Mike Koehler of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, has made it his life dream (having already gotten the ‘married with three children’ part of the dream out of the way) to build a full-size and fully functional AT-AT walker. Theeeeeeen stomp the shit out of the woods behind his house looking for leprechaun gold.

AT-AT for America is a crowdsourced project that aims to build, no fooling, a fully fuctional, full-scale model of an AT-AT Imperial Walker from The Empire Strikes Back. They’ve gotten preliminary approval from Kickstarter to make it happen, so it sounds like they just need some funding plus a bunch of engineers from Kuat Drive Yards, or failing that, an alliance of Earthlings with a level of mechanical expertise equaled only by their hardcore sci-fi geekiness.

In case you were wondering, an AT-AT stands nearly 75 feet tall and has a maximum speed of just under 40 mph (!). It can carry 1 ton of cargo, or up to 40 Imperial Storm Troopers.

40MPH?! Yeah f***ing right! I’m surprised those shrinky-dink legs even hold the things up, let alone gallop. No, I say you shoot for 20MPH. Oooooooor half a mill in donations before fleeing the country.

Hit the jump for the entire Battle of Hoth scene from the movie (to stick it to the man for a bit) with no 40MPH AT-ATs and a link to the official project page.

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AT-AT For America: One Man’s Plan To Build A Full-Scale, Functional Imperial Walker