Timeline for Are mechanical walking vehicles useful in combat?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 1, 2021 at 21:39 | comment | added | DrMcCleod | It is interesting to consider why an axled wheel has never evolved in a living creature given the efficiency improvements that could be made. There is no obvious way to allow blood flow to a fully rotating body part and no intermediate advantageous evolutionary steps to get to a full wheel. | |
| Feb 12, 2020 at 10:21 | comment | added | Hobbamok | @Elia because that was just forest. There were few geographical limitations and they had a THICC engineering corps with them to build bridges and cut trees etc. They didn't go through the forest. They just took a rout where a forest was before them | |
| Feb 12, 2020 at 3:12 | comment | added | Schwern | @luis.espinal Because it's a question of efficiency of design, any sci-fi technology you need to make walkers feasible (so long as we don't drift into magic) can be applied to tracked vehicles with greater benefit. Multiple legs each with multiple powered and exposed points of articulation will never be as compact and robust as an engine/transmission power pack using two wheels to drive two tracks. | |
| Feb 12, 2020 at 0:15 | comment | added | Sarah | "No one drives tanks into truly mountainous terrain or dense forests, as even if it is physically possible to move them they would be too vulnerable for it to be worth it" wouldn't the WW2 German assault through the Ardennes be a counterexample? Even if it's impractical to fight in that terrain, the mobility advantage of being able to move through it is potentially valuable. | |
| Feb 11, 2020 at 21:12 | comment | added | luis.espinal | > The amount of complex engineering that would have to go into this process is not worth the benefits. This seems to be strongly pegged to the limitations of current technology. For the purposes of world building, one could realistically assume that technology has advanced well enough to consider such things as "problem solved." | |
| Feb 11, 2020 at 14:07 | comment | added | Dan W | "would you ever challenge a bicycle to a race on foot?" – YES – for example, a race up any hill which requires scrambling; a race with a significant sideways gradient; a race over boggy ground where wheels will easily sink; a race which includes hurdles; a race on paving slabs where you're not allowed to step on the cracks... legs are more effective on many annoying types of ground, but society has organised itself largely in places which have flat ground and roads because they make wheels more efficient, so we rarely have wars in those places. | |
| Feb 11, 2020 at 12:32 | comment | added | virolino | Your answer seems to be build on the premise that the "road" is flat and horizontal, maybe going downward, or only slightly upwards. Climbing (e.g.) a mountain while avoiding (or fighting) trees and rocks / boulders, makes the "bicycle" argument useless. The original question seems to be more about efficacy, rather than efficiency. | |
| Feb 11, 2020 at 11:53 | comment | added | alain | "From a physical standpoint, it is inherently inefficient." It's a big engineering challenge, but not impossible. Energy is only wasted when turned to heat, else it's just converted: Lifting a leg creates potential energy, accelerating it creates kinetic energy, etc.. You could design a system with springs, masses and/or electromagnetic actuators that recover these energies. Hard, but not inherently impossible. | |
| Feb 11, 2020 at 9:18 | comment | added | Burki | I like your answer. But you seem to be focusing on humanoid shapes for walkers. If you consider four-, six- or eightfooted walkers, some of your points become less valid. | |
| Feb 11, 2020 at 8:35 | history | edited | Adam Reynolds | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 398 characters in body
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| Feb 11, 2020 at 7:20 | history | answered | Adam Reynolds | CC BY-SA 4.0 |