Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles

Post by w0m » Mon, Jun 25, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #129

mhandley wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could of course just carry a regular spare wheel or two. If your fancy trackwheel fails, unbolt it, and fit the regular spare wheel. You're still mobile, just without the ability to switch to track mode.

Never mind those folks with the rifles pointed at us! They’d never shoot someone whose busy changing a wheel!

Post by emiliobumachar » Mon, Jun 25, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #77

namirez wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say anything about the design of it, which is by the way, very cool. I don't understand the point of the triangle. The same mechanism could be used to change the geometry of the wheel only at the bottom.

Changing it only at the bottom adds complexity: Which side is at the bottom right now? How can we know this; how can we know this in a way that will survive the tough conditions we expect this to be driven in? And then we need to have three separate actuator paths to transform just one part of the wheel. We would also need to deal with the fact that just flattening one side of the wheel would make for a shorter perim…

Post by kbutler » Mon, Jun 25, 2018, 2:27 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #173

kbutler wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... "Motor vehicle crash fatalities were higher for males than females in all age groups, while the male population is equal to or less than the female population in all age groups." Particularly in the 21-30 age group, males had 3x the fatalities of females.

That has little bearing on the cost of fielding/maintaining a vehicle. Fatalities are so rare they won't have an impact maintenance costs unless a sizeable chunk of your fleet is getting driven off a cliff. In my experience men and women tend to be about equally hard on things. The male outliers tend to create more maintenance work by being hard on chassis/suspension ("hold my beer and watch this"). The female outlie…

  Attention to detail
  “I’ve always been impressed by how women take care of 
  their machines” Smith says. “They keep them clean and 
  don’t leave trash in the cabs. If there was a drop of 
  oil coming out of a wheel or something small like that 
  they let you know about it.”

Post by Cthulhu_ » Mon, Jun 25, 2018, 2:35 PM UTC

psergeant wrote: post #149

asfdsfggtfd wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are millions of young males in the US alone who are more careful than millions of young females. The effects of testosterone are far from as simple as you suggest. It tends to lead to higher competitiveness. This is not quite the same as recklessness. Meanwhile during normal usage the driver (of whatever gender) is likely to be getting shot at. This will tend to have a larger affect than their gender.

> there are millions of young males in the US alone who are more careful than millions of young females Yes, and millions of young men in the US who are shorter than millions of young women. What’s your point? Young men are still disproportionately more likely to be in road traffic accidents. Re testosterone, the keywords you should be searching for are “risk taking behaviour”. I’m curious also what percentage of tim…

Post by mcguire » Mon, Jun 25, 2018, 2:38 PM UTC

godelmachine wrote: post #99

haloux wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 year olds vary. As a 20 year old in the military, I was elbows deep in the B-61 Mod 10 replacing radioisotopic thermoelectric generators. Concession: id be damned if I told you that we didn’t goose the new guy bending over the explosives from time to time.

I Googled for "B-61 Mod 10 replacing radioisotopic thermoelectric generators" and I got this → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb and upon further searching, this → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator I need to ask if thermoelectric generator was a part of the B61 nuclear bomb? Please explain.