Wow. Way cool! If you think about it, soldiers have been limited to the same 50 pound load since the romans. It was a balance between supplies, weapons and armor. With body armor, people are already wearing 35 pounds but they are much less vulnerable to threats. With an exoskeleton, we can get the load down and carry much more lethal payloads of weapons and ammunition in more heavily armored soldiers. Hooray!
You can see a snippet of that heavy body armor in the photo on the left.
Hmmmm....
In some ways it is more of a 'human forklift' than an Ironman's rocket man. But warfare is 90% supply and 10% fighting.
Rare Earth minings stocks have been really taking off lately (made 15% in one day recently). I suspect that if the US government really plans to deploy these in actual 'theater operations' within five years, you should buy in now.
It seems the Toyota Prius uses about 20-30 pounds of rare earths per car. These bots must use at least 10 pounds for magnets. And China has cut way down on export. In fact it is rumored that it is currently punishing Japan by further limiting rare earth shipments over the fishing vessel incident.
Yes, the Chinese cornered the rare earth market in the 90s by undercutting and now that they have 90%+, they have been pursuing an export restriction plan over the last two years. Other sources (US and Canada and others) are trying to ramp up but it is taking time.
It appears there is a major shift to Australia for mining rare earths. While America and China have most of the world's reserves, America has more environment barriers to deal with. And it also seems the best ore includes high levels of thorium, which happens to have a lot of radium as by-product. So old mines are not reopening. A different development approach is being explored and a new set of players - basically Australia, Canada, and USA.
I don't see how we got so dependent on China, unless the old facilities were overcome with radium pollution and other toxic by-products. But now, a western source is a 'must have' item.
erco
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You can see a snippet of that heavy body armor in the photo on the left.
Way cool! I want one. (to carry beer)
This one shows more promise and it is going to be available sooner.
In some ways it is more of a 'human forklift' than an Ironman's rocket man. But warfare is 90% supply and 10% fighting.
Rare Earth minings stocks have been really taking off lately (made 15% in one day recently). I suspect that if the US government really plans to deploy these in actual 'theater operations' within five years, you should buy in now.
It seems the Toyota Prius uses about 20-30 pounds of rare earths per car. These bots must use at least 10 pounds for magnets. And China has cut way down on export. In fact it is rumored that it is currently punishing Japan by further limiting rare earth shipments over the fishing vessel incident.
It appears there is a major shift to Australia for mining rare earths. While America and China have most of the world's reserves, America has more environment barriers to deal with. And it also seems the best ore includes high levels of thorium, which happens to have a lot of radium as by-product. So old mines are not reopening. A different development approach is being explored and a new set of players - basically Australia, Canada, and USA.
I don't see how we got so dependent on China, unless the old facilities were overcome with radium pollution and other toxic by-products. But now, a western source is a 'must have' item.