Slashdot Mirror
Wind-Powered "Greenbird" Seeks Land-Speed Record
Mike writes with this tantalizing excerpt: "Dale Vince of Ecotricity and engineer Richard Jenkins are setting up on the salt flats at Lake LeFroy in Western Australia, hoping to catch the right breeze and break the wind-powered landspeed record of 116.7 mph in their sleek wind-powered vehicle, the Greenbird."
I hate to do this but...
http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/search.pl?query=sailing%20faster%20than%20wind%20speed
>;-)
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Well, if you've ever seen the Coyote and Road Runner Cartoons, you'll know that the crew on the boat blows really hard into the sail, thereby creating a much larger velocity associated with the relative wind, increasing the "lift" of the sails and thereby propelling the craft faster than the wind. Now, if you place a large amount of ACME TNT behind the craft, the crew, out of shear terror, will blow even harder and thereby adding a few more knots to said velocity of the craft.
They use a rocket engine. The fuel was derived from oil, which used to be dinosaurs. The dinosaurs used the wind (or "air") to breath, and the plants (and other dinosaurs) they used for fuel also used the wind in a similar fashion. Thus, the vehicle is technically powered by wind.
See? This green stuff is easy if you just put a little thought into it.
Really stupid ;-)
Just kidding, of course. The thing does have a sail, but it might not be obvious to the uninitiated. It's that thing that looks like a vertical airplane wing. As you may be aware, the sail on a modern sailboat functions much like the wing of an airplane. The rigid sail on this landsailer is actually much more efficient than a cloth sail.
This ain't rocket surgery.
For more information, people can go to the Greenbird web page or to the relevant wikipedia page.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I wonder why that design hasn't become more popular. I suspect it was made illegal for racing.
Rigid sails are extremely inflexible compared to their soft counterparts. Every wind needs its own sail shape; different wind speeds, directions, wave heights, etc. all require different shapes. There is no rule against rigid sails, it's just too hard to bring dozens of huge metal foils on a boat.
Quantum hacker.