anyone else see the thing on ch7 earlier tonight about jets n stuff.Impressive piece of gear, the lightning.
The RWE Bagger 288 earth digger stands 311 feet tall, is 705 feet long and weighs 45,500 tons (the weight of the Titanic was 46,328 tons)
Being big, the Bagger 288 can only go one-third of a mile an hour on three rows of caterpillar track assembles. If it crosses a highway, as it has done on rare occasions, the roadway must be fully rebuilt as the sheer weight crushes the cement and anything else in its path.
It takes five people to operate it, and little wonder, as it has a 70-foot diameter bucket wheel. Each of its 20 huge buckets can scoop up over 530 cubic feet of material. It moves on 12 crawlers with tank-like treads. After all it is German. One of the buckets once picked up a large bulldozer by mistake.
If that were a transformer- we'd all be so screwed.
Loving this thread...let's try the good-old X-15.
Doesn't look too special, does it. Except for how it was. Rocket-powered, top speed of Mach 6.7, flown at altitudes exceeding 350,000 feet, had to be drop-launched from a converted B-52. Yeah, pretty much a giant missile with a pilot strapped in. So cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skG5ioabGVQ
Or how about the X-29 technology demonstrator for a super manoueverable forward-swept wing fighter aircraft? Enormously dynamically unstable, only capable of being controlled with the advent of multiple redundant computer controlled fly-by wire systems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GpSPAzzFwg
And of following on from POSM's giant, fast intercontinental bomber post how about the venerable B1-B Lancer, precursor of course to the B2 Spirit aka. the Stealth Bomber. Supersonic, variable sweep wing design again conceived of to drop nukes and huge conventional payloads on those pesky Russians although it didn't enter service until well into the 1980s. Still gets outings today when needed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-01NRNK_BI
A bunch more cool shit
hell yeah! Haha arms races make for wicked aircraft if I get some spare money I'm buying me a ride in a foxbat. Hopefully if all goes well I'll he behind the controls of an f-35 and hopefully oneday an su-37 or 35 I'm easy haha, dreams and aspirations are wicked cool .The Mig-25 which was of course designed to intercept and shoot down the U2, Blackbird, Valkyrie, Vulcan and Lancer.
Mmmmm...arms race. Mmmmmmm...Cold War.
lol at the car! The aircraft deconstruction yard is called the boneyard and it's location escapes me, in the us, my mind says Edwards afb, but it's not it's elsewhere in the desert I'm pretty sure, it's an extrememly cool place, as a bit of trivia we bought our f1-11s from thre and that is where they shall return shortly along with the f-4 phantoms we borrowed while our f1-11s were being fixed up.Cool thread, some of those planes are pretty interesting.
Continuing with simpsons pictures:
Ford Nucleon (nuclear powered car that never went into production for obvious reasons, theres a small nuclear reactor in the back!)
Not really an invention but thought it was interesting, abandoned, decomissioned plane fields, not sure on the location of this one.
and, the wild wacky action bike
Genesis spar. GOM. I was almost going to POSM up on the Thailf until I remembered the s7000 only had 2 7000t cranes. Man those are huge.
Some of those russian aircraft are absolutely insane.
Nothing still comes close to the spruce goose, not even the Antonov 225.