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American Solar Challenge Completed: Blue Went
s20451 writes: "The American Solar Challenge solar car race wrapped up yesterday in Claremont, California, with the University of Michigan winning.
According to this article in the Globe and Mail, two Canadian teams finished in the top five: Waterloo and Queen's, finishing third and fourth, respectively. Go Canada!"
One would think that the intelligent players would already be expanding their business beyond the dead dinosaur fuel industry into alternative fuels. There's no reason the big fuel makers can't also dominate the production of alternative energy as well. If anything, they're the ones who have the know-how and the backing to implement such a massive widescale infrastructure upgrade. Alternative cars will NOT be feasible for Joe Average Consumer until there is a fueling station on everything block like there is today with gasoline and it takes less than 5 minutes to refuel. That means no sitting overnight while you tricklecharge your 60HP Rice Rocketmobile and that means not having to drive 30 miles away to fuel up your eco-geek car because they're the only ones that sell Absurdoline on your metropolitan area.
...people would realize that this post was no where near insightful.
We read a post where people are spending lots of money to expand this and other forms of clean energy. The winning car was $1M with grants from major oil companies and car componies! Thats a lot of money for a car that will only take a one way trip and will never break 2k miles.
And then he writes as if speaking to a world ignorant to this he wishes people would relize we could expand on this and other forms of clean energy... And gets moderated up for it?
Many other well informed posts actually discuss the practicality and requirements of this and other clean technologies. They are informative, insightful and educational. In the interest of real science Read them, this is mearly a fool looking for a paradise.
~^~~^~^^~~^
And I suppose you don't notice Dick Cheney's hand up Bush's ass.
Bush is the goatse.cx guy?
:)Trolling is a art,
I bet most of that went into top-of-the-line solar cells.
The good thing about races like this is that effort is put into designing the very best cells possible, and a side effect is (eventually, we hope) better solar cells available to the community market.
A major advance was made (the so called 'green cells' in Australia for the Australian solar challenge a few years ago).
A good resource on PV cells (notice my Australian bias!) is http://acre.murdoch.edu.au/refiles/pv/text.html.
I went to Waterloo, and their solar car project is one of the babies of the university. I'm very proud to hear of both Waterloo and Queen's doin' the top 5! I did a 94% in highschool, and Waterloo kicked the crap out of me (Electrical engineering.) It's rumoured that the U of Waterloo's engineering program is one of the top 5 egineering programs (electrical, computer, systems) in north america .. I definately know it's the hardest in Canada.
:)
So go Canada!
"Old man yells at systemd"
Is the really a test of engineering acumen, or more of a test of who has the most money to throw at the problem?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Here's a vignette from one of her updates:
Apparently, they were the loudest gang out there. Go Team! Now it's prep time for the World Solar Challenge.
I'm sick of you damn crazy hippies complaining all the damn time.
If you hate the oil companies, stop using their products.
It *is* possible to live without them. I believe about 60% of the planet does.
And if you don't want to live in the stone age, do your best to avoid the most obvious oil company products: plastics and gasoline. Use an electric car. Don't use a straw or a plastic lid when you eat fast food. Don't buy polyester clothes (yeah, you're not a pimp anyway). Heat your house with solar panels (which a good friend of mine has been doing since 1989 or so). Stop using certain paints and other coatings on your car/house/toenails. Power your house with energy from a company that uses hydroelectric or nuclear (deregulation can be ok if you're outside California), etc.
If the linux revolution has shown us *anything* it should be that we CAN AVOID THE CORPORATE BEHEMOTHS!
Chicago to California is a decent road trip
On another note
On sunny days, and on flat stretches of highway, the cars hit speeds as high as 110 kilometres an hour.
which is starting to be respectable.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
World Solar Challenge is the probably the longest solar car race. It started about 13 years ago. It is scheduled for Nov or Oct this year.
Pretty cool, now if they can only get it so that you could power an SUV...
Buy Hex-Rated Stuff, fight the DMCA!
It's not the evil corporations, it's the Stonecutters, dammit!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do! We do!
...people would relize we could expand on this and other forms of clean energy instead of spending money to burn coal.