Yes but the requirements of a space bourn vehicle and a tank are very different.
The identical Voyager spacecraft are three-axis stabilized systems that use celestial or gyro referenced attitude control to maintain pointing of the high-gain antennas toward Earth. The prime mission science payload consisted of 10 instruments (11 investigations including radio science).
voyager.jpl.nasa.gov
Voyager is run off of 230 watts. That will not run my microwave let alone a 120,000lb tank. Can you effectively scale that to the power requirements of a tank, keep it economical, avoid the hazards when it is disabled or destroyed and still fit it in the very small form factor of a land vehicle?
As far as I know, you cant. I am unsure you can make electric work either considering the power requirements and weight a battery would add to meet them. My suspicion is that the time is as far off as it is because nuclear is not an option and EV needs a new battery technology which they may very well be researching right this minute in the military. We know the civilian side is desperately looking for a battery solution as well.
EV's are a nice idea but currently nothing more than a niche market because the limitations on battery capacity, weight and lifespan. When that changes there will not be a trickle from ICE to EV, it will be a flood. ICE engines will end very fast the moment tech makes EV's an overall better economical option.
The first tanks had a speed of advance of about four miles an hour. That is walking speed. You could literally walk away and outrun the First tanks. Their armor was barely enough to stop pistol bullets. Many medium machine guns could penetrate the armor.
I am sure some naysayer stood there and said Tanks would never replace horse Calvary. Horses were faster. You could forage in the countryside. And Horses didn’t break down as often as Tanks.
Airplanes in warfare were dismissed or many of the same reasons. And I mean moments before the first world war started.
As Ukraine has shown. Tanks are not the weapon they once were. They are too vulnerable to cheap man portable missiles. So the era of the Tank is over. Even the advocates admit they are approaching the end of their usefulness.
As Battleships were shoved aside by aircraft carriers, tanks are being shoved aside by fast armored personnel carriers. Or Infantry fighting vehicles. A man with a radio can call in an artillery barrage that wipes out a company of tanks. A platoon with anti-tank missiles makes the tanks funeral pyres cheaply.
So arguing that energy systems we are talking about today won’t power tanks in a generation is based upon the belief that everything is going to remain the same.
My point on all of it is that we have the foundation. The same foundation the First tanks presented. A window into the future. A future where Tanks and trucks would replace horses for mobility. A future where airplanes would replace Battleships as the weapon to win wars.
Could the People of the Second World War imagine a future where Drones would determine the battlefield? Where submarines would use Nuclear Power to stay underwater for weeks or months without any problems?
Progress is like that. The B-17 Bomber was a technological marvel. Able to carry up to 17,500 pounds of bombs. It was amazing. For the era. In the 1950’s the Navy started to work on the A-6 Intruder. It was able to carry 18,000 pounds of bombs. A generation after the first flight of the worlds first heavy bomber, and a Carrier Based Medium Attack Plane could carry more and better ordinance.
A generation ago the standard vehicle was the HMMPWV. Or Hummer. Who would have thought it would be shown as obsolete in such a horrific manner? Even slapping bolt on armor didn’t work.
Every year battery technology is improving. Seven years ago I built a solar powered battery back up to use in case of emergencies. Today everything in it is already obsolete and as I look to replace components I find they are radically different. The glass battery is going to be replaced by a LiFe battery. Improved and safer than the traditional Lithium batteries we are all well aware of.
I built that system to run a thermoelectric cooler in case of power outage that lasted for more than a few hours. Like when a Hurricane comes through and turns power lines into spaghetti.
The system was tested and it worked. Granted all I ever used it for in the real world was picking up groceries on the way to work and letting the battery power the cooler all night to keep the cold stuff fresh. But it worked exactly as I intended.
It is difficult, dangerous, and expensive to transport fuel. It is a vulnerable situation which cost us a lot of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we armor the fuel trucks they are even heavier and can carry less fuel while burning even more.
en.m.wikipedia.org
evocharge.com
www.aei.org
www.forbes.com
www.consumeraffairs.com
