The Inventor of the Ascender May Be A Real Life Bruce Wayne

Posted by NOVAscienceNOW_Motherboard on Tuesday, Mar 30, 2010

Nate Ball, mechanical engineer, MIT grad, and co-founder of Atlas Devices, just might be the masked crusader. As a student at MIT, Nate entered a design competition for products that would help soldiers survive in the battlefield. His team’s idea was to create a Batman-like device called the Ascender that would enable soldiers to scale ropes at high speeds simply by pushing a trigger.

After months of designing and testing in the lab, Ball and company were ready to see the Ascender in action. One night at 4 AM, they took it to a stairwell on campus, and tied 8 water jugs to a rope and the device. At ten feet per second, the jugs shot toward the ceiling, until the fixture broke and the whole thing came crashing down. Nate had never been happier to see something fail — he happily spent the rest of the night working to perfect his creation.

The secret to Nate’s success, he explains in this episode of Secret Life of Scientists: he isn’t afraid to make mistakes – to really put the error in ‘trial and error’ – in order to learn. Shortly after the water jug incident, the Ascender was completed, and rescues, battlefield ops, and possibly crime-fighting will never be the same. We know you’re Batman, Nate. Admit it.