Hey, guys, you ever see that really old movie, Empire Strikes Back?
Empire Strikes Back released 1980, complete with its AT-AT walkers. This US military walking tank project kicked off 1981. Just coincidence? Or a big-budget fan-boy tribute?
The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
121–130 of 173 posts
Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
#122The things you can do when you don't have to tackle child poverty or provide healthcare for all. Its probably because of my Euro socialist identity but all I see is wasteful spending.
The Eurozone (NATO) is protected from Russia and other aggressors by US military spending, and trades along sea routes which are kept open by US military spending, to list only two ways in which the EU benefits massively from our tax dollars here in the US. If the EU decided to allocate a proportional share to their common defense, maybe the US would have less reason to be intervening overseas and could spend some of…
Too much global warming, and some of that trade might divert to sea routes kept open (modulo Alyaska[1]?) by russian military spending...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Passage
[1] might this geomilitaristic argument fly as a US pro-environment domestic argument?
Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
#123I've been talking about this kind of stuff with some friends. You can't just tell reality from fiction by the news, anymore. Sometimes is a crappy politician who you wouldn't believe act / say / do the things the news report (I'm Brazilian by the way, I have grounds to say this). Some other times is this crazy sci-fi things no one in a bar conversation would believe you if you told them. Go ahead, next time you're on…
> Go ahead, next time you're on bar with your friends (In a few months I think the bar are going to be open - hope) tell them this exactly headline and see how they react to it. I don't think many Americans would doubt our military has funded all sorts of crazy stuff. There are confirmed paid studies for mind control and attempting to kill goats using telekinesis by the CIA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_…
Wow, that's up there with the premise of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I tend to optimistically/pessimistically believe people are rational but devious, and therefore believe that goat-staring is likely a way to launder money that immediately leads people into talking about how silly attempted telecapricide would be, instead of asking, no, really, what did you totally not get compensated for not having done, the other 39 hours of the week?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23597523
Bonus track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuduj0yeV4c
Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
#124Earlier 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.
Absolutely this. With the culling of most corporate R&D groups over the last 20-30 years, DARPA pie-in-the-sky research projects seem to be one of the last real sources for investigating anything that can't be immediately and quickly monetized.
Even before then, Wikipedia claims government was, at least in part, responsible for the soda can[1].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950...
[1] as far as I've seen, soviet vending machines used a shared glass. They must've been very confident both (a) that the glasses wouldn't grow legs, and (b) in their public health initiatives.
Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
#125Earlier 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.
I feel for you, but military spending is a massive federal jobs program. Each job created has a job multiplier effect, creating additional jobs in the surrounding area. Manufacturing jobs producing military equipment have a much bigger job multiplier effect. So if you were to wave a magic wand and half military spending overnight, the economic impact would be disastrous, and many more people would be in dire economic…
I find it interesting that this argument is only ever being made when there is talk about cutting military spending. Somehow it is never the problem that there is job losses when other spending (in particular social spending) is being cut.
There was actually a great response by a member of the German Labour Party (SPD) in the discussion about the spending on the Eurofighter project (sometime in the 90s IIRC). His response to the jobs argument was: We could also build a pyramid in honour of Helmut Kohl and it would create a lot of jobs, that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
About the timber harvester: I assume better here is meant from a economical perspective, because from a ecological perspective the walkers are superior, as they do not devestate the ground so much. But that is sadly not really a issue for most wood production, but I could imagine, with rising awareness for the forests, market demand for not so intrusive wood harvesting(along with advances in the field in general) cou…
Most timber today isn't harvested in natural forest, they are effectively tree farms, they have a 10 to 20 year growth cycle and since all the trees planted are harvestable, they basically clear cut the land, burn it, off cycle growth as needed, and do it again. In those instances, there is no ecological consideration as the whole area basically gets wiped out.
That's not really accurate. It depends on the tree type, but the growth cycle is somewhere between 50 to 100 years for optimal results.
It's true that most forests today are not old growth anymore. They have been cut (usually clear cut) and then either replanted or just naturally reseeded and are now essentially waiting for the next cut. There are some areas where they are monocultural tree farms with not much else growing, but forest industry starts to realize that that's not the most efficient anyway. Most forests today, even those used for lumber (which are almost all) are integrated ecosystems. That's a great benefit to nature.
Clear cutting is quite bad for the surrounding ecosystem. Habitat loss, soil erosion, it's a pretty traumatic event for a forest. (Some shrubs really thrive for a few years after a clear cut though. In Sweden that's when you get to pick tons of wild raspberries, for example.)
An alternative is selective cutting where you only cut the oldest trees and leave everything intact. For that, such a legged harvester would be much better. The traditional method is to use horses, but that's too slow for modern forest industry.
Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
#127Anybody else thinking of the walkers from star wars when reading the headline? I was a bit disappointed seeing the size as it promises "giant" which does not really live up to star wars size expectations..
Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
#128Oh, that thing. Back when I was into legged locomotion, I found out more about that machine than I ever wanted to know. The designer was really into four-bar linkages. The leg mechanism is set up so that one actuator moves the leg in X, one in Y, and one in Z, with a four-bar linkage encoding that into the leg position. This simplifies the control problem, while complicating the mechanics. I suspect they wanted to be…
About the timber harvester: I assume better here is meant from a economical perspective, because from a ecological perspective the walkers are superior, as they do not devestate the ground so much. But that is sadly not really a issue for most wood production, but I could imagine, with rising awareness for the forests, market demand for not so intrusive wood harvesting(along with advances in the field in general) cou…
> because from a ecological perspective the walkers are superior
You sure about that? Soil compaction is the most serious long-term damage caused by timber harvesting. It's why only tracked harvesters driven by highly-paid fellers are allowed off the gravel. The masses of everyday log-truck drivers (and their wheeled vehicles) are not allowed on the dirt.
You want the ground pressure spread out as much as possible, not concentrated on tiny "feet".
Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel for you, but military spending is a massive federal jobs program. Each job created has a job multiplier effect, creating additional jobs in the surrounding area. Manufacturing jobs producing military equipment have a much bigger job multiplier effect. So if you were to wave a magic wand and half military spending overnight, the economic impact would be disastrous, and many more people would be in dire economic…
I find it interesting that this argument is only ever being made when there is talk about cutting military spending. Somehow it is never the problem that there is job losses when other spending (in particular social spending) is being cut. There was actually a great response by a member of the German Labour Party (SPD) in the discussion about the spending on the Eurofighter project (sometime in the 90s IIRC). His res…
Yeah it’s a ridiculous argument. The money being spent on those jobs is taken by force (which has an unmeasurable chilling effect on the economy), and then allocated according to central planning, inevitably in a way far less efficient than the market would.
Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would not be surprised if Boston Dynamics scaled up their dog to truck size rather sooner than later.
They did one the size of a large horse, but for the complexity and cost, it unfortunately didn’t seem to have much practical benefit over a semiautonomous 6-wheeler.
Something like the Rheinmetall Mission Master was pretty much the expected outcome.