h a l f b a k e r yPoof of concept
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Foam Zorb
Sandwich the rider inside a large foam ball. | |
The top half of the foam sphere cracks open like Pacman opening his mouth. The rider slides into this crack where he can insert his legs and lower body into legholes.
Then, the rider straps his torso into a harness attached to the rear surface. This harness prevents him from sliding upward.
The
front surface has armholes. The rider inserts his arms to reach handles. He can then pull the clamshell closed.
In front of the rider's face is a tunnel for breathing and comfort. At the end of the tunnel is a pinhole camera so that the only visible break in the foam on the outside is a pinhole (the pinhole is actually much smaller than the breathing holes). The pinhole projects a wide field of view image onto a circular projection screen.
Unlike an inflatable zorb, this foam vehicle can't deflate. It also provides better shock protection, with forces evenly spread across the entire body.
It's essentially a big Nerf ball, so it can even be launched from a compressed air launcher.
Skydiving spheres
Skydiving_20spheres
[MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 19 2007]
[link]
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If you're giving up the visibility inherent in the regular Zorb, at least make it worth the effort - encase it in Kevlar or some other battlefield-ready material. |
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With a sufficiently large foam zorb, one
could presumably skydive quite safely
sans parachute. Terminal velocity
would be quite low (I think it could
easily be gotten down to <60mph), at
which speed one could probably land
with an exhilerating but survivable
bounce. |
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The drawbacks would be limited
maneuverability in freefall (ie, limited in
the sense of zero), and virtually no
interesting sensation after the first few
moments of apparent weightlessness. |
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Someone suggested skydiving Zorbs previously, so you might want to look up that thread. |
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Ah yes, Dr. Curry, you'are right [link].
Nobody really resolved the calculations
regarding sphere diameter on that one.
They were calculating for "comfortable"
landing speed, whereas in fact the foam
zorb would allow a much higher safe
landing speed. And, since wind resistance
goes as the square (??) of velocity, you
could get away with a much smaller
sphere. |
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You could encase it in something like Kevlar to make it bulletproof and RPG-proof, and maybe even roadside bomb-proof (the foam absorbs blast). |
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Indeed, you could turn the suit into a "Zorb-Orion" vehicle. This vehicle incorporates some fuel spray nozzles around the vehicle. To produce thrust, a bit of fuel is sprayed to make a fuel-air mixture and then it's detonated. Road-side bombs? The Zorb-Orion suit laughes at the threat! It uses dozens of explosions per second just to fly around! To conserve fuel, the explosions could be used sparingly for horizontal rolling motion. |
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But...how is this invincible mobile jump trooper supposed to fight? He's wildly spinning around in this foam ball with no real visibility. The spinning ball is a lousy gun platform. |
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Maybe the soldier could operate remote controlled weapons platforms, and he uses his own amazing mobility only to escape from enemy threats. |
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Difficult to do both those last two things when you can't see out. |
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Why not just be elsewhere? |
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Why not indeed...it's really hard to imagine spinning around in an armored Zorb being of any value on the battlefield. The above is about as close as I could get, but it's still entirely silly. |
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