When America Had an Atomic Mecha Warrior Robot
owl writes:
https://orangebeanindiana.com/2021/04/09/once-upon-a-time-america-had-an-atomic-mecha-warrior-robot/
Iron Man's got NOTHING on this beast.
27 feet tall. 77 tons. Lead, steel, and glass armor almost two feet thick. A 500 horsepower supercharger engine. Able to withstand 3,000 times more radiation than a human. Mighty claws able to tear, rend, and shred steel with 85,000 pounds of force...yet nimble enough to balance an egg on a spoon.
It took the Air Force Special Weapons Center three years and $1.5 million (roughly $15 million in 2021) to build this real-life science fiction warrior-nicknamed the Beetle"-for a specific purpose: to service the country's first nuclear-powered bomber.
[...] More than anything, the Beetle demonstrated the tremendous advances robotic manipulators made in practical applications. This directly lead to the invention of RUM [PDF link] in 1960 (Remote Underwater Manipulator), which could crawl along the ocean bed 20,000 feet from the surface. The lessons learned in testing and improving Beetle and RUM lead to their prized relative in 1964: the Deep Sea Vehicle (DSV) Alvin. Among Alvin's stunning exploits... being the first manned sub to explore the Titanic in 1986.
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