RRC Archives

This is the only way I will ever beat an El-Cap speed record.


http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrusts/materi ... /index.htm



I gotta get me one of these systems.

what will they think of next?

If the adhesive is strong enough to hold a soldier and his gear (200+ lbs?), how hard is it going to be to remove it from the wall to make the next move?

Don't know. It's not really an adhesive. I think they are trying to exploit the Van Der Waals interaction like geckos do. My guess is you would be able to activate and deactivate the attraction. Imagine how easy aid climbing would be with these things. Or if you could make one to hold a whipper you could lead face climbs without bolts.

Gecko inspired adhesives already exist. You stick them on and they are incredibly strong yet you can lift the corner and peel them off since each individual stud only holds a tiny amount of force.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/18966/?a=f

Regardless of the "adhesive" sticking the soldier to the wall, lots of wall surfaces, like plaster on brick, or decaying brick for that matter, won't hold up the soldier...

Good point.

NanoTechnology is Huge

If you have enough surface area, even really shitty surfaces might hold you up.

That's true - but I see two problems:

1) How big can you go before it's impractical? If you're envisioning Hollywood style hand and foot or knee pads, you're talking about 4 contact points - but I'd want to design the system so that any one point/pad could support you. A 200lb soldier with an extra 100lbs of crap (including the gecko pads) equals 300lbs total. (and I'm only talking static loads here - think about what happens if one pad fails and you shock load the other pad(s)) Think about how big a 1' by 1' pad would be - it's big, but let's say that it's the largest you could go. That would mean that the surface would need to be able to support 300 pounds per square foot (or just over 2 psi).

In the developed world, there are lots of building surfaces (in good condition) that can support either the overall 300 lb load and the 2psi localized load. But these things are presumably not going to be used somewhere like downtown Chicago, with our building codes and inspections. This would be used somewhere like downtown Baghdad, on old, damaged buildings. Also, a lot of US soldiers won't be familiar with the construction techniques used in these areas, so they'll have a hard time "reading" whether a building is old or new and if the wall system is solid. I would be hard pressed to solo builder a multistory, war damaged building in Baghdad - it would be a tough "read" from the ground and I don't think that gecko pads would be enough of a margin of safety.

2)I'm not going to be schumck who tries to climb up the side of a 5 story building with no backup line! Again, think about where these things would likely be used. I'd be really not happy about risking a multi-story fall to pavement.