Proving that some people just have too much time on their hands, the cost of gundam (big robot thing that shoots lasers and missles) has been figured out. While the estimate only gives a summary of the machine without labor, the parts alone are enough to make a person cry. The read out looks something like this...
Estimated cost of Gundam parts:
| ITEM | UNIT COST | QTY | COST |
| Aluminum alloy (honeycomb) | $1,800 | 43,875 | $79,000,000 |
| (+ Metal manufacturing/processing) |
|
| $240,000,000 |
| Main computer (IBM) | $1,550,000 | 1 | $1,550,000 |
| Gas turbine engines (GE) | $52,000,000 | 7 | $364,000,000 |
| Superconductive motors (IHI) | $260,000 | 30 | $7,800,000 |
| Motor drivers | $260,000 | 30 | $7,800,000 |
| Reducers | $760,000 | 30 | $22,800,000 |
| Sensors |
|
| $910,000 |
| Cockpit |
|
| $450,000 |
|
| TOTAL: | $724,310,000 |
What makes me giggle and cry is that this scientific calcuation was posting on the SciencePortal, an offical website from the Japan Science and Technology Agency. The robot would be sixty feet tall and weigh nearly one hundred thousand pounds. Start saving your quarters now.
[Via pink tentacle]
9 comments
Superconductive motors, sure, but gas turbine engines for 52 million each? and what kind of computer costs 1.55 million?? The super computers on the F35 aren't even half that much.
There is a serious flaw though with their method in using electricity to power it from gas turbines and using electric superconductors. HEAT.
According to my calculations, for a gundam to move at a rate of 60ft/s (assuming it's 60ft tall and roughly 20 tons of weight- 60ft/s then would be a brisk walk for it), it would take approximately 331811.8 Joules of force. Convert that to Watts by dividing by 1 second (since that’s how much power it would take to move 60ft/s for one second), and you get somewhere around 3 MEGAwatts. Even if you divide that up among several turbines, that level of electricity would fry any size wire you could make, or at least require it to be frozen to superconductive levels that'd be nearly impossible in such an environment.
Instead, a better method would be to use individual fuel cell systems installed at each joint, so that if one goes down all the others can still function, and in addition to taking a severe load off of any power system, you wouldn't need the massive would be cables that would otherwise be necessary, and leave more room for ammo and guns.
(As you may or may not be able to tell, I research and calculate this kind of stuff for fun- oh, and that stunt in the 5th episode of gundam 00 would've taken well over 300MW of power for Kyrios to push a block roughly 100 times the gundams size- current day full size 4th generation nuclear reactors can barely output that much)