I couldn't imagine how the headline could be accurate, and was expecting to be disappointed, but apart from the lack of legs, the mentioned robot surpassed my expectations.
A little sad that it seemingly ended up being cannibalized at a Nevada test site, but I suppose that's better than being swallowed up in a Dirac sea while having its S² Engine installed.
A little misleading: not a robot per se but more of an armed, treaded vehicle that a person can drive around. Also warrior only in the sense that it would be used to service war aircraft — not actually fight soldiers or whatever.
Cool as hell though nonetheless. Being behind a foot of leaded glass and sealed in that steel and lead cocoon would creep me out. I mean, what if the hydraulics failed and they were unable to get the hatch open?
For the nerd traveller, I highly recommend Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 in Arco, Idaho.
In addition to the breeder reactor itself, outside in the parking lot are two remaining experimental nuclear aircraft engines that the robot was to service.
You may want to take a look at the Swedish Stridsvagn 103 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stridsvagn_103): designed for a crew of 2 (a third was later added) where all crew positions can perform all operations.
Not really. Mecha is abbreviation for mechanical and generally means all types of mechanical objects. Because anime and japanese movies dominatly use the term for giant robots, western people have the misunderstanding that only those are Mecha. Enforced is this picture probably also because of the Mechs in the Battletech/Mechwarrior-Franchise, because people don't understand the difference between mech and mecha.
If the hydraulics failed there was a jack in the cabin. And you would never operate this thing alone. A massive support team would be around you to handle such emergencies. You would be towed out of the danger zone quickly.
The only bit of fiction that I have read that mentions atomic powered bombers is Charlie Stross' excellent A Colder War - where they are armed with Project Pluto style missiles and target the Soviet weakly-godlike entity i.e. (a) Cthulhu.
The tour would get you close to the NERVA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA) test stand and you could see the train tracks and the diesel switchers that would pull the reactor core in and out of the protective bunker dug into the hillside. Maybe if you looked closely, you might be able to find the chassis, assuming the arms were repurposed.
Ah yes the 1950s! When we thought we needed nuclear-powered long-range bombers that could stay in the air for months at a time as part of the deterrent. The USAF spent a good $10B 1950's dollars on this concept and funded some incredible reactors like the Aircraft Reactor Experiment [1] and the Heat Transfer Reactor Experiments [2] (which you can see yourself if you're ever driving through Idaho).
The ARE was interesting in that it was the world's first molten salt fueled reactor.
Once Kennedy shut down the propulsion program (because ICBMs had been developed and we didn't need nuclear-powered planes anymore), the reactor expertise from this program at Oak Ridge led directly to the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), which to this very day fuels all the excitement about thorium reactors and molten salt reactors.
Interestingly, China is just about finished building their version of the MSRE, called TMSR-LF1 [3], and is supposed to start testing it in a month or two.
Truly a golden age of absolutely insane nuclear projects, like Project Pluto[1], a proposed nuclear-powered ramjet that could theoretically cruise around for weeks or months before being directed to a target.
Of course, you never know whether that’s wishful thinking by the Russian and/or US military. The Russians may exaggerate how far they are in order to increase deterrence, and the Americans may exaggerate in order to get the money to get even bigger toys)
It's too bad this wasnt explored further, there could be non-weaponized use cases for a nuclear powered aircraft that can stay in the air for days or months at a time.
It's definitely a test reactor. You can see some program overview here [1]. This thing that's coming online is the 2020 several MW test reactor, not the 100 MW power demo.
I thought this article was going to be about Eagle Prime, a $2.5M robot that was designed to actually fight against a japanese one, but ended up getting auctioned off on ebay after the parent company went bankrupt[0]
The japanese robot is pretty cool too: "The vehicle can be "armed" with multiple weapons, such as a 6,000 round per minute twin BB rotary cannon, a "LOHAS" launcher which fires either water bottles[4] or possibly fireworks, and a powered humanoid hand called the "iron crow" that is capable of picking up objects, and is linked to the pilot by "what appears to be a Mattel Power Glove". The main Suidobashi website lists two other "weapons", a "Kuratas Handgun", and a "Pilebunker"."[1]
It doesn't say whether this was the whole lifecycle cost or not(design, prototype, build...) but there is no way the DoD could create something like this so cheap today.
I keep wondering about MegaBots, which was unabashedly inspired by mecha fiction, but which might've then gone on to inspire more. It was founded in 2014 and debuted its first robot in 2015. Fallout 4 came out in late 2015 as well, so I assume neither knew about the other and they were both influenced by similar prior art.
Yes, but just look at it, that's one of the coolest retro things I've ever seen. It's cool enough that it could go into a video game today. Sorry to say the cool factor legitimizes everything they could put in the headline. That's a beast. You're gonna see that in a Guillermo del Toro film soon.
I think OP is saying corporations are not focused on innovation and manufacturing, instead busy with corporate virtue signaling while shifting manufacturing overseas. They’re faulting mostly white corporate leaders.
And white corporate politicians and lawyers and the other empty nutsacks responsible for dismantling America's ability to make anything at scale, or to be self sufficient. There's nothing wrong with diversity, it's what they used diversity and other virtue signaling to cover for.
The failings and benefits of globalization are pretty well understood at this point, but some of us are pissed off that the boomers thought it was a great idea to hand off almost all important manufacturing to an antagonistic, imperialist country whose tenets are fundamentally antithetical to basic American principles and human rights.
I am sure all minorities, specially the ones more affected by long term unemployment are happy to know that their means of subsistence are being shipped to East Asia, but at least Citigroup has a cool new PR op.
This is of course a mod of Jakub Różalski. I think it was very funny. Unfortunately Reddit did think so and banned me for life. Reddit actually banned half of Helsinki by the IP-address because of this, which was very funny also and to the point.
A little sad that it seemingly ended up being cannibalized at a Nevada test site, but I suppose that's better than being swallowed up in a Dirac sea while having its S² Engine installed.