Japanese Politicians Are Thinking about Building Gundam.

[SapperSix]

Originally Posted by Soluzar

I notice both of these videos are robots by the same company. They must be a major innovator in the field of robotics. I had not heard of them previously, but I don't exactly pay attention to this kind of thing on a day-to-day basis.

They've built a bigger version of Bigdog, and it's able to get up after it it's fallen. The company also built the fastest legged robot, and a robot that can jump 30 ft into the air.

[Driver]

Skynet's first step at taking over..........

[Caster13]

Originally Posted by Driver

Skynet's first step at taking over..........

The solution for that is magnets.

inb4singingshowtunes

[Vaikyuko]

The only real viable Gundam designs are the non-mecha, and the hybrids like the Guntank. There will, sadly, never be any literal mechanized infantry units.

That said, powered armor style stuff like the nanosuits from Crysis is ideally what we should be working on, and are to some extent with the advent of the now something like a decade old Future Soldier project works.

[Driver]

Oh I think building a gundam is very possible, it will just take about 30 or so years to do it.

[superplough]

It's possible, just impractical

[SapperSix]

Originally Posted by Vaikyuko

The only real viable Gundam designs are the non-mecha, and the hybrids like the Guntank. There will, sadly, never be any literal mechanized infantry units.

That said, powered armor style stuff like the nanosuits from Crysis is ideally what we should be working on, and are to some extent with the advent of the now something like a decade old Future Soldier project works.

The US Military is currently testing the powered exoskeletons, it's a long way away from Iron Man though.



The Raytheon Sacros XOS



Lockheed Martin HULC.

[Soluzar]

Originally Posted by SapperSix

The US Military is currently testing the powered exoskeletons, it's a long way away from Iron Man though.

The original Iron Man suit was a long way from what you think of as Iron Man. I'm not even talking only about the prototype model from the film. In the early comics he used a pretty basic suit for a good while. It got the upgrades slowly.

Some aspects of the comicbook version won't ever be duplicated though. The filmmakers were wise enough not to even attempt to show it as 'flexible like cloth, but strong like metal' as it has sometimes been depicted.

Thing is, back in the 1960s, it must have seemed like anything was possible. So many new areas of technology.

[Vaikyuko]

Ahaha, nice to see HULC again, I didn't know they were still working on it. I'm just hoping that with tech advancing at such a rapid pace, we'll eventually have the relative equivalent of super soldiers in the field. Not Iron Man esque, since that's silly, but again, like the nanosuits from Crysis.

[Arnold]

Originally Posted by Soluzar

Thing is, back in the 1960s, it must have seemed like anything was possible. So many new areas of technology.

Back then in the comics, everything was made possible by transistors. Must have been some crazy transistors around back then...

[Driver]

They need to be working on artificial bodies that we can plant our brains in like Ghost in the Shell. Now that would be cool, we could live forever. The only downside is, people would getting hacked and going on murder sprees

[Old Ape Face]

Originally Posted by Driver

They need to be working on artificial bodies that we can plant our brains in like Ghost in the Shell. Now that would be cool, we could live forever. The only downside is, people would getting hacked and going on murder sprees

This would solve the gender confusion problem, as well as other things.

[Soluzar]

Originally Posted by Arnold

Back then in the comics, everything was made possible by transistors. Must have been some crazy transistors around back then...

I know, right? I read the earliest Iron Man stories sometime in the last year or two. I was more than a little puzzled about the way Tony Stark constantly refers to transistors as though they are a source of power, like a battery or a reactor or something.

I think the confusion arose from the fact that transistors can amplify power. Arguably a transistor-powered circuit is more powerful than one which accomplishes the same goals using pre-transistor technology. No doubt having read something to that effect, the writers took it and ran with it in a few crazy directions. A lot of the early Marvel Comics writers didn't really understand the scientific terminology they were using too well. It all adds to the charm, in some ways.

I've no objection at all to 'magic technology' like the arc reactor from the Iron Man movies - as long as the audience knows what it does, it doesn't matter if it's realistic or plausible. It doesn't even matter if it breaks the laws of thermodynamics, which as far as I can tell the arc reactor does. It's just better to avoid ascribing magical properties to existing tech, the properties of which are already entirely known.

On a related note, the entire Fantastic Four should have died of asbestos poisoning within the first half decade of publication. Regardless of such flagrant science abuse, I love 1960s comics. I find ones from the 1970s and 1980s to have more interesting plots, but the style of the 1960s is just delicious.

[ThePhillyFlash]

Originally Posted by Soluzar

On a related note, the entire Fantastic Four should have died of asbestos poisoning within the first half decade of publication. Regardless of such flagrant science abuse, I love 1960s comics. I find ones from the 1970s and 1980s to have more interesting plots, but the style of the 1960s is just delicious.

Yeah, and Bruce Banner should've croaked from radiation poisoning instead of becoming the Hulk, but hey, those stories from the 60's were awesome!

[Arnold]

Originally Posted by Soluzar

On a related note, the entire Fantastic Four should have died of asbestos poisoning within the first half decade of publication. Regardless of such flagrant science abuse, I love 1960s comics. I find ones from the 1970s and 1980s to have more interesting plots, but the style of the 1960s is just delicious.

My favorite era of Marvel is the silver age, with its balls to the wall craziness and how it seemed like anything was possible. The dialog is hokey and dated now, but the dynamic art and the wild ideas just pop off the page. You certainly can't say they weren't being inventive.

Bringing this back on topic, any idea how these mecha would be powered? With the sheer complexity involved in the mechanics, I can't see how they would be very energy efficient.