Gas must be a bitch.

Puts new meaning to the word toothache.

Saw a Discovery Channel show or some such on this monster last year. They had to move the thing from one mine to another in Germany. That was a logistical mind melter. This thing is the definition of awesome.

You didn't include any purchasing information.

Cut the driver some slack, man! He's so far away from that saw that he can't possibly be expected to see something as tiny as a Cat!

I'm in love...

Since I alreay own one, when are they releasing Bagger 289 with the tail fin option and shag interior because I may consider upgrading.

My truck did the exact same thing to a cat. My neighbor was pissed.

so where do I stand in line to reserve one of these babys? I heard supply is limited, must be made my Sony.

how would they get that out of there anyway? bulldozers weigh tons!

I wonder if my house fits in 2 or 3 scoops...

Gas isn't a bitch, it runs on electric power.

-Tries to order one on Ebay-

It does, it's funny...drags the mother of all extension cords around behind it...

BTW order time, if I remember right, is 10 years build time and about $10 Billion price tag. It is supposed to run some 25 years non-stop and then be junked.

Between this and the jet engine fire extinguisher, I thing we deserve a new tag: "German Engineered"

Obvious Guys Says:
I'm sure the electricity used to power this beast isn't necessarily produced only by waterfalls and windmills... what ever produces it, the cost to run this machine has to be outrageous!

I'm lovin' the recent series of "Gizmodo's World of Biggest/Bestest Super Machines" Keep 'em rollin' out!

what im wondering is, as this thing is massive, i cant imagine it movies all that quickly... did the bolldozer driver not see/hear something that rediculously huge quickly enough to move it out of the way? or vdid he just choose a really bad parking spot?
im still amazed at how purely fucking cool this thing is...

It's a "bucketwheel", not a "trencher".

It's not used for digging trenches, rather it's for open pit strip mining. It swings back and forth while edging forward to completely remove the top layer of earth from a wide area.

It's basically used to remove all the dirt that is covering big-ass coal deposits, which can then be dug out by more normal-sized machines.

Still, those pictures do put its spectacular size into perspective.

Hey.. this has been dugg. Go figure.

"Obvious Guys Says:
I'm sure the electricity used to power this beast isn't necessarily produced only by waterfalls and windmills... what ever produces it, the cost to run this machine has to be outrageous!"

The excavator is used for mining coal, which is sold to powerplants that produce electricity, which is then purchased to run the excavator. Everything cancels out. :D Except obviously once in a while you have to feed it a bulldozer for dessert...

theres still a guy in thate truck going "WTF?"

Exactly Drew, is seems like some people just assume that since something is powered by electricity that the production of said electrical power is somehow "greener" than fossil fuels.

Holy F#@%!

I'm buying one and going to robot wars.

And to add on to what MosH8ed was saying... if the electricity is produced from fossil fuels themodynamics says that it will take more energy to do the same task and so this would be cleaner if it did use gas. This ends physics class for today.

Nice sensationalist headline.

"Potentially destroys world"*

* - Built in 1978. Don't you think it would have already succeeded, if that was the goal? Come one, man! Look at the size of the thing!

Oh man, Lenroc, I hope you're not serious.

I like how they have the extra dumptruck for carrying a massive grey 3 prong to 2 prong converter for those 'just in case' times.

Some strange perceptions of what is and isn't "green."

Practically the same issue comes up in Daniel Rutter's "Dan's Data" letters column (see the third to last letter): http://www.dansdata.com/danletters177.htm

Summary:

1. Efficiency: a fossil fuel power plant is running at its max efficiency all the time; in-vehicle engines are starting up, idling, accelerating, etc. and are generally wasteful as anything.

2. Pollution: a fossil fuel power plant has much higher emissions standards than any gas engine; tall smokestacks and fly ash collectors reduce impact to much less than car exhaust.

My own comments:

Regardless of what our principal energy supply sources are NOW, grid electrical consumption (as opposed to local fossil fuel consumption) leaves the energy landscape flexible. Improvements to the supply side would then have a much greater effect; if this thing was gas powered, a new clean power plant wouldn't make a difference in how it pollutes; but if it's electric, its environmental impact is under direct control of things like governmental energy policies.

Obviously there are even better "ideal" options, like if it was locally powered by something renewable like the sun or wind (probably impossible for a monster like this), and there are chemical issues for anything that runs on rechargeable batteries (although I somehow doubt this does), but claiming that this thing would be cleaner if it was gas powered doesn't seem to make any sense.

-GLL

did yall see the preview? transformers is comin out! Woot! Megazord!

O. Your. God.

Oh man that bulldozer was owned!!!

I an really curious about the backstory with the 'dozer.

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! It's Truckasaurus Vs. Bagger

just hide the plans from our future robotic overlords and all will be fine - until they master replication that is. Shit. were. doomed.

I have been to several of these mines in eastern Germany. It is min(e)d boggling to see them in person. There are stories of entire villages being ground up and tossed aside by these during desperate communist times.

icebox500: Except this one is from a mine just north of Wiesbaden, and firmly in the old West Germany sector.

cortot20: The Bagger 289 exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288 . Quote: The Bagger 288 has a near-identical sister vehicle, the Bagger 289.

Glebec, you make some good points and you may be right in this case, but I was speaking from a pure thermodynaic point of view (energy lost converting to and from electric and during transport, coal being less efficent than oil). Also, power plants do not run all the time. They are turned on and off based on load. In Texas, this is done by a crazy computerized system that will some times turn an entire generator on for just a few seconds which is clearly not very green.

Dude, didn't *hungarians* build the jet engine fire extinguisher?

:/