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#lift#life#challenge#heavy#least#darpa#position#foot#case#something

Discussion (23 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

konchunas•about 2 hours ago
It's Heavy Lift, not life
A_D_E_P_T•35 minutes ago
Heavy life challenge: Biology usually discriminates against heavy isotopes. Can we reverse, redirect, or exploit that tendency? Find a way to get plants and bacteria to preferentially incorporate heavy atomic isotopes.

Use microbes, algae, duckweed, or plant-cell cultures to produce deuterated and 13C/15N-labeled complex biomolecules that are expensive or impractical to synthesize chemically.

Could be fun, honestly.

kreelman•about 2 hours ago
When life gets tough...

Contact DARPA for a lift !

bob1029•about 1 hour ago
> Competitors must create an aircraft that is both lightweight and powerful – lifting at least 4x its weight while flying a 5-nautical-mile circuit course.

I'd make it 50NM. 5 is way too easy to bullshit with edge case engineering. Alternatively, set a minimum payload capacity of something like 100kg.

TeMPOraL•about 1 hour ago
Maybe "edge case engineering" is precisely what they're looking for? Get people to think about beating the rules with cheesy strategies, in hopes some of those could, with some cleverness, scale up and evolve into proper, broad-range solution - or at least become a key previously-missing component of one. But even if it can't, very narrow capabilities can still be useful too; military isn't beyond doing silly things if they offer enough tactical advantage (enough to offset extra burden on logistics, at least).
xnx•26 minutes ago
Giant hot air balloon for lift + 4 rotors for steering? It wouldn't be fast, but it might work [in low wind conditions].
Schlagbohrer•about 2 hours ago
Darpa.mil got slashdotted? Wow. The folks who invented the internet...
emsign•about 2 hours ago
The military is waking up to the need to adapt frontline logistics. With killrates of 90% for traditional trucks in the Ukraine war, without resupply missions by UAVs/UGVs holding positions is impossible now.
fc417fc802•about 2 hours ago
If the truck killrate is 90% what is it for troop transports? How do infantry get in and out of position?
blini-kot•29 minutes ago
on foot (not 20km, usually its something like 3-5km AFAIK, 20km is the width of both sides strongpoints + no-mans-land between), or on some fast and agile one-way craft: motorcycles, buggies, e-bikes

the key idea is that you need something which can get you onto the enemy position either before hunter drones take off, or that a drone won't take out the whole complement, hence the uselessness of trucks

going on foot is not really due to the human wave nature of the attacks, but rather its like WW1 stosstruppen - they use whatever cover they can find and a squad of 4 on foot is much easier to go through bushes used as cover or when weather is not suitable for flying

of note here is that trucks were not really used for transport on the tactical level on the frontline, however lately (with drones from destinus) logistics runs in the rear have also become a problem even 100km+ deep - thats where the 90% killrate figure comes from

sneezychl•about 2 hours ago
> How do infantry get in and out of position?

They don't. Life expectancy of a Russian on the front line is hours. You just send in another wave.

fc417fc802•about 1 hour ago
If that were the case then there wouldn't be anyone there to receive the resupply to begin with.
KptMarchewa•about 1 hour ago
On foot, walking 20km+ to the position.
torginus•about 1 hour ago
Quads and dirt bikes afaik.
lukan•about 1 hour ago
Armored carriers if avaiable.
jauntywundrkind•about 2 hours ago
This is being announced to us or everyone right now? It's only around 10 weeks away: that seems surprisingly close. Have some folk already been made aware & have they had time to build for this DARPA Challenges? Generally I think of them as longer running challenges.
fc417fc802•about 2 hours ago
> Generally I think of them as longer running challenges.

Given how outlandish the ratio requirement is compared to currently available products I expect this one will be recurring for at least a few years similar to what happened with the self driving challenge 20ish years ago.

ThunderBee•about 2 hours ago
this competition was announced October last year. IIRC registration ended sometime Q1 this year.
zx8080•about 1 hour ago
Typo in title: "lift" not "life"

cc @dang

brador•about 1 hour ago
Really just a battery challenge.

Possibly against laws of physics at energy density of 4x?

eichin•about 1 hour ago
I saw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tohImHa4f5U (Hoarder Sam, "I'm building a drone for the DARPA lift challenge") the other day and it was a pretty good discussion of the "shape of the envelope" of the problem (and what kind of lift ratios actually exist in modern air vehicles), and particularly how they've set up the constraints to eliminate a bunch of "easy" approaches.

It also reminded me that for the first round of the self-driving grand challenge, none of the vehicles even completed the course :-) They really are trying to encourage "out of the box", or at least "not in the obvious box", designs...

neonstatic•about 2 hours ago
You think your life is heavy, huh? You might want to check out this challenge...