For The Superhero In Everyone
Want to be like Spiderman? Want to be able to zoom up to the top of a tall building? Well now you can, thanks to an engineering student at MIT.
BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) — A 23-year-old inventor has come up with a tool to give mere mortals the powers of a superhero: the ability to zoom up a rope as fast as 10 feet per second and scale the side of a building.
The battery-powered, handheld gadget is envisioned as a tool for firefighters and soldiers, and helped earn Nate Ball of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, to be announced Wednesday.
While he has practical applications in mind, Ball says it isn't a stretch to compare the tool to the gadgets fictional heroes use to quickly climb to dizzying heights.
"It's neat to be able to create a real-life engineering solution that has the actual functionality described in the fantastic situations you see on Batman, and with James Bond," said Ball, an MIT graduate student who spends his spare time rock-climbing and pole-vaulting.
The invention grew out of an MIT-sponsored, Army-funded student design competition in 2004 to develop technology to help soldiers ascend rapidly.
Ball collaborated with three fellow MIT students to refine the design from the competition and create the Powered Rope Ascender, a product of the startup company they founded, Atlas Devices.
It's like rappelling backwards, zooming up instead of down. They already have a contract with the military to produce prototypes of the device. The military can see some real advantages to a device like this. So can I. The next time the kid gets a rocket stuck on the roof, we can go get it in style. Here's the website for Atlas Devices (Warning, slow load - probably a lot of visitors). They have videos.
By Quilly Mammoth, Wednesday, 14 February , 2007 @ 3:02 pm
Just sayin:
Following the NAR safety code should prevent future landings on the roof.
http://wwwtest.nar.org/NARmrsc.html
You can find a local club with a large launch field here:
http://wwwtest.nar.org/NARseclist.php
http://www.tripoli.org/prefecture/us.shtml
As a mentor for the Aerospace Industry Association’s Team America Rocket Challenge I just can’t let this opportunity pass.
http://www.aia-aerospace.org/aianews/features/team_america/
By Gaius, Wednesday, 14 February , 2007 @ 3:19 pm
Heh.
By Chet, Wednesday, 14 February , 2007 @ 5:04 pm
Cool, but you got your superheroes wrong. The guy who zips up buildings with the aid of handheld devices is Batman, not Spiderman. Geez!
By DanMac, Wednesday, 14 February , 2007 @ 9:57 pm
so are these going into production or is it just a concept?
By Gaius, Wednesday, 14 February , 2007 @ 10:17 pm
In production apparently. Prototype testing by the military is a good first step. (And if it passes milspec, it’s going to be overbuilt like a mother.)
By Sweet Land Of Liberty, Thursday, 15 February , 2007 @ 10:45 am
What a great concept! I will buy one. Another idea crying out for civilian use is the military exoskeleton!
http://bleex.me.berkeley.edu/bleex.htm
The design needs to be streamlined a bit…