V IMPRESSIVE

WHEN IT COMES TO POWER, SIZE DOESN'T ALWAYS MATTER - BUT IT HELPS.
Words by Martin Gurdon
Illustration by Tom Lane

ROCKET POWER: When Apollo headed for the moon in 1969, its Saturn V rockets produced 7.6 million pounds of thrust and enough energy to power New York for 75 minutes. Just igniting one took fifteen tons of kerosene and liquid oxygen, and on take-off Apollo’s astronauts were subjected to 4.5 times the force of gravity. Getting into space required the spacecraft to hit 17,500mph, and breaking free of Earth’s gravity necessitated an even more heady 24,500mph. But it certainly worked.

HORSE POWER: Before tractors, if you wanted something shifted, you used a Shire or heavy horse – gentle giants with evocative breed names like Clydesdale and Suffolk Punch. A pair of Shires were said to have pulled a 55-tonne load in 1893. The tallest, born in 1959, named Firpon, stood 21.1 hands; the heaviest, apparently, was a Belgian stallion called Brooklyn Supreme, weighing in at 1.44 tonnes. Born in 1928, it’s unlikely that David Beckham and ‘Posh’ Spice named one of their children after him.

WIND POWER: According to the ‘Treehugger’ website, German company RePower makes the world’s biggest electricity-generating wind turbine, the 5M, whose 415-foot-long blades generate 5 megawatts of power. 5Ms are sited offshore, and residents of Scotland’s Moray Forth can view these giants, secured in 40m of water, generating electricity 95% of the time –meaning they stand idle on average just 18 days annually.

DIESEL POWER: Not all giant ships use turbines; some have very big, very powerful diesel engines. Probably the biggest is the Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C, a turbocharged two-stroke with up to 14 cylinders, weighing 2300 tons – 300 of those accounted for by the crankshaft. 89 feet long and 44 high, it has a maximum power of 108,920hp at 102rpm – at generating 5,608,312lb ft of torque. And although it uses 1660 gallons of heavy fuel oil every hour, it is 20 to 25% more efficient than most modern aircraft or car engines. If the batteries go flat, however, a push start would be out of the question.

INSECT POWER: It’s tough being an insect, which may be why some are very tough themselves. Toughest of all is the Rhinoceros Beetle, which in terms of proportional strength is reckoned to be the world’s strongest creature. Elephants can carry up to 25 per cent of their own weight, but the beetle can haul 850 times its own mass. As larvae they dine on rotting wood, and in adulthood fetid fruit and sap keep them healthy. There are some 300 varieties, and although they all look (and indeed are) hard they’re totally harmless.

PENSIONER POWER: He may not be the world’s strongest man, but 76-year-old Sri Chinmoy must be one of its strongest senior citizens. Bengali-born Chinmoy, now resident in New York, recently took part in the Team USA v Team World Strongman Competition in Philadelphia, and using a trestle arrangement lifted eight very large competitors weighing between 320 and 420 pounds ‘with one arm’.