building the impossible: the roman war machine. part 2

[alteredchild]

also, they're called skeins, not "torsion springs"

[alteredchild]

HOW IN ANYWAY IS THIS IMPOSSIBLE?

[oxman0313]

For smart people you would think they would know the difference from a catapult and a Batista

[coopernwo007]

dude a friggin high schooler can build a roman catapult AND a ballista. My friend can do it.....and HE DID..... \he showed me it when i went over to his house

[minxel16]

you know sinew would actually be more beneficial since it is stronger than steel for mass

[TheMongoPKer]

@minxel16 And I'm pretty sure the romans actually used sinew.

[minxel16]

@TheMongoPKer definetely-a lot more advance physically than roman iron

[avatardimestesso]

Building the impossible...

Yes...Indeed, it is really impossible that the Romans would use their weapons for polyester ... The Kevlar armor when built? Please, if you can not build it, go ahead and be honest ... at least with yourself. Otherwise one day you want ... ricostruireuna pyramid using a Caterpillar to bring the stone blocks.

[GreatDukeGorgon]

Polyester??? WTF!!! Romans has not such materials. If U want to build a Roman Ballista (NOT a fudgin'CATAPULT) U have to use what They used... Everybody is capable to build an ancient war machine with actual stuff... Looooosers...

[palicsito]

poor tree

[xxJasterMereelxx]

Honestly, I don't doubt the recording of the capabilities of these machines, I am more inclined to disbelieve the dimensions and the design features recorded in the ancient texts. This is for one simple reason; these things would clearly have been military secrets, and the Romans certainly weren't stupid enough to record how they actually did it so that their enemies could just reproduce the damned things.

[ZundappFan]

OMGGGGG that is NOT a catapult.. it a ballista!, and the smaller one's are calld scorpions.. But certanly not a catapult. And it's originally greek (400 b.C.), and the romans stole the idea, and improved it.

[hellenion]

You're absolutely right, catapults may use the same torsion bundles, but they have a single arm firing upward, or two +/-horizontal arms forcing a third arm upwards.

ballista's, on the other hand, use two arms to pull forward a rope fixed between them.

[300warrior300]

no, it is a catapult coz it fires rocks, it's a ballista if it fires javlins

[biggieboy2510]

@ZundappFan

that's what they always did: steal and improve :)

[PompeusMagnus]

@ZundappFan Yup i wrote exactly what you said in the part 1 lol. And the the greek version is a Oxibeles, and a smaller version maybe more famous Gastraphetes...

[IchigoCandy1]

@ZundappFan Actually, scorpios are not small ballistas. They follow similar principles, but their uses are different.

[x69camaross69x]

they werent even hitting targets @ the end it was fake, the one on fire that suposedly hit the haystack? Bullshit, the fire starts at the bottom of the stack feet away from the spear. Fake crap...

[totalwarandwow]

That was the best video !!!!!!!

[Deadman1709]

I found another guy commenting on the first part of the vid say this: "I can imagine people in 4000AD build our artillery today and it fires half a mile. Ours fire over 15 miles".

GREAT

[magemager0]

wow...he's not sure how to get 20 people FLOATING in mid-air.... i think that isnt possible, and im pretty sure that guy knows that

[TheOriginalEntz]

This engineer guy is quite an idiot... he thinks of the problem not the solution. Instead of having "20 men floating in the air" you could just attach a rope to the levers and have them pull from the ground. I wouldn't even dream of putting 20 men in the air. This guy is silly.

[88Thyra]

about the sinew.

go to a bycycle shop. get flat inner tubes.

consult your local rope maker.

I did it myself.

F#*n ! awesome.

[whyunknown]

hahaha

I fell off the chair when he said it wasn't 400 but 112

[CrackoGold]

Its because they are in the bronze age.:)

[Skytroop]

The Romans did not use steel torsion washers but rather BRONZE ones.

[magemager0]

yeah but they arent going to use bronze now when steel is available, and thats what was commonly available to the romans back 2000 years ago

[hairyballzonna]

In these videos, i am sad to say, i see a lot of professional scientists but no one with a nice solid chunk of common sense. These people are brilliant and i appreciate their efforts, but sometimes there are simple solutions to complicated problems.

[erickgpt]

then what's the solution of yours? To use your pubic hair as substitute to a plant fiber rope?

[hairyballzonna]

And why not? Orginal rope was made from human hair during wartimes.

[mig15fan]

100% agree, may be romans had other ways to sinply solve that tricky steps

[daydaysince1986]

why don't you build one with readily available materials, then worry about historical accuracy later on a different machine

[magemager0]

i know seriously

[plenty2see]

these fuctards are out of their depth, the Romans superior technology has been lost, these rote learning modernday twits are in denial their book read proffessor knows best knowledge is as limited as their thinking.

[Bugstomper2]

They must be doing something wrong, because the performance of the Ballista is rather dismal. Or I've seen to many surface to air missles launch?

[jlasud]

i think romans didn't wind up the spring when he ballista was fully assembled,but when the springs and arms were on the ground,and after that they put the hole thing on the platform.

[Darius92TheGreat]

In the video one guy of the team

sayd that he found a "document" where he read that the weapon could fire 120 meters and not 400 as Vitruvious says.

I think it's bull shit, it's only a pretext because they aren't able to fire it more than 90 meters without breaking it.

It's impossible that during the siege of jerusalem this ballista was stationed within 120 meters from the walls of the city.

It would be a favourite target for the jews

archers. What do you think about this??

[Dhaune]

probably the production told him he should say that so they wouldnt get hurt, and a roman catapult could fire over 519 meters

[aseglkj]

@Darius92TheGreat I concur and I think the random britfags they chose to design this are just a bunch of lamers and losers. Just look at these pricks. They're so lame they couldn't design a working baseball bat.

[unapologeticmind]

@Darius92TheGreat True, this guy said himself that the figure of 120m is from an earlier Greek text which means that they simply chose to disregard any improvements made by the Romans which Vitruvius' figure of 400m suggests. The Romans improved on other Greek weapons and it's very likely that they also improved the range of the ballista considering how much they depended on succesful siege engines in their conquests...

[HeroSK86]

Excellent video tahnks alot for sharing ;)