globster2000 on 26 January 2008
I was browsing the internet the other day and came across an interesting article about the Japanese Science Portal specing the cost for making a real-life gundam unit in Japan. They priced it as a meer 725 million dollars.
They measure the unit to be approximately 18 meter's tall using IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer (¥171 million or $1.6 million); 30 400KW motors would supply the movement (total cost $7.8 million), and the seven Apache helicopter engines needed to power them would be another $52 million each.
Estimated cost of Gundam parts:
| ITEM | UNIT COST | QTY | COST |
| Aluminum alloy (honeycomb) | $1,800 | 43,875 | $79,000,000 |
| (+ Metal manufacturing/processing) | $240,000,000 | ||
| Main computer (IBM) | $1,550,000 | 1 | $1,550,000 |
| Gas turbine engines (GE) | $52,000,000 | 7 | $364,000,000 |
| Superconductive motors (IHI) | $260,000 | 30 | $7,800,000 |
| Motor drivers | $260,000 | 30 | $7,800,000 |
| Reducers | $760,000 | 30 | $22,800,000 |
| Sensors | $910,000 | ||
| Cockpit | $450,000 | ||
| TOTAL: | $724,310,000 |
For more information click here.
