Thursday, April 26, 2012

Exoskeleton: Be All That You Can Be

Lockheed Martin is bringing us a great new system that doesn't fly:


This idea has been worked on for quite some time – decades, I’m sure, but it looks like it’s starting to take shape.  There is still a ways to go, though: I can imagine trudging 180 pounds up a 20-degree slope in the Shah-i-Kot when an AK round takes out the servo.  I started out in the infantry and I have always retained a Marine’s healthy sense of paranoia about gadgets.  As with most of these time- and labour-saving devices, as long as you have a good back up, which usually involves the same technology available to the XV Roman Legion (Apollinaris), then you will probably pull through.

I am not certain where the idea originated, but a good candidate has to be the great Robert Heinlein, creator of Starship Troopers (the book about the mobile infantry of the future, with its great soliloquies about citizenship, capital punishment, delinquency, and other matters – not the lamentable movie).

But I bet that I know what you are thinking, though.  Am I right?



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