doctorGONZO
100 W
John in CR said:DrG,
Stop wasting our time with your inability to grasp the physics of why the craft works. While the mechanics to take advantage of the wind are different, It's really no different from the airlines' use of high altitude winds for an airliner to fly faster than the thrust of the engines would dictate simply by traveling with the wind.
Have you ever seen those hidden picture stereogram images. This is similar in that you simply have to look at it from a different perspective to come into focus. I don't really like using sails and angles of attack to explain this propeller driven system, but your stubborn position is really no different than trying to say that no sail craft can travel faster than the wind. Land and ice yachts demonstrate how it's possible to travel many times the speed of the wind. The speed limitation is friction, mostly in the form of wind resistance. This craft simply takes a novel approach to enable it's "sails", the prop blades, to harvest the wind energy exactly like a land or ice yacht, while the vehicle travels directly downwind. If it weren't for friction, primarily in the form of wind resistance for the spinning blades, the vehicle's top speed would be extreme.
MrJ, It is true that I am wasting my time round here. Because there is zero possibility that any massive body can be propelled solely by the wind, SOLELY DIRECTLY DOWNWIND, without some method of energy storage or the application of additional energy from some outside source. During acceleration of the body from a standing start, there is a moment when the speed of the body is exactly equal to the speed of the propelling body (the molecules of the air making up the wind). At that moment there is no longer any way that wind energy can be transferred to the body. And I have a severely limited interest in any boondoggle that cannot show the way to any new way to capture energy.
Your Red Herring analogy to tacking to go faster than wind VELOCITY is a lie in terms of the stated criteria of BEING PROPELLED BY ONLY THE WIND and MOVING ONLY DIRECTLY DOWNWIND. Any experienced sailor, as also any reference book or internet reference, will tell you that the closer the boat moves to being exactly parallel, or, antiparallel, to the wind, the lesser the VELOCITY MADE GOOD becomes, until an exact agreement with wind direction gives no speed greater than wind speed.
Your erudite self is warmly invited to explain EXACTLY, IN AMPLE DETAIL, how a wind molecule having zero velocity relative to the car body, can possibly interact with the prop so as to push upon the prop resulting in a thrust FORWARD to push the car one jeezillionth of a Mile Per Hour faster than wind speed. So far, all that you or anybody else has done, is spew word salad at me but NO SPECIFIC DETAILS. No specific geometry. No specific maths. No specific logic.
Or, if your erudite self takes the tack to say that the road gives up energy by pushing upon the wheels hence putting energy into the chain hence turning the prop faster, you are warmly invited to explain EXACTLY, IN AMPLE DETAIL, how the road can avoid being slowed relative to the car whilst it is losing energy to the wheels. If the road is slowed relative to the car, by relativistic reciprocity, the car must be slowed relative to the road! So, you all say that simultaneously the car slows whilst the car is accelerating, by sucking energy out of the road!
Beam me up Scotty, there is no sign of intelligence down here.
PS I have done a good first blush analysis of the energy available from sucking momentum out of the road, the drivetrain friction losses, the prop (in)efficiency, and a comprehensive summation of car parasite drag. Sorry, Charlie, there is NOT a surplus of energy at 1.0 windspeed to accelerate the car faster. It was interesting to ferret out the probable error source in the original 60s paper. It is the typical kind of mistake that someone who has had a rather sheltered life inside reading books rather than ever getting his hands dirty and sweaty doing real work would make. I fully expect that neither you or any of the other dreamers will figure out where the error is. But, if I tell you what it is, you will immediately slap yourself upside your head and say "Gorsh, Mickey, I could of thunk of that!"
PPS What kind of HEAVY BRAKES did the car have?
Drum brakes off of a 59 Chrysler Imperial?
Disk brakes off of a 73 TransAm?
Hub motors controlled to act as regenerative brakes?