The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!
Monday, February 3, 2014
And if the brakes failed?
This is a gutsy demonstration of the braking power of the Leopard 2 tank . . . but it leaves me speechless at the thought of the possible consequences if anything had gone wrong.
It's a bit of theatre really, so I couldn't help but ponder what I would do if asked to produce such a video.
My first inclination was something like dowty retarders set into the road surface and then a buffer-stop. Even after the victims start moving around in the video there is plenty of surface area in front of the tank that we do not see, so a hayes-bumper could be hidden by the people both before and after the "brake test", and the retarders by the people before and by the tank sitting on top of them after the stop.
But even there there is hazard. So what I would actually do is have PA speakers in the position of the stopped tank playing the sound effects of the brake test. That would get the appropriate reactions from the human talent, and then the video could be merged with an actual tank brake test.
That is the difference between older folks and younger folks. Younger folks assume things will go right, and veterans of life are always expecting Murphy to show up at any moment.
9 comments:
Clearly, good brakes - but they couldn't pay enough to make me stand among them.
Wow.
It's a bit of theatre really, so I couldn't help but ponder what I would do if asked to produce such a video.
My first inclination was something like dowty retarders set into the road surface and then a buffer-stop. Even after the victims start moving around in the video there is plenty of surface area in front of the tank that we do not see, so a hayes-bumper could be hidden by the people both before and after the "brake test", and the retarders by the people before and by the tank sitting on top of them after the stop.
But even there there is hazard. So what I would actually do is have PA speakers in the position of the stopped tank playing the sound effects of the brake test. That would get the appropriate reactions from the human talent, and then the video could be merged with an actual tank brake test.
YOu just know that the HR department had several job postings ready to go up...just in case.
That is the difference between older folks and younger folks. Younger folks assume things will go right, and veterans of life are always expecting Murphy to show up at any moment.
Oh HELL no... And Murphy was an OPTIMIST!!!
Can that be retried with congress being substituted for the frat boys?
Grog:
And a tank with no brakes?
The tank could have stopped sooner. It was obvious the driver eased on the brakes to time the final stop.
My machine had trouble loading and buffering the clip, so I got to watch the tank come to a dead stop four times. It's not as impressive that way.
You notice they were all young...I suspect they could not get older and wiser people to volunteer.
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