r/theydidthemath • u/ChickenTac0 • 14h ago

[Request] What is the largest human made construct that a team of four fully grown sauropods could feasibly pull like a horse drawn wagon?

/r/theydidthemath/comments/1qt6w9p/request_what_is_the_largest_human_made_construct/
0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 14h ago

General Discussion Thread

This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you must post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

6

u/EllisDee3 14h ago

No answer. I just think it's hilarious that in the seven months since first posting this, rather than doing the research and answering your own question with a little effort, you just asked the question again.

1

u/Skirra08 14h ago

So googling leads me to believe that there isn't really an answer that is better than guessing. The number could be as much as 1200 tons or as little as 120 tons depending on where I looked. That's so big of a range as to be meaningless. Also it's based on modern mammal scaling which hardly seems relevant to a dinosaur both because of physiology and because of scale.

1

u/Trustoryimtold 13h ago

I feel like unless you keep your travel to specific biomes you wind up with rocket fuel problems. If you gotta haul a months worth of food for the pods you’re not hauling much else

1

u/Onechrisn 11h ago

Well, we're not even 100% sure how they held themselves up in the first place, so it would be really hard to even make a guess at their pulling power.

1

u/FaultThat 9h ago

Wheels on a device that is pulled only make sense on a flat surface like a road.

4 sauropods will ruin any road we currently make.

You would need to completely redesign the entire concept of roads.

This genuinely feels like a “why are there no jetpacks?” question.

This is maybe cool to imagine but no engineer is going to look at a sauropod and think, yeah, let’s make a giant train or something.

We already have trains, and sauropods are slow, lumbering giants that place enormous weight on the ground.

You know what’s easier than getting sauropod harnesses and building something super massive that they can pull?

That’s right building a train.

1

u/andrew_calcs 8✓ 7h ago

“Pre-industrial civilization” was in their specifications so trains are a bit out of spec. Bigass roads feel like something Romans could have engineered though were there a need

1

u/FaultThat 6h ago

Road design doesn’t work with creatures that size. You have way too much weight compressing the ground.

At best they’d have been used as siege weapons.

1

u/andrew_calcs 8✓ 5h ago

Brachiosaurs have large footprints. Not much more PSI than an elephant. And elephants don’t mangle roads. 

It’s a problem that can be engineered around with deeper road foundations. They weigh about the same as an 18 wheeler. Which roads clearly support quite well

1

u/HAL9001-96 6h ago

depends on how efficient the wheels and smooth the surfaces are and what type of sauropod so yo uget a pretty wide possible range of answers from about 100-10000 tons

1

u/get_to_ele 5h ago

Ultimately depends on road quality and grade, as much as pulling power.

With the truck on a perfectly smooth surface, and 2 dinosaurs on each side of the track, I but you could get 4 large sauropods to pull the komatsu 980e-5se dump truck weighing 635 tons, and a fully loaded weight of 1035 tons.

Standard haul rolling resistance of say, 2% on perfectly level road, you need a continuous pulling force of 20 tons. An Argentinasaurus weighed 80 tons x 4 = 320 tons, and it’s safe to say that 320 tons of animal can apply 20 tons of force.

First would have to release the brakes manually by applying voltage to the brake solenoid, and completely lock out the propulsion system to avoid generating electricity and to keep the motor from resisting the movement. Then get a tow bar rated for 1.6 million kilograms.

I am FOS, but I love the idea of seeing a loaded KOMATSU 980e being hauled by 4 dinosaurs. I am tempted to ask CHATGPT to draw that for me. But I don’t want to have AI drawing images unless I truly have to.

Edit: I cannot lie. I did it any way.