Live-Evil Forums
General => General Forum => Topic started by: synapticflow on January 13, 2008, 12:13:55 am
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Just in case any of you guys wanted to buy me my very own robot...
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-01-11/science-website-calculates-price-of-building-gundam
My address is 3705...
haha!
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LOL! *giggles at random intervals throughout the day*
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I so want one of those.
having a Gundam would be so sweeet.
Then finally my dream of blowing up work would come true if I had one.
~Vash~
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I think that number is far too low.
$729 Million is pennies when you are talking about the military.
A raptor costs ~$100M and an arleigh burke destroyer costs $1100 Million. and another $710 Million for the armament. A Virginia-class sub costs about $2100 Million to build. The "tax rebate" proposal just passed by Congress cost $150 Billion or $150 000 Million. They also neglect the cost of armament which is often just as much as the combat vehicle itself. A pretty shoddy job at cost estimation IMO.
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Heh, I would love to have my own custom built Gundam. Let me take a test and if I pass, perhaps the military and/or government will pick up the tab. :D
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I think that number is far too low.
$729 Million is pennies when you are talking about the military.
A raptor costs ~$100M and an arleigh burke destroyer costs $1100 Million. and another $710 Million for the armament. A Virginia-class sub costs about $2100 Million to build. The "tax rebate" proposal just passed by Congress cost $150 Billion or $150 000 Million. They also neglect the cost of armament which is often just as much as the combat vehicle itself. A pretty shoddy job at cost estimation IMO.
Since mobile suits are powered by fusion reactors, you could spend all the money you can print trying to build one, and never make it. I don't think the anime ever mentioned the power plant, but Tomino refers to the fusion reactors often in his novelizations. Of course, a real Gundam would incinerate itself in a few seconds, since it's design doesn't take heat dissipation into account at all.
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Actually you could build a fusion 'reactor' today, it just wouldn't have a positive energy output.
Here is an example.
http://www-jt60.naka.jaea.go.jp/HOME-J.html
They say it achieved Q=1.25 for something like 28 seconds, which I think is the current record.
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I witnessed the operation of one of the first two operating fusion reactors, the twin tokamaks at UCLA and Princeton. The one at UCLA took roughly six months to prep for a millisecond shot. It was triggered by eight Litton Radarange microwave ovens with their magnetron tubes pumped by a massive (size of a semi truck) Lincoln welding supply - Huge 4 gauge cables ran into and out of the backs of the ovens. There were 4-8 Commodore c64 computers hooked up to sensors in and around the tokamak, and they had cheap color TV's for monitors. When the tokamak was fired, the monitors were gaussed beyond all rescue, and gallons of liquefied teflon ran out of the tokamak (The teflon had been big machined hunks used as dielectric insulation between the walls of the tokamak).
UCLA had previously built a small tokamak that was a twin of one built in Russia - the designed proved to be optimistically undersized and neither was completed, but it could be seen hidden behind some fences and tarps in the machine shop area of Boelter Hall until the mid eighties.
Anyway, as you can see from the vast scale of the Japanese reactor, a *portable* fusion reactor like the Gundam would use would be quite a leap.