If you haven’t already seen this, you really ought to check it out. (Thanks to Tactical Life for catching it.) Maybe not a finished design, but in a time when 1% of America fights while most of the rest go to the mall, it is refreshing to see kids want to help out.
5TH Graders Design Improved Military Helmet
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1% of america chooses to fight, for what ever reason. no draft = iraq war.
1% of America wants the draft, for whatever reason. draft = vietnam war.
I feel like such a simpleton compared to these kids. I may as well give up all hope and just become a janitor.
And they didn’t even charge a fortune in design, development, and production, plus cost overruns, over budgets, and missed deadlines. I think the whole US industrial and Government could take lessons from these kids.
and that’s why they won’t be taken seriously either.
Will there be a Natick or PEO soldier version of “are you smarter than a 5th grader” now?
Future engineers! When I was in fifth grade, my only design like this was a landspeeder from Star Wars with a Ma Deuce up top.
Needless to say, the teacher wasn’t pleased with my show-and-tell presentation.
Proud of those kids. Gives me hope that science and engineering may not be completely deteriorating in this country.
It’s great to see these kids actually take this seriously. Seems like most don’t appreciate what’s going in the world these days.
But I must say, how do you break the news to an e-5 s. sgt. that his helmet was designed and made by 5th grader.
Keep up the good work!
Best idea instead of greedy billion dollar corporations fighting in a competition let kids design them they’ll be waring them in ten years. LOL
You must be an occupy homo. That is EXACTLY that same **** those nimrods say. Why does it always have to be a “greedy corporation”? Is that the phrase of the day?
Those “greedy corporations” are there to make a profit. It is called capitalism.
FYI, your retirement (if you have one) is mostly likely intertwined and heavily invested in the “greedy corporation(s)”. So before you go you lambasting the “greedy corporation”, remember, your future depends on its success.
Congratulations to these young people and all the others in school who are using their knowledge in designing items that work for the military and all others to improve this world. And, you’re absolutely correct, shawn1999, they didn’t do what the big corporations would that you pointed out. Perhaps they should apply for a patent on their design, contract it to a company that would see to it that the things you mentioned would not happen and that these students are rewarded with “scholarship” money to make sure they can get through college and beyond. They should receive a “full-ride” so they don’t have to work and struggle through school – this would allow them the opportunity to spend their time on school, learning, and creating.
It’ll be interesting to see where this goes from here. Quite possibly, Natick/ contractors (ugh) could pick up the idea and ‘soldierize’ it. Or it could just be discarded, lol.
If I’m understanding this properly, there are overlapping ballistic plates with more ballistic “gel” in between the plates? It’s a good idea, but it sounds a bit delicate for soldiers…
I’m curious to see how much patent law gets in the way of giving our soldiers the best gear.
Don’t you just love when the US government’s bureaucracy leads to us to spend truckloads of money on R&D to prevent traumatic brain injury to US soldiers and a bunch of 5th graders made a better the design than the military could have instructed congress to contract the military industrial complex for.
Wasn’t there a rule from the Evil Overlord list applicable to this situation?
Tinker, you would be livid if you knew how much patent law really gets in the way on innovation and improvements in all sectors of human endeavor. From highly effective cancer drugs, to high efficiency electronics, from education, to military hardware, from mental health, to space travel. The US patient and copyright system crush innovation with convoluted and arcane legal systems that make it almost impossible for the small guy to get patents and enforce them, meanwhile giving huge power to stifle innovation with fear of expensive litigation to those with the legal teams needed to navigate the system.
Given that these students took ideas from many other places and put them together, it’s highly likely that they have something in the system that is already patented. So even though they are using these ideas in new and inventive ways and we are dealing with likely very old patients and copyrights they are unlikely to ever be able to produce a product without paying millions of dollars in licencing to a company that never did anything with their idea.
I love inventiveness, but our system crushes it and I lament that almost daily. Good for these kids that they are young enough to still think having a good idea is enough.
I wonder if the president told them to work on another project because he was cutting their defense funds too? Great work for the kids though. Even if our president does not think it is important atleast kids do.
he propabably told them they didn’t win because their invention didn’t help the enviroment.