Lengthening the blades was no small feat, either. Because they're made of composites to keep weight down, GE's boffins were able to cut the 120-foot blades in half and seamlessly insert a 23-foot extension in the middle. You can see one such surgery happen in time-lapse fashion in the video above, but bear in mind that the most important bits are blurry -- the process has yielded 16 patent applications thus far, so we won't know the particulars until the USPTO publishes them.