You will see the tears of time

[Ford Prefect]

The Mobile Suit Gundam franchise is gigantic: it's as deeply ingrained in the Japanese cultural zeitgeist as Star Wars in America. In the past its name has been attached to a program exploring future space development at Osaka Prefectural University, but this is the first time I've heard of it being attached to an actual giant robot project :v

http://gundamguy.blogspot.com.au/2012/0 ... panel.html

The Liberal Democratic Party, a center-right faction in Japanese politics, will hold a live, 12-hour marathon stream on the niconico service on Thursday, and one of the marathon's panels will discuss "the Gundam Development Project, as seriously considered by the Liberal Democratic Party."

Masaaki Taira and Hideki Niwa, two members of Japan's House of Representatives, will speak during the 8:00 p.m. panel with their guest, novelist Harutoshi Fukui. Fukui happens to be the writer of the Mobile Suit Gundam UC novels (pictured below right).

Taira reported last year that his party would consider adding the efforts to realize "piloted, two-legged walking humanoid robots" into the party's platform manifesto. Taira also posted an extended discussion about the feasibility of piloted walking robots on Twitter, using the anime and manga titles Gundam, Appleseed, and Patlabor (pictured left) as examples. Taira broached the topic after meeting with Katsuya Kanaoka, a professor of robotics from Kyoto University.

In 2008, SciencePortal.jp, a website run by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), released a report estimating how much it would cost to build a 18-meter-tall (59-feet-tall), functioning "Morph-X" combat robot similar to those used in Gundam. The Japanese government funds about 90% of JST's budget, with the remaining coming from the agency's own operational income.

JSTA's celebratory Gundam design for for the 30th anniversary was made out of foamed aluminium and relied on something like twelve Apache engines and a zillion superconducting motors just to walk, with the parts cost being about a hundred million cash moneys. I think it goes without saying that this won't go anywhere, and as the panel is something of a retrospective you could say this it has in fact gone nowhere. I mean, you can't trust the military industrial complex to invent a radio, let alone a giant robot, but here we are.

[Mr Bean]

I think it goes without saying that this won't go anywhere, and as the panel is something of a retrospective you could say this it has in fact gone nowhere. I mean, you can't trust the military industrial complex to invent a radio, let alone a giant robot, but here we are.

I've trust you've never seen the wonders of American giant robos... the Robosaurus which ate cars at many of our fine Monster Truck rallies from 1988 onwards. Trust me if you throw enough money and enough idle engineers at a problem you will sooner or later get a Giant Robot design.

[tim31]

Hell, I saw Robosaurus at the Sydney Royal Easter Show in '94 and it was fucking brilliant. But it's nothing like what Ford's just posted... We're talking something that would move with fluid grace and serious mass.

[Sidewinder]

JSTA's celebratory Gundam design for for the 30th anniversary was made out of foamed aluminium and relied on something like twelve Apache engines and a zillion superconducting motors just to walk, with the parts cost being about a hundred million cash moneys. I think it goes without saying that this won't go anywhere, and as the panel is something of a retrospective you could say this it has in fact gone nowhere. I mean, you can't trust the military industrial complex to invent a radio, let alone a giant robot, but here we are.

Is there a link to a webpage or other document detailing this robot design?

[Zixinus]

They are only doing this to gather fan votes, right?

[Alkaloid]

I may be off base here, but isn't this more or less the cultural equivalent to the US Democrats running on a policy of radioactive spider research, super soldier programs and gamma ray bomb testing? And is that more than a little odd?

[Zaune]

I may be off base here, but isn't this more or less the cultural equivalent to the US Democrats running on a policy of radioactive spider research, super soldier programs and gamma ray bomb testing? And is that more than a little odd?

You say that like it wouldn't work.

[someone_else]

Woot! +1 for "Japan stops wasting money on that stupid orbital solar power station and finally make something awesome!"