Slashdot Mirror
How To Make 96,000lbs of WWII Machinery Into High-Tech Research Platform
coondoggie writes "The US Naval Research Laboratory is taking a 96,000-pound piece of World War II-era machinery and turning it into a test-bed for leading edge communications and radar applications. The equipment was originally known as a three-axis tilting platform designed to simulate the movements of a large ship at sea. It was built by Westinghouse in 1943 as a gun platform requiring only primitive motion in roll, pitch and yaw, according to the Navy Lab. Specifically it was used as a mechanically operated deck with a heavy machine gun director and a machine gun mount installed. Gun crews and director operators could be trained on the platform under conditions that approximated the movements of a vessel at sea."
In 1943 it probably cost a few hundred thousand $ to build - if that.
Today's "updates" will cost $4.3 billion, be obsolete 6 months before completed, take 6 years, be the subject of multiple disciplinary hearings, congressional investigations and DOJ corruption probes, won't work, then ultimately will be outsourced to China for completion prior to being abandoned for a new technology.
This type of reuse of ex-military kit quite often happens, although not normally so long after it was originally used. I'm not sure if it's still running on the same engines but I know that the Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank (UK), at one time the largest movable dish telescope, originally had a lot of parts cannibalised from engines taken from two battleships. Lovell, the maker of the telescope, had also previously been using quite a lot of reclaimed military kit for his astronomical observations before the actual radio telescope was built.
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
Isn't it about time a technical site such as slashdot started using metric units , eg kilos? You know, for the rest of the world outside the USA who has no clue what the hell 96,000 lbs means? Even in the UK hardly anyone under the age of 60 uses lbs as a measurement any more.
...is that yacht builder Sea Ray and several Mercedes Benz dealers will see a significant boost in revenue.
So it was used back then as a platform to simulate movement at sea, and that's exactly what they are going to use it for now (after a few upgrades).
The F-16 jets were created in the 70s and are still upgraded to this day. I don't see how this is that different.
I'm one of those Americans that HAS traveled abroad and I cordially invite you to create your own *technical* site with whatever units of measurement you see fit. The fact that you're even able to complain about this 'problem' is due to DARPA. You know them, they're the US agency responsible for the development of the internet.
Everyone wants to bitch about our units of measurement, but nobody seems to have any trouble accepting our units of currency.
(name withheld by request)
Works out to some 42000 Kg. But the picture shows the platform was getting its three degrees of freedom by very heavy gimbals. Though the whole apparatus is very heavy but the payload is not likely to more than any modern aircraft simulation platforms. Modern designs would use six hydraulic jacks and electronics to get not just three rotational degrees of freedom, but also limited degrees of freedom in translation. So wondering why someone would go through the trouble of rescuing that relic. The inertia of the gimbals is so high compared to the payload, upgrading the motors and electronics is going to be so expensive, it is probably cheaper to build a platform of similar capability using modern technology.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They should print US currency on soft rolls of paper. Then people can't say it isn't worth a crap!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
On the days it isn't wet and/or blowing then the simulator might be needed.