THE KEY TO AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE IS QUITE LITERALLY A KEY

摘要

These massive gates, soon to be installed in new locks in the Panama Canal, currently stand guard near the Atlantic entrance to the 100-year-old waterway. Built by Italian steel manufacturer Cimolai, each gate is nearly 10 stories tall, weighs 3,100 tons, and costs $34.2 million to fabricate, transport, and install. Construction crews will wheel 16 of these monsters into the locks-eight on each end of the canal-where robotic transporters will fit them into their housings. It's all part of a projected eight-year, $5.2 billion plan to add a third lane to the canal to accommodate colossal "post-Panamax" container ships. When it's finished in 2015, the project will double the capacity of the only man-made interoceanic waterway in the world.