We choose to move earth

Greg Whitaker

In the last couple of weeks we’ve celebrated the anniversary of the first people to walk on the moon - and of course we’ve commemorated the passing of another famous moonwalker.

While Michael Jackson never had much to do with the world of earthmovers, NASA and its Soviet counterpart did advance technology significantly and in ways that we can all benefit from.

For example, did you know that the space agency developed a small robotic backhoe arm to collect samples of alien soil?

Or that the most modern advances in heat resistant material come from the missions. Developments in other fields such as formula milk, trainers, water filters and of course computers are all down to moon technology.

These days, there is little appetite for going back there, and fair enough, perhaps mankind has more important things to be concerned about at the moment. It would be nice to think that for all the gloom and lack of investment, that there are still sparks of creativity in the world’s R and D departments.

There

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are some encouraging signs. For a start, there is Tadano’s bizarre and frankly terrifying walking crane concept. Next, there are the various experiments with combined diesel electric power that have been occurring at nearly every major manufacturer.

While development seems to have slowed on these of late, new legislation might still see the first machines with high-discharge capacitors for slewing on worksites before the end of the decade.

Doosan report that it is ahead of schedule with its hybrid digger, and even now, there are some fascinating concepts emanating from the drawing boards of other excavator makers… we even saw one proposal for a nuclear powered wheel loader, though perhaps that is one that probably shouldn’t be built.

All things considered, the industry should modify the famous phrase ‘We chose to go’ in to ‘we chose to build’ and ignore the short term money markets in favour of creating visionary machines for when the market returns.

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