Chompie Returns!

07/14/2010

Last week I posted a photo of one of several mysterious gray bundles that had been delivered to the Discovery building and asked if you could guess what it was...

Well, here's the answer:  It's Chompie, the building shark!  Chompie made his first appearance on the Discovery building to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Shark Week in 2007, and he's back this year to herald the arrival of Shark Week 2010, which starts August 1.

Here are some interesting facts about Chompie:

The inflatable shark consists of five pieces - the head, two side fins, a dorsal fin, and a tail. If the shark were real, it would be about 446 feet long from the tip of his nose to the back of his tail, about 113 feet tall from his belly to the top of his dorsal fin, and about 200 feet wide from tip to tip of his side fins -- and he would weigh about 84,000 pounds. That's one big shark!

The shark is a cold-air inflatable - it must be continuously inflated by air while it is installed on the building. It takes 10 air blowers blowing 2000 cubic feet per minute of air each to keep the five pieces inflated.

It took 11,720 yards of fabric to make the shark - that's 6.65 miles of fabric! No to mention 36.7 miles of thread, and 3/4 of a mile of seatbelt webbing.

Comments

[gaelan]

chompie!!!! aaahhhhh!!!!

[Jeff Felts]

My wife and I notice when both Discovery and History channels run many of their shows with a commentator, the background music volume is SOOOOO loud one can't hear what the commentator is saying. I would much rather hear the important parts than extra loud background music. Thanks! Jeff

[Ick]

The new narrator of Discovery's Nature's Most Amazing Events is awful. Couldn't Discovery spring for Richard Attenborough? Some misguided network exec ruined BBC's hit.

[Ick]

It looks too much like a plane -- bad idea.

[Crazykitty]

Wow!! how in the world did they get that
all the way up there?!