Magnesium seawater battery - its pretty much bronze age techmology - http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/191_IR/chap_03/c3_5.htm <http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/191_IR/chap_03/c3_5.htm>Can melt down alloy car wheels for a start. Otherwise AZ61 alloy is hardly a controlled substance. Only other thing you need is twisted wire titanium brushes with carbon fiber bristles. Easily made in some South Asian sweatshop, with barely a record kept. The electronics is the tricky stuff, but once you get the first one working, replicating to 1000s is easy enough. Again, south asian sweatshops, or buying a middle tier chinese RC toy maker isnt out of reach for the South American combinas. On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 8:48 PM, Stephen Williams <sdw@lig.net> wrote:

Really 'game over' if our southern businessmen build NarcoGliders... No external propellers or emissions of any kind, potential for total silence, super efficient long range, easy antenna raising, great depth...

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/5-insanely-cool-robots-youll-desperatel...

How many of these have been sold in South America?

Anyway, go iRobot!

On 4/2/11 6:43 PM, Stephen Williams wrote:

...

On 4/2/11 6:08 PM, Damien Morton wrote:

...

When these guys get really smart and start churning out thousands bathtub sized robosubs powered by magnesium seawater batteries, it truly is game-over. Until then, its WW2 tech all the way.

What the fuck do you do when invaded by swarms of 1000s of silent robosubs bearing 50kg of cocaine, swimming up your rivers, your drainage outlets, your harbours, and your god-damned toilets.

You change the economics... If they're delivering fresh papaya and coffee, it wouldn't be so bad would it? ;-) And we could send back iPads to be good recyclers. If you don't change the economics, then you have to live with the fact that you're always going to be outnumbered and outsmarted by the SillyNarco Valley "startups" of the _deep_ South.

sdw

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