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The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

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Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#31

Post by drusepth »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #26
melling wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, a single M1 Abrams tank costs over $4 million, and we have 9000 of them. DARPA R&D money always feels like money better spent than a lot of other military spending. We get future dividends, often civilian.

What are you talking about? Everyone is poor and miserable, families arent making rent. My uncle was just dumpster diving to feed his family two months ago. They're wasting the people's money over at DARPA.

>>DARPA R&D money always feels like money better spent than a lot of other military spending.

I think "better spent than a lot of other military spending" was the point of the post you responded to. The military may be wasting The People's Money, but DARPA seems to have low costs / high return comparatively, and often has high returns for civilians/society.

Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#32

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

drusepth wrote: post #31
jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Everyone is poor and miserable, families arent making rent. My uncle was just dumpster diving to feed his family two months ago. They're wasting the people's money over at DARPA.

>>DARPA R&D money always feels like money better spent than a lot of other military spending. I think "better spent than a lot of other military spending" was the point of the post you responded to. The military may be wasting The People's Money, but DARPA seems to have low costs / high return comparatively, and often has high returns for civilians/society.

What return? Dead people? Pollution? Fear?

Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#33

Post by jansan »

gojomo wrote: post #2

Only millions? Amazing! To actually deliver a physical, one-of-a-kind, working vehicle of that scale & novel function, for low-digit millions, seems pretty impressive to me - especially if the effort documented enough of their choices/discoveries/limitations to help inform later efforts.

Colin Furze could probably do this for less than 50,000£, and it would even spit fire!

Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#34

Post by Animats »

greendude29 wrote: post #17
gojomo wrote: post #2

Only millions? Amazing! To actually deliver a physical, one-of-a-kind, working vehicle of that scale & novel function, for low-digit millions, seems pretty impressive to me - especially if the effort documented enough of their choices/discoveries/limitations to help inform later efforts.

I don't think the technology behind it was particularly new or novel. It was simply arranging known technology to a new application. Given the lack of research, but perhaps the high experimentation, millions make sense.

It was new in that it was computer controlled. General Electric had demonstrated a 4-legged walking truck in 1965.[1] Arms and legs were slaved to the operator's arms and legs. It was very hard to drive. Trying to do that with computer control in 1985 was worth trying.

Building the prototype at full scale, not so much. If they'd gone through a few iterations starting with a dog sized version, it might have worked out better. But there was a political problem. DARPA funded a pony-sized legged walker in the late 1960s[2], and it was publicly shamed as a waste of taxpayer money by Sen. Proxmire. So DARPA went for one big enough to carry a real load.

Early thinking about legged locomotion was all about gait and foot placement. It turns out that balance dominates foot placement, and slip control dominates balance once you get off the flat.

Today, most of the problems have been solved, and there's still no market. Which is disappointing.

[1] https://youtu.be/coNO9FpDb6E

[2] http://cyberneticzoo.com/walking-machines/1968-phony-pony-fr...

Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#35

Post by CamperBob2 »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #26
melling wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, a single M1 Abrams tank costs over $4 million, and we have 9000 of them. DARPA R&D money always feels like money better spent than a lot of other military spending. We get future dividends, often civilian.

What are you talking about? Everyone is poor and miserable, families arent making rent. My uncle was just dumpster diving to feed his family two months ago. They're wasting the people's money over at DARPA.

Good sarcasm needs an element of absurdity or irony. Pathos and non-sequitur alone aren't usually sufficient.

Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#36

Post by SahAssar »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #26
melling wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, a single M1 Abrams tank costs over $4 million, and we have 9000 of them. DARPA R&D money always feels like money better spent than a lot of other military spending. We get future dividends, often civilian.

What are you talking about? Everyone is poor and miserable, families arent making rent. My uncle was just dumpster diving to feed his family two months ago. They're wasting the people's money over at DARPA.

Reread the comment you are replying to (especially the context of "than") and consider the scale of the resources invested in the military.

DARPA accounts for a pretty small part of the military budget and is probably not the reason for poverty.

Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#38

Post by CamperBob2 »

pjc50 wrote: post #30
jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Everyone is poor and miserable, families arent making rent. My uncle was just dumpster diving to feed his family two months ago. They're wasting the people's money over at DARPA.

That's the choice of your fellow citizens who'd rather spend money on weapons than feed people, and will come up with elaborate stories about why your uncle deserves to be in that position. :(

," he said, on an ARPA-funded network.

Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#39

Post by SahAssar »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #32
drusepth wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>DARPA R&D money always feels like money better spent than a lot of other military spending. I think "better spent than a lot of other military spending" was the point of the post you responded to. The military may be wasting The People's Money, but DARPA seems to have low costs / high return comparatively, and often has high returns for civilians/society.

What return? Dead people? Pollution? Fear?

DARPA has driven a lot of research in self-driving cars, space exploration, internet infrastructure (TOR for example), neural implants and so on. It's budget is also lower than some weapon systems that have never even gone into production.

I dislike the american military-industrial complex, but if I had to keep one thing from it it might be DARPA.

Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#40

Post by drusepth »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #32
drusepth wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>DARPA R&D money always feels like money better spent than a lot of other military spending. I think "better spent than a lot of other military spending" was the point of the post you responded to. The military may be wasting The People's Money, but DARPA seems to have low costs / high return comparatively, and often has high returns for civilians/society.

What return? Dead people? Pollution? Fear?

Some notable ones off the top of my head include the Internet, GPS, computer mice (and basically the foundation of UI that uses them), onion routing, and prosthetic limbs.

Compare DARPA's $3B budget to e.g. the DoD's $650-700B budget. You can argue that either or both should be spending some portion of their budget on "the people" in a myriad of ways, but that argument gets way too close to personal politics for an engagement here to be worthwhile, IMO. Don't forget to vote!

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