[HN Gopher] US Army's Land Trains ___________________________________________________________________ US Army's Land Trains Author : lbrito Score : 169 points Date : 2022-05-16 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com) | jefurii wrote: | This must have been Neal Stephenson's prototype for the arctic | land trains in Anathem (2008). | Lio wrote: | Yes! That was the first thing I thought too. | | I guess the future really is here but poorly diffused, as | another great author once said. | niviksha wrote: | Great read! Minor nit - shouldn't they be called 'road trains'? | The other kind are also land trains, no? | izzydata wrote: | I had the same thought. Not many water and air trains going | around. | hammock wrote: | Trackless train. Backcountry train | btbuildem wrote: | "Road train" is a monicker for multi-trailer semis. These are | quite common in Australia. In North America we sometimes see | doubles, but I don't think they quite qualify for the name. | [deleted] | andylynch wrote: | They are different from road trains- these were built to drive | through untracked wilderness. Wikipedia calls them 'overland | trains' Road trains were invented in Australia to haul | livestock and general freight on their long, empty roads | jeffybefffy519 wrote: | Unrelated, but in the Netflix series Snowpiercer - I never | understood why its not a vehicle like but is instead a huge train | besides Wilford just liking trains? | ClumsyPilot wrote: | is it the dumbest concept in all fiction? | oneoff786 wrote: | I haven't watched the Netflix adaption but I think they were | trying to suggest it's a fixed loop with no driver. That felt | thematically appropriate | grendelt wrote: | This sort of lore is drilled into the engineering students at | LeTourneau University (my alma mater). There's an entire mini | museum setup to LeTourneau's achievements on campus. After | working there after grad school I realized much of LeTourneau's | "genius" was some form of reductionism. | | problem: "We need a machine that can grab these logs from these | trees we cut down." solution: "Why not make a gigantic claw and | put it on wheels?" https://www.imcdb.org/i236846.jpg | | problem: "All these trees are in the way. We just need a way to | quickly clear the area." solution: "Why not just stomp them | down?" 'Stomp them down?' "Yeah" | http://cyberneticzoo.com/walking-machines/1964-tree-stomper-... | | problem: "Ok, RG. Some trees we can't just stomp" solution: "Ok. | Let's just drive over them them." | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-9yvNESLPo | | There's this saying: _" Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, | but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands."_ | | RG was never guilty of making anything "barely". Dude straight | over over did it on a lot of projects. He took small simple | machines and just scaled them tf up. He didn't do small. "You've | got a big problem? You just need a bigger machine." is something | that fits with what his machinery says about his design choices. | | He filled a niche for sure. His style and creations fit at a | unique time in American history. American steel and manufacture | was very much in it's heyday. He had access to all the stuff | needed to execute his big ideas. His conservative religious | fervor also fit the politics of the day, allowing him to link up | with Billy Graham which had some factional differences of opinion | from the likes of the overly conservative Bob Jones and Oral | Roberts. Seeing large numbers of GIs returning from WW2 eager to | work, RG put them to work building gargantuan creations. My | personal, somewhat cynical take, is RG also saw that each of | those veteran workers had GI Bill money sitting unused. He formed | LeTourneau Technical College on the grounds of a shuttered | military hospital to train employees at his factory a short walk | from the campus. Being a "college" meant he could charge exactly | the dollar limit amount of tuition the GI Bill afforded. Being a | private college meant he could control what and how they studied. | It remains a quite conservative Christian institution and | students and faculty alike are reminded how it's a "ministry" | until it comes time for a student who can't pay or an employee | that asks for a raise. Suddenly the "ministry" facade shatters | and the word "business" hops into the wording. As soon as the | matter is closed, it returns to its "ministry" persona (esp when | asked to do something above-and-beyond). | | RG is a fascinating character nevertheless. He's even listed in | the Offshore Drilling Hall of Fame in Galveston (yep, it's a | thing) for his work on _Scorpion_ an offshore rig for the Zapata | Oil Company, then run by a young businessman named George H. W. | Bush. | digerata wrote: | Isn't saying "Land Train" like saying "Sky Plane"? | hathawsh wrote: | Trains usually go on rails; this is a train (a series of | physically linked cars) that goes on many kinds of land instead | of rails. The name fits IMHO. | robonerd wrote: | > _Trains usually go on rails_ | | Usually indeed. Besides accidental derailments, there was a | time in the late 90s when a town in Canada intentionally | derailed a diesel-electric locomotive and drove it down the | street half a mile under its own power so they could use it | as an emergency generator. The road needed to be repaired, | but apparently the locomotive was fine and eventually | returned to regular service. | dervjd wrote: | Here's a HN post from a few months back discussing: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26233736 | upwardbound wrote: | References about the Canada story: | | https://gizmodo.com/that-time-a-canadian-town-derailed-a- | die... | | https://steemit.com/history/@kiligirl/remembering-canada- | s-w... | moffkalast wrote: | "Offrail Train" is more like it yeah. | dheera wrote: | Reminds me of Australian trucks | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iFkKRh5kcM | VLM wrote: | Very small compared to coal draglines like "big muskie" | | Why make a mere train to eventually make a building, when you can | make a large building that moves? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Muskie | | Interesting to think that Big Muskie was significantly larger in | all dimensions than the residence hall I lived in for my first | year of university. One machine moved more material than two | panama canals in its lifespan... | | Big Muskie was not a fast mover but it could have made that | proverbial 400 mile trip in about 5 months, which isn't all that | bad. I do believe it would have cost more overall, which is why | they didn't do it this way. I would imagine trying to ford a | river with Big Muskie would have been very exciting indeed. | LargoLasskhyfv wrote: | Still digging... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_293 | jacquesm wrote: | Different continent. | Severian wrote: | it wouldn't have made it, as it ran off of electric power. It | trailed a huge electrical cable. Which makes sense as it was | operated by American Electric Power. You can visit the bucket | at Miners' Memorial Park where it's on top of a hill ( which I | have to visit to get cell service when I camp nearby). It's the | size of a small house. | tbalsam wrote: | In his autobiography, LeTurneau talks about one of the land | trains being nuclear powered, casually as if it was just another | increment. This man was on another level. His faith was pretty | fantastic too, it's a really enjoyable read of how he did a | bootstraps-pull-up but also with the appropriate amount of good | fortune ("fortune?") that generally leads to massive successes. | The man was a prodigy/genius, absolutely amazing and from very | humble roots. | | Now, the nuclear land train didn't materialize, but this guy is | the guy that Elon Musk wished he was. The OG ironman back in the | 50's or whenever you'd classify his active years to be in. | Presumably because he died, on the nuclear powerplant front, but | I got the sense from reading it that he was adored enough that | despite the safety risks he could have relatively handily gotten | something like that in production. | | Which would have changed the nature of our transportation today | in a big kind of way. If you make a portable nuclear generator | that can sit on a military land train (and this man could, just | read his engineering reasoning you'll see why I speak of it with | a sense of awe and wonder), then you can make that same generator | and use it to power rural neighborhoods, remote electric vehicle | stations, etc. The cost of infrastructure maintenance and | installation would go down, and we'd have one more good option | during the energy crisis today, with global warming and such as | it is. | | Really and truly a peek into what could have been almost our | current "alternative future". Probably not a bad one either, | though presumably there would be negative consequences like | Appalachia getting hit more hard economically due to further | lowered coal dependence, etc. | eastbound wrote: | The daemonization of nuclear during the cold war, prerequisite | for the MAD threat, led to hypersecure research centers, | centralization of funding and research, preventing tinkerers | from studying new solutions, and ultimately nuclear innovation | completely halting. As you said, many suggest that if we had | left it run its course, we might have seen nuclear stacks the | size of a washing machine powering neighborhoods, and other | applications entirely unimagined today. | dallasg3 wrote: | Mutual Assured Destruction | jaguar1878 wrote: | In case you weren't aware, the US also pursued nuclear powered | airplanes[1] with actual test units built. They're still | sitting out there in Idaho a few miles off the highway and you | can visit certain times of the year. Reading the placards (or | the wiki) honestly scares me a bit, despite my thought that | nuclear power makes a lot of sense for our energy needs. I | don't love the idea of 500mph reactors up above me, even with | modern airplane safety records. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion | hammock wrote: | >read his engineering reasoning you'll see why I speak of it | with a sense of awe and wonder | | Where can I do this please? | | I'm also generally curious what "engineering reasoning" is and | how I may be able to use it to sell in new ideas at work | andylynch wrote: | A nuclear version would not have been competitive - they were | _very_ special purpose vehicles; after the DEW line heavy lift | helicopters became available and made them obsolete. | reaperducer wrote: | _LeTurneau talks about one of the land trains being nuclear | powered, casually as if it was just another increment_ | | Reminds me of The Big Bus, which was also nuclear powered. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bus | moffkalast wrote: | Just 50s culture I guess, the typical Fallout book of nuclear | power. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | >LeTurneau talks about one of the land trains being nuclear | powered, casually as if it was just another increment | | This was a decade before hippies and greenpeace. It _was_ | casual to them. It was like saying "we're gonna use batteries | and DC motors" would be today. About the most condemning | response you'd get is "good luck with that I don't think the | numbers pencil out". | 8as746fd4a5df wrote: | Wasn't it rather common for the time to fantasize about | everything being powered by nuclear reactors? (Think: Ford | Nucleon, ideas about civilian nuclear powered ships or | aircraft) | | I also don't get the Musk hate. That man created more than 100k | jobs for Americans, made rockets land and cars go electric. And | with "made", I mean that he enabled the engineers at these | companies to do what they did. If you don't believe that then | mentally substract Musk from SpaceX or Tesla and ask where they | would they be today? (Answers: Tesla would have died in 2004 or | soon after because Tesla was not much more than an idea back | then and SpaceX would have never existed at all). | jcranmer wrote: | > I also don't get the Musk hate. | | If Musk just stuck to SpaceX and Tesla, a lot fewer people | would have problems with him. The issue is that he comes | across as a smarter-than-thou narcissist who needs to "solve" | every problem [1], can't stand being told to shut up (cf. | coronavirus restrictions, or the Thailand cave rescue | incident), and generally acts like a petulant asshole. | | I'll also point out that--in my opinion--Tesla just isn't as | revolutionary as people think it is. Yes, they are today the | largest producer of electric vehicles, but there is a very | good chance that they will not retain this position by the | end of the decade. And while Tesla may have accelerated | adoption of electric vehicles, without Tesla, it's still | likely that we would be moving to electric vehicles before | much longer. | | [1] I could insert a long discussion about why his efforts on | Hyperloop and Loop are worse than useless, but details aren't | really germane. | tablespoon wrote: | > If Musk just stuck to SpaceX and Tesla, a lot fewer | people would have problems with him. The issue is that he | comes across as a smarter-than-thou narcissist who needs to | "solve" every problem [1], can't stand being told to shut | up (cf. coronavirus restrictions, or the Thailand cave | rescue incident), and generally acts like a petulant | asshole. | | Even if he "just stuck to SpaceX and Tesla," he'd also have | to stop over-promising to the point where he seems like a | pathological liar. | KennyBlanken wrote: | "Seems"? | pasabagi wrote: | As a long-time Musk hater, I can tell you, I don't hate the | player, I hate the game. I hate that, for a while, the most | powerful man in the world (Trump) and the richest man in the | world (Musk), were both essentially Twitter trolls with side | gigs. | | All of his companies are fine, but it just sucks that we're | at a point in time where the way he behaves is basically | optimal behavior from a market standpoint. | [deleted] | KennyBlanken wrote: | I think the billions in government loans, contracts, tax | credits, and subsidies contributed significantly: | https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government- | su... | | "He enabled the engineers at these companies to do what they | did" is a weird way of saying he's an extremely abusive | manager. | | Work at enough companies and you'll see that a lot of them | succeed _despite_ their "founder"/owner, not because of | them. They end up surrounded by people who insulate them | enough, clean up their messes, and so on. | | With a competent manager, it's likely Tesla would have long | ago mastered things like "paint a car properly", not taken a | decade to make a single-gear transmission that lasts more | than 30,000 miles (and can be driven in heavy rain without | risk of water ingestion) and "have body panels align the same | on the left side of the car as on the right", as well as not | faced the huge production problems they did because Musk was | obsessed with switching to automated production. | wolverine876 wrote: | Why not by ship? Was the area completely inaccessible due to the | ice? Too far from shore? | | I'm sure they thought of it, I just wonder why it was ruled out. | walrus01 wrote: | most of the year it's frozen over, the barge transport season | to take things to nunavut is very short. | worldsoup wrote: | These stations are all along the Northwest Passage which was | extremely inaccessible back then, especially for the large | commercial shipping that would be needed. It's become much more | accessible recently with warming waters but still mostly just | by small craft in the summer. | drewzero1 wrote: | > Oh, your pickup has a lift? That's cute. | | My favorite fact about land trains is that the tires were later | reused on Bigfoot monster trucks[0]. | | [0] http://bigfoot4x4.com/blog/bigfoot-5/ | exhilaration wrote: | Fantastic link! don't miss the videos at the bottom: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGcFtWnPUOs&list=PLkNbuDiWyZ... | smm11 wrote: | Is Monster Trucking still a thing? Seems I'd see it all over | the place a while back, and haven't really noticed a thing | about it in 10-15 years or so. | morepork wrote: | I went to a Monster Jam show in ~2018, looks like they're | still going: https://www.monsterjam.com/en-US/tickets | jamescun wrote: | > The VC-22 was quickly assembled in a little more than a month. | | Most incredible takeaway from the article. | [deleted] | DerekL wrote: | The title needs "(2020)". | frankus wrote: | I read somewhere that these had a mechanism that made all of the | wheels follow in roughly the same track, but I haven't been able | to find an explanation of how they made that work. Anyone happen | to have a link/explanation? | | Edit: Found this https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Steering- | scheme-of-a-roa.... | [deleted] | pimlottc wrote: | Since it's not defined in the article, the "DEW Line" is the | Distant Early Warning like, a string of radar stations in the far | northern regions of Canada designed during the Cold War to | provide early warning of incoming planes or troops from the | Soviet Union. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Early_Warning_Line | capekwasright wrote: | In an episode released a few years back, Omega Tau spoke with | two individuals who had worked on the DEW Line back in the day: | https://omegataupodcast.net/248-dew-sage-and-the-f-106-delta... | eggy wrote: | It didn't seem to help Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze in the | 1984 movie Red Dawn ;) Interesting NATO is disbanded in that | movie, and the harvest in the Ukraine suffers for some reason | (blight? war?). | tablespoon wrote: | > It didn't seem to help Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze in the | 1984 movie Red Dawn ;) Interesting NATO is disbanded in that | movie, and the harvest in the Ukraine suffers for some reason | (blight? war?). | | Of course. The DEW line was mean to warn against a Soviet | nuclear attack, but in that movie no such attack occurs. | HideousKojima wrote: | Actually the downed jet pilot mentions DC, NYC, and a few | other cities getting nuked. | tablespoon wrote: | > Actually the downed jet pilot mentions DC, NYC, and a | few other cities getting nuked. | | Oh, that's totally possible. It's been a long time since | I've seen the movie, and I just recall that nukes didn't | feature in the plot at all. | HWR_14 wrote: | The Ukraine harvest suffering isn't as random as you might | think. It produced the majority of the food for the Warsaw | block, and avoiding a famine leading to revolution is a good | reason to start a major war. | | NATO being dissolved is pretty deterministic as well. The | average American in 1984 couldn't conceive of the Russians | actually making it all the way over to the US. Nuking the US, | but not a successful land invasion. So there had to be some | reason the US got weaker. NATO dissolving doesn't put any | blame for that on the US, which is important for a flag- | waving film. | aksss wrote: | > Average American in 1984 couldn't conceive.... | | "Couldn't conceive" is pretty strong - it was the era of | the Cold War, GI Joe, a hangover from the Cuban Missile | Crisis, the contras. Maybe accurate to say the average | American would find it highly improbable, and our eventual | victory always assured because Chuck Norris, Rambo, and the | inherent virtue of our cause against totalitarianism. | | Anyway, I think the paratroopers that appear in Red Dawn | are from Cuba or a socialist country in Central/South | America, right? Which isn't terribly far-fetched in the | context of the eighties imagination - maybe more accessible | idea than a Soviet D-Day-style invasion. Also not out of | line in history - didn't the Germans court the Mexicans in | WWII? The French during the Civil War (I use the word | "court" loosely with the French 'intervention', but hell, | we got a holiday out of it). | | The film was marketed saying that no foreign invasion of US | soil had happened, though it ignored the Japanese invasion | of Alaska. The "average American" probably still doesn't | think of Alaska very often except for reality TV, much less | its history. | | https://www.archaeology.org/issues/433-2107/letter- | from/9780... | tablespoon wrote: | > So there had to be some reason the US got weaker. NATO | dissolving doesn't put any blame for that on the US, which | is important for a flag-waving film. | | I don't recall exactly where I read it (it was some | interview or something with the people who made the movie | 10+ years ago), but I think it was a little more extreme | than that. IIRC, (the perhaps unstated) bit of the | backstory was domino theory was true and the US was badly | on the wrong end of it. The NATO dissolving thing was just | part of the picture. | sidewndr46 wrote: | Of course, that was the Cubans that invaded. | tablespoon wrote: | > Of course, that was the Cubans that invaded. | | In the backstory for the movie it wasn't just the Cubans. | The Russians directly led it, and also Mexico went | Communist and the invasion actually proceeded from there, | so I'd assume Mexican forces participated as well. That | would have been obscured because the main antagonist | characters were a Russian commander and a Cuban commander. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn#Plot: | | > In an alternate 1980s, the United States is strategically | isolated after NATO is disbanded. At the same time, the | Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies aggressively | expand. In addition, the Ukrainian wheat harvest fails | while a socialist coup d'etat occurs in Mexico. | imwillofficial wrote: | It's like the exact story happened in reverse | jacquesm wrote: | Except for the small detail that nobody cares about | invading Russia. | macintux wrote: | China might, as Siberia warms and Russia's military | forces are depleted. | imwillofficial wrote: | No, China has no interest in this. | sudosysgen wrote: | Invading, no, but regime change? Absolutely (see Western | involvement in the Russian civil war and, well, all of | the cold war) | wombatpm wrote: | Tom Cruise was not in Red Dawn | | In the 1984 movie, paratroopers dropped from supposed | commercial flights, which was the approach the USSR used for | their 1980 invasion of Afghanistan | | Nukes were used later against the Chinese, which was why | there were 500 million screaming Chinese in our side. 13 year | old me was a big fan of the movie. | | John has a big mustache. The chair is against the wall. | mzs wrote: | The Soviets did not parachute from commercial flights | during Storm-333. | skmurphy wrote: | I had to look up "John has a long mustache. The chair is | against the wall. " They are explained in this blog post. | https://www.housemorningwood.com/red-dawn-code-words-and- | wol... | | "John has a long mustache" is a callback to the movie "The | Longest Day" as a signal to French Resistance. | aksss wrote: | Tom Cruise wasn't in Red Dawn, as I recall - maybe thinking | about Charlie Sheen (the discount Tom Cruise)? Yes, wheat | harvest fails in Ukraine, coup in Mexico, NATO disbanded. | Cuban paratroopers in the first wave if I recall correctly. | Still a highly enjoyable movie - one of the best eighties | adventure flicks. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-16 23:00 UTC)