The Assassin (Sha ren zhe Tang Zhan)

Today on "Impossible engineering," the Airbus A380,

the largest passenger plane on the planet.

It took cutting-edge aerospace engineering...

A massive fly-by-wire system like this is an incredible tool

of safety for the aircraft itself.

...And a revolutionary design...

Without those design features,

this aircraft wouldn't exist today.

...To make the impossible possible.

captions paid for by Discovery communications

since the birth of aviation over a century ago,

air travel has been growing exponentially across the globe.

Over 3 billion people fly each year.

That's half the world's population.

The challenge for today's aerospace engineers

is to find a way to keep up with the constantly growing demand

and design aircraft that can accommodate

as many passengers as possible.

In order to reduce

the 100,000 flights that take place each day,

aircraft designers would need to think big.

What they came up with smashed aviation records...

...the Airbus A380, an ultra-high-capacity airliner,

the largest passenger plane on the planet...

...an aircraft so big

that a giant building had to be constructed

just to accommodate it.

This revolutionary double-decker plane

has an almost 265-foot wingspan,

the largest of any commercial aircraft.

It has almost 6,000 square feet of usable floor space.

That's 40% more than the next-largest airliner.

It can carry up to 850 passengers.

And with its state-of-the-art jet engines

and cutting-edge design,

it can fly nonstop almost halfway around the world.

At a custom-built hangar in Paris, this Airbus A380

is being stripped down

as part of its scheduled four-year service,

revealing the secrets

behind this incredible feat of engineering.

For maintenance manager sylvain Fagot,

this incredible machine never fails to impress.

The A380 is a colossal machine

that's the result of centuries of innovation.

Man has been trying to fly like a bird for quite some time.

But flight isn't as easy as it looks.

11th-century benedictine monk eilmer

reportedly strapped wings to his back

and launched himself off malmesbury Abbey...

Geronimo!

...but he glided out of control, coming to a painful landing.

And in 18th-century Paris, the montgolfier brothers

discovered that hot air could make a paper bag rise.

This led them to build a hot-air balloon,

making history with the first-ever

lighter-than-air manned flight...

Ah, très bien. Magnifique!

Ugh!

But their design had a few drawbacks.

To build a flying machine heavier than air

that can take off and remain airborne,

engineers would need to figure out a way

to harness the forces of nature.

And in 1804, British scientist sir George Cayley

finally unlocks the mystery of flight,

earning him the title the father of aeronautics.

Cayley discovered that while in flight,

a bird's wing has a curved shape.

This is now known as an aerofoil.

Air passing over the curved surface

speeds up, losing pressure.

The pressure of the undisturbed air below remains high.

This creates upward force.

By turning the aerofoil upside down,

aerospace engineer Dr. Ben Evans can demonstrate

how Cayley's shape successfully conquered the forces of gravity.

Now, in this experiment, on one side, we've got weights

representing gravity, the force that needs to be overcome.

And on the other end, an aerofoil.

And as this spins, the arm goes level.

The air passes over the aerofoil

and pulls it down to counteract gravity,

which is what lift is trying to do in an aircraft.

In 1853, at the age of 79,

Cayley put these ideas into practice

when he launched the world's first

heavier-than-air manned glider.

Sir George Cayley had made the impossible possible.

Cayley's achievements inspired

generations of aerospace engineers

to reach for the skies.

Without George Cayley's innovative wing design,

the gargantuan Airbus A380 wouldn't make it off the ground.

The A380's wings apply the same principles that Cayley exploited

but on an enormous scale.

With an almost-265-foot span

and a surface area of 9,095 square feet,

they're big enough to park 20 of Cayley's gliders on top.

But engineers needed some serious power

in order to get

the world's largest passenger plane airborne.

So they looked to a revolutionary design

from the past...

What an incredible sensation.

I can feel the acceleration pushing me back into my seat.

...To produce more impossible engineering.

In a supersized hangar in Paris,

an Airbus A380 is being serviced.

Technician Charlie Jackson is getting up close and personal

with this engineering masterpiece.

As this aircraft is taking off down the runway

and generating speed,

the tips of the wings actually will raise up,

which is a sign that the wing is generating the lift

it's going to need to carry such a large aircraft into flight.

Creating a wing big enough to generate lift

but small enough to minimize drag

is an engineering conundrum.

On the A380, special high-lift devices,

slats on the front and flaps on the back,

allow the wings to increase in size and curve

depending on how much lift is needed.

But the wings also keep the A380 airborne

in a more surprising way.

Inside of these wings is the fuel,

which you need to complete your flight.

The plane has 11 fuel tanks,

five in each wing and one in the tail.

Fuel is stored in the inner tanks

to reduce weight at the wing tips, but after takeoff,

it's pumped to tanks across the whole wing.

Throughout the flight,

the system constantly adjusts the fuel

to maintain the center of gravity.

This wing is the product of good design.

If it hadn't been that way,

it just wouldn't be practical to make an aircraft that size.

Well-designed wings aren't enough

to keep this massive plane in the air.

Creating engines powerful enough to lift a 369-ton aircraft,

along with 200 tons of passengers,

fuel and cargo almost 2½ miles into the sky is a daunting task.

The engines are one of the most important components

on this plane.

It's like the heart --

it doesn't beat, the body doesn't live.

Powering the A380 would be impossible

without the brilliant work of past engineers.

By the late 1800s, aerospace engineers recognized

that power and thrust were needed to fly.

Gah!

In 1874, frenchman Félix du Temple

attached a steam engine to a monoplane.

Et voilà!

But the engine was too heavy.

Sacrebleu!

And in 1903, American professor Samuel Langley

tried using a giant catapult,

but the takeoff didn't quite go as planned.

Aw, shoot!

Luckily, two siblings from Dayton, Ohio,

were about to make

one of aviation's most significant breakthroughs.

In December 1903, wilbur and Orville Wright

launched the maiden flight of the Wright flyer.

Two propellers driven by a piston engine

gave the plane enough thrust to take to the air.

Even though the flight only lasted 12 seconds,

covering just over 100 feet,

it was the first controlled powered flight

and is recognized as the birth of modern aviation.

But getting a plane more than 1,500 times heavier

than the Wright flyer airborne

would take an incredible engineering breakthrough.

Through the late 1930s,

piston-engine, propeller planes were the aviation standard.

They were limited in range, speed and altitude.

However, a radical engineering innovation was on the horizon.

Dr. Ben Evans is experiencing firsthand

the power of britain's first fighter jet,

the gloster meteor.

It's powered by the first-ever jet engine...

...which was invented by British engineer frank whittle.

Whittle's engines were powerful enough

to lift the gloster meteor over 7 miles into the sky

at a speed of over 600 miles per hour.

As groundbreaking as the jet engine was,

the engineering behind it is surprisingly simple.

In essence, the way the jet engine works is

you have suck, squeeze, bang, blow.

You suck air in at the front here,

and that passes through a spinning compressor.

And that compressor squeezes the air down,

increases the pressure and the temperature of the air

before it passes into the combustion chamber.

And this is the point where the fuel is added and ignited.

This increases the temperature

and pressure of the gas even further,

and then all of those hot exhaust gases