” said a beaming Abhishek.

Abhishek Singhania poses with a rice storage container. Photograph: Dipak Chakraborty/Rediff.com

Once his research at IIT-Kharagpur gets over, Abhishek wants to set up a firm that will lend technical assistance towards integrated farming.

After completing his research, Abhishek wants to travel to villages all over Bengal to interact with farmers and share his experience and knowledge with them.

“At present, with the current population, implementation of National Food Security Act requires 61 metric tones of foodgrains annually,” said Abhishek.

“Moreover, India needs to double its agricultural productivity by 2040 to reduce the supply and demand gap.”

These statistics, Abhishek said, outline the need for research in the field of food production.

“I am happy to be a small part of this gigantic research,” he told rediff.com.

Asked if he missed his high profile career at PwC, the young farming enthusiast said, “Not in the least. I am being true to my soul. I have transformed my passion into my profession.

“All that I ever wanted was to have a car of my own. I drive a Hyundai i10 now. What more can I ask for?” Abhishek said.

“For the entire six months of my stay at Jeddah, I stayed at Radisson. But here at Kharagpur IIT, I am staying in a small hostel room with a common washroom.

“The huge difference between my living arrangements here and there never bother me for a minute.

“We get only one life. Why waste it chasing frivolous things?”

Indrani Roy / Rediff.com in Kharagpur

Source………….www.rediff.com

Natarajan

World’s Biggest Hotel to Open in Mecca…in 2017…

May 26, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

The hotel will feature four helipads and 12 towers. Picture: Dar Al-Handasah (Shair and Partners) Source: Supplied

MOVE over Vegas, the biggest hotel in the world is set to open in a different desert.

Towering over the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the Abraj Kudai hotel will feature 10,000 rooms, 70 restaurants and four helipads.

Set to open in 2017, the project will cost around $4.5 billion and has been designed to look like a desert fortress.

The mammoth hotel will be 45 stories high, made up of 12 towers standing on top of a 10 storey podium. There will be a shopping mall, food courts, a bus station and a huge ballroom to service the millions of people that converge on the city for the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

Five of the floors will be strictly off limits to guests and reserved entirely for the Saudi royal family.

Some critics worry about the destruction of Saudi Arabia’s heritage. Picture: Dar Al-Handasah (Shair and Partners)Source: Supplied

Irfan Al-Alawi, director of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, told The Guardian that the hotel was proof the city was “turning into Mecca-hattan”, and lamented the little heritage left in Saudi Arabia’s holy cities.

The hotel will be built in the Manafia district, a few kilometres south of the Grand Mosque, and is funded by the Saudi Ministry of Finance and designed by the Dar Al-Handasah group.

The Saudi royal family has five levels dedicated entirely to them. Picture: Dar Al-Handasah (Shair and Partners) Source:Supplied

Source….www.news.com.au

Natarajan