Machine love

I know that humans are not good for the biosphere. I know that giant open-pit mines are hideous scars on the landscape. I know that burning the world's coal reserves over the next century or two is going to have global repercussions that we can't escape.

Still, wrecking the planet doesn't seem so bad when you get to have badass giant machines like this one to do it with. I stole the pictures and the stats from here. Thanks to Katie for the tip.

Oh, the picture above has jack all to do with giant mining machines, I just think it's cool and I hadn't had an opportunity to use it yet. It's a painting by Donato Giancola that I stole from someplace on the web a long time ago.





Specifications:
~ The mover stands 311 feet tall and 705 feet long.
~ It weighs over 45,500 tons
~ Cost $100 million to build
~ Took 5 years to design and manufacture
~ 5 years to assemble.
~ Requires 5 people to operate it.
~ The Bucket Wheel is over 70 feet in diameter with 20 buckets, each of which can hold over 530 cubic feet of material.
~ A 6-foot man can stand up inside one of the buckets.
~ It moves on 12 crawlers (each is 12 feet wide, 8' high and 46 feet long).There are 8 crawlers in front and 4 in back.
It has a maximum speed of 1 mile in 3 hours (1/3 mile/hour).