Exploring the limits faced by engineers as they struggle to go further with everything they build, this book takes as its basis some of the world's most ambitious modern projects. These include the plans of Sir Norman Foster and Kazo Shimizu to build a tower block almost a kilometre high; Hugh Doherty's Jubilee Line extension tunnel; Jean-Jacques Huber's 1000-passenger airbus; Stephen Gorevan's challenging attempt to design a vehicle that can land on and analyze a comet; Niels Gimsing's record-breaking suspension bridge in Denmark; and Peter Cochrane's plans for a fibre-optic network to encircle the earth.