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A landship is a large vehicle that travels on land, as opposed to on water, air, or in space. Because of their large size, their use on land is seen as impractical due to terrain obstacles, and soft ground that cannot support such large weight. Such problems are non-existent on water and in space. However, vehicles similar to the concept of landships have appeared in various forms in the real world, and more commonly in works of fiction. Compare with trams and trains, which are large segmented land vehicles (or groups of vehicles) that use rail tracks, road trains, which are large land vehicles that use roadways, articulated buses (another road vehicle type), amphibious vehicles, which can drive on land and on water, and hovercraft, which travel above the surface of both masses on an air cushion. ==History== In the First World War, the British proposed building "landships" - large (1000 tons or more) vehicles capable of crossing the trench systems of the Western Front, and the Landships Committee was formed to investigate these ideas for equipping the Naval Brigades. The impracticality of building such large vehicles and the needs of the British Army for more numerous smaller vehicles led to the much smaller first tanks. However, until after the Second World War, the British would continue to think of tanks in naval terms; e.g., the Cruiser tank operating like the ships of the same name. Quickly proving impractical were the battleship-equivalent heavy tanks, such as the multi-turreted Vickers A1E1 Independent and its assorted offspring. The Russian Tsar Tank, a super-heavy tricycle gun platform, was scrapped after a prototype proved difficult to maneuver and the vehicle was deemed vulnerable to ground fire. A Super Heavy Tank and a Railway Gun, the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte and Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster, were the closest things ever to be designed that approaches the popular fictional conception of a landship. The Maus was the only super-heavy tank built by the Germans in WWII. Bucket-wheel excavators are the biggest (externally powered) land vehicles ever built by man, but do not fit into the popular conception of a landship. The largest self-powered land vehicles are NASA's two crawler-transporters. The Mountbatten class hovercraft is the largest civilian hovercraft ever built, and is capable of traveling over relatively smooth land in addition to water. It is capable of carrying 418 people, and 60 cars. Hovercraft are also used by the military for their amphibious landing capabilities. They are commonly referred to as air-cushioned landing craft. These vehicles are usually very large compared to other land vehicles, and commonly carry other land vehicles like jeeps and armored vehicles. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「landship」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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