Wow, you definitely demonstrated how much classier and less arrogant you are then Michigan.
Based on your discussion of the results, I'm assuming you're from Aurora.
Michigan catches a lot of hell for a) having a lot of sponsors and b) not letting people in our garage at the track and c) wanting to win. Strangely, Nuon, for whom all 3 things are true (they show up for an afternoon to run about 3 practice laps then leave rather than staying with the other teams, to prevent teams from seeing their car more than necessary), never gets bashed. And I can't blame them really, it's ridiculously hectic at the track and having lots of strangers in and out of your garage risks damage to your ridiculously expensive vehicle you spent two years to build, and also distracts you from making sure your car is safe and ready to roll. It's not a product of arrogance or meanness, just concern to maintain a tight ship and avoid unfortunate accidents.
We get all our stuff by working our butts off with sponsors and having a well organized business team - it's not like money fairies come along and drop dollar bills from the sky because we're special or something. Apparently "working hard, being successful, and being proud of it" = arrogance. And that big trailer with a machine shop Michigan gets called arrogant for having has helped other teams get back on the road a lot more often than it's been needed for the Michigan car. Whatever, I guess teams in every sport just need someone to hate.
You're right that it's up to the car behind to maintain a safe distance, which is why Stanford cannot be legally faulted. But I challenge you to prove that you always maintain a completely safe stopping distance, all the time, either in your solar car or in your personal vehicle. Bad things happen outside of your control sometimes. The fact is that a lot of accidents are avoided by luck, even if all the rules are followed to the letter. We tried to maintain a greater distance in the race but had to pull tighter in traffic to avoid gawkers and agressive drivers trying to weave in and out of our caravan, which seemed a lot more dangerous at the time (we rear ended our lead once, but suffered at least a dozen very, very near misses when drivers cut in without leaving enough room between their rear bumper and the front of the solar car, or when they would cut in, reducing our safe stopping distance, and then unexpectedly slow down). It's hardly as simple as you try to make it sound. The accident was the result of a series of unfortunate circumstances and mistakes by both teams involved. If Michigan had more separation, maybe they would have been fine, and maybe they would have ended up rear-ending a civilian who thought that big cushy spot between our cars looked too tempting, safe stopping distance be damned. Who can really know? Of course, none of that excuses the race officials from blatantly failing to follow their own safety rules due to a poorly organized event start that endangered the lives of the competitors.
The WSC could seriously learn a lot from the NASC in terms of safely and effectively organizing an event. Rules are well defined before hand (not made up during the race, a la the 2007 WSC stage stop), starts are well organized to run smoothly, safety requirements on all parts of the vehicle are stricter, and regulations are enforced by the book (e.g. egress in x seconds MEANS egress in x seconds). And I say that in good faith - such organization would really improve the safety and fairness of the sport. Unfortunately, speaking of arrogance, the WSC seems to like to pretend that NASC doesn't exist, and how dare those bloody Yanks think they can suggest anything to us.
This is clearly rubbish, everyone knows it's impossible to control the weather. The satellite dish simply surrounds the solar car in a subspace bubble connecting to a parallel universe where it's always sunny.
Interestingly, in the parallel universe, Michigan is actually an underdog team of ragtag remedial school ethnic stereotypes led by teacher/team mom Halle Berry and a grumpy but lovable Jim Belushi. This is actually better than it sounds, because in the parallel universe, Jim inexplicably ended up being the funny brother.
I guess I'm still not sure what about Michigan looks bad at first glance, especially compared to other teams. You're correct that composite analysis is difficult, which is why Michigan worked with their sponsors to learn tools and methods that allow them to optimize the carbon layup schedule and bulkhead layout with a high degree of confidence. The same is true of all of the mechanical components. Michigan can design to a lower safety margin because their uncertainties are made much lower by the analysis and testing. This makes their car safer, but faster at the same time. Also helping this is the high degree of parts quality due to Michigan's access to sponsors with extremely good CNC machining capabilities.
I'm sorry to hear that you felt brushed off by some of the Michigan team, but keep in mind that scrutineering is extremely serious and ridiculously stressful - it's part of the competition, not a PR event. In Australia we usually tried to designate a couple people to talk to visitors (and keep them from touching/leaning way over/sitting on fragile bits), but this isn't always possible. When you're worried about your car (and 2 years of your life) not qualifying, you're not going to be terribly focused on answering a stranger's questions about your car. Even when you're not working, you're probably exhausted as hell. These aren't celebrities used to the spot light, they're tired, dirty, stressed-out college students doing one of the most difficult things in their life. You would probably get a similar result from Minnesota if you asked technical questions about their solar array while they were concentrating on fixing their power trackers and getting moving again. Even the best can have stress and emotion get to them - some members of the Minnesota team, who you commend justifiably for their sportsmanship, said some downright nasty things about the Michigan team in their local paper after the '05 race. I hope you can be understanding, just as you would be if Tiger Woods was a little brusque with you if asked him for swing tips while he was on the practice tee before the Masters.
Also, the need for secrecy comes from the desire of the top teams to get as much technical info about their competitors as possible, which they will then use to improve their strategy and gain a competitive edge. Little things like this can make or break a close race. There was a constant stream of competitors asking extremely probing questions about the car in Australia. On at least one occasion there was even one competitor intentionally distracting a Michigan team member so that their other teammate could get close up photos of parts of technical parts of the car we'd explicitly requested them not to photograph. On another occasion we actually had students from MIT trying to pry tech details from team members at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. These sorts of things make you a little antsy, and its tough to strike a balance between helping out the little guy and not giving away your competitive edge.
I'm sure the Michigan team will be a lot happier to speak with you after the race and the stress are over. We'll be happy to talk about Continuum once its safely retired and no one is out to get it;)
From what I heard from the team, the race officials were willing to allow Michelins if independent testing confirmed their safety. Michigan was able to arrange this testing, and was thus allowed to use the tires. Apparently Michigan's approval extends to the other teams as well, but many did not bring any because the testing could not be completed until the last minute. Michigan was giving away some lightly used Michelins to keep Durham running.
Where exactly has Michigan compromised safety for performance? More importantly, where have they done so in a way that 99% of other teams do not? What I mean by this last bit is that these things are inherently less safe than a passenger car - a truly safe solar car would be a Mercedes with solar cells duct taped on top, but that would make for a pretty lame competition. A 600 pound carbon fiber solar car will never be safe against a head on with a Hummer. Michigan makes up for this by designing in crush zones, titanium roll cages, and multi point harnesses, and driving in a caravan with thousands of miles of practice until it's second nature. I already answered your remark about the brakes. At any rate, Michigan's driver fared a heck of a lot better than a motorcycle rider would have in a similar crash as the 2007 incident.
And really all the bashes against Michigan's misplaced priorities and bad sportsmanship are pretty low. Until you can point out some actual evidence of Michigan's reckless engineering, I'm forced to conclude that you're merely out to flame a group of people dedicated to their sport who I'm assuming must have beaten your preferred squad or run over your dog or something.
Thanks Hal, that's about right (though to be fair, Michigan probably has more logistical support than Nuon these days, although Nuon still had the advantage of a huge cash sponsorship early in the project that allowed them to snap up the world's best solar cells before Michigan had any cash for a down payment - the teams would have likely been well matched without Michigan's accident).
Regarding the crash, Stanford was indeed ruled not legally culpable - but whether they were at *fault* or not, their support cars' panic brake in congested traffic certainly helped *cause* the accident. I think it was an unfortunate accident and Stanford did nothing malicious, but legal fault and cause are two different things - and the distinction is understandably blurry for someone who has to look at two years of their work smashed up on the side of the road. Driving in city traffic(solar races are on open roads) is a dangerous balance for solar car teams - drive close to your lead and chase cars, and you're protected from other drivers but you might collide with your own vehicles if they are forced to stop fast. But you can't really leave a truly "safe" stopping distance, because you end up with aggressive drivers cutting between your lead car and your solar car, an extremely dangerous situation. Of course this happens to everyday drivers as well - try maintaining the recommended safe interval between you and the car in front of you in rush hour traffic, and think about how often you avoiding an accident relies on the person in front of you being conscious enough to not slam on their brakes.
Regarding solar car brakes, Michigan does indeed use heavy duty downhill mountain bike disk brakes (which many if not most teams use). Why don't we use something more powerful? Because the brakes we have are plenty strong enough to immediately lock the wheels at speed - that is, our brakes supply more stopping power than our tires (low rolling resistance tires that are the same or equivalent to what every team uses) can apply to the road, so anything more powerful is just dead weight (which would ironically make us stop slower).
At any rate, any fault for the accident probably lies with the race officials, who violated their own safety rules by allowing the Stanford solar car to start the race without its support vehicles due to a huge snafu in the support vehicle staging area. This is a hugely dangerous situation, and there is supposed to be a system in place to prevent and correct this, but the rules were not followed. Had they been, Stanford wouldn't have had to come to a screeching near halt in morning traffic directly in front of the Michigan caravan while they were trying to rendezvous with their solar car.
Michigan's Continuum (despite its bad luck streak) is one of the safest solar cars in the competition, and rolled to the start line in Australia with literally thousands of miles of open road testing. Anyone who thinks otherwise might want to ask WSC second place finisher Umicore, who had a wickedly fast car but a wobbly steering system that barely kept them on the road. Or Twente, who also had a great car but suffered continual suspension failures. Or Stanford, who actually flipped their car a day or two after the Michigan incident (I think that one was due to a blown tire which led to a road departure followed by a suspension collapse). Or Aurora, whose 2005 car burned to a crisp due to a battery fire. Of course, the worst offender, although they've thankfully not had an accident, may well be 4 time WSC winner Nuon, who in 2005 had a driver's canopy so tiny that their driver had only a vestigial roll bar and could not even wear a helmet. Had they suffered Stanford's crash (which the Stanford driver walked away from, thank God), their driver would be dead. That, my friends, is sacrificing safety for speed.
As for Michigan's sportsmanship, apparently innovation gets called "gaming the race framework". Continuum had a solar concentration system on their car was one of only two successful implementations of s
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Wow, you definitely demonstrated how much classier and less arrogant you are then Michigan.
Based on your discussion of the results, I'm assuming you're from Aurora.
Michigan catches a lot of hell for a) having a lot of sponsors and b) not letting people in our garage at the track and c) wanting to win. Strangely, Nuon, for whom all 3 things are true (they show up for an afternoon to run about 3 practice laps then leave rather than staying with the other teams, to prevent teams from seeing their car more than necessary), never gets bashed. And I can't blame them really, it's ridiculously hectic at the track and having lots of strangers in and out of your garage risks damage to your ridiculously expensive vehicle you spent two years to build, and also distracts you from making sure your car is safe and ready to roll. It's not a product of arrogance or meanness, just concern to maintain a tight ship and avoid unfortunate accidents.
We get all our stuff by working our butts off with sponsors and having a well organized business team - it's not like money fairies come along and drop dollar bills from the sky because we're special or something. Apparently "working hard, being successful, and being proud of it" = arrogance. And that big trailer with a machine shop Michigan gets called arrogant for having has helped other teams get back on the road a lot more often than it's been needed for the Michigan car. Whatever, I guess teams in every sport just need someone to hate.
You're right that it's up to the car behind to maintain a safe distance, which is why Stanford cannot be legally faulted. But I challenge you to prove that you always maintain a completely safe stopping distance, all the time, either in your solar car or in your personal vehicle. Bad things happen outside of your control sometimes. The fact is that a lot of accidents are avoided by luck, even if all the rules are followed to the letter. We tried to maintain a greater distance in the race but had to pull tighter in traffic to avoid gawkers and agressive drivers trying to weave in and out of our caravan, which seemed a lot more dangerous at the time (we rear ended our lead once, but suffered at least a dozen very, very near misses when drivers cut in without leaving enough room between their rear bumper and the front of the solar car, or when they would cut in, reducing our safe stopping distance, and then unexpectedly slow down). It's hardly as simple as you try to make it sound. The accident was the result of a series of unfortunate circumstances and mistakes by both teams involved. If Michigan had more separation, maybe they would have been fine, and maybe they would have ended up rear-ending a civilian who thought that big cushy spot between our cars looked too tempting, safe stopping distance be damned. Who can really know? Of course, none of that excuses the race officials from blatantly failing to follow their own safety rules due to a poorly organized event start that endangered the lives of the competitors.
The WSC could seriously learn a lot from the NASC in terms of safely and effectively organizing an event. Rules are well defined before hand (not made up during the race, a la the 2007 WSC stage stop), starts are well organized to run smoothly, safety requirements on all parts of the vehicle are stricter, and regulations are enforced by the book (e.g. egress in x seconds MEANS egress in x seconds). And I say that in good faith - such organization would really improve the safety and fairness of the sport. Unfortunately, speaking of arrogance, the WSC seems to like to pretend that NASC doesn't exist, and how dare those bloody Yanks think they can suggest anything to us.
This is clearly rubbish, everyone knows it's impossible to control the weather. The satellite dish simply surrounds the solar car in a subspace bubble connecting to a parallel universe where it's always sunny.
Interestingly, in the parallel universe, Michigan is actually an underdog team of ragtag remedial school ethnic stereotypes led by teacher/team mom Halle Berry and a grumpy but lovable Jim Belushi. This is actually better than it sounds, because in the parallel universe, Jim inexplicably ended up being the funny brother.
I guess I'm still not sure what about Michigan looks bad at first glance, especially compared to other teams. You're correct that composite analysis is difficult, which is why Michigan worked with their sponsors to learn tools and methods that allow them to optimize the carbon layup schedule and bulkhead layout with a high degree of confidence. The same is true of all of the mechanical components. Michigan can design to a lower safety margin because their uncertainties are made much lower by the analysis and testing. This makes their car safer, but faster at the same time. Also helping this is the high degree of parts quality due to Michigan's access to sponsors with extremely good CNC machining capabilities.
I'm sorry to hear that you felt brushed off by some of the Michigan team, but keep in mind that scrutineering is extremely serious and ridiculously stressful - it's part of the competition, not a PR event. In Australia we usually tried to designate a couple people to talk to visitors (and keep them from touching/leaning way over/sitting on fragile bits), but this isn't always possible. When you're worried about your car (and 2 years of your life) not qualifying, you're not going to be terribly focused on answering a stranger's questions about your car. Even when you're not working, you're probably exhausted as hell. These aren't celebrities used to the spot light, they're tired, dirty, stressed-out college students doing one of the most difficult things in their life. You would probably get a similar result from Minnesota if you asked technical questions about their solar array while they were concentrating on fixing their power trackers and getting moving again. Even the best can have stress and emotion get to them - some members of the Minnesota team, who you commend justifiably for their sportsmanship, said some downright nasty things about the Michigan team in their local paper after the '05 race. I hope you can be understanding, just as you would be if Tiger Woods was a little brusque with you if asked him for swing tips while he was on the practice tee before the Masters.
Also, the need for secrecy comes from the desire of the top teams to get as much technical info about their competitors as possible, which they will then use to improve their strategy and gain a competitive edge. Little things like this can make or break a close race. There was a constant stream of competitors asking extremely probing questions about the car in Australia. On at least one occasion there was even one competitor intentionally distracting a Michigan team member so that their other teammate could get close up photos of parts of technical parts of the car we'd explicitly requested them not to photograph. On another occasion we actually had students from MIT trying to pry tech details from team members at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. These sorts of things make you a little antsy, and its tough to strike a balance between helping out the little guy and not giving away your competitive edge.
I'm sure the Michigan team will be a lot happier to speak with you after the race and the stress are over. We'll be happy to talk about Continuum once its safely retired and no one is out to get it ;)
From what I heard from the team, the race officials were willing to allow Michelins if independent testing confirmed their safety. Michigan was able to arrange this testing, and was thus allowed to use the tires. Apparently Michigan's approval extends to the other teams as well, but many did not bring any because the testing could not be completed until the last minute. Michigan was giving away some lightly used Michelins to keep Durham running.
Where exactly has Michigan compromised safety for performance? More importantly, where have they done so in a way that 99% of other teams do not? What I mean by this last bit is that these things are inherently less safe than a passenger car - a truly safe solar car would be a Mercedes with solar cells duct taped on top, but that would make for a pretty lame competition. A 600 pound carbon fiber solar car will never be safe against a head on with a Hummer. Michigan makes up for this by designing in crush zones, titanium roll cages, and multi point harnesses, and driving in a caravan with thousands of miles of practice until it's second nature. I already answered your remark about the brakes. At any rate, Michigan's driver fared a heck of a lot better than a motorcycle rider would have in a similar crash as the 2007 incident.
And really all the bashes against Michigan's misplaced priorities and bad sportsmanship are pretty low. Until you can point out some actual evidence of Michigan's reckless engineering, I'm forced to conclude that you're merely out to flame a group of people dedicated to their sport who I'm assuming must have beaten your preferred squad or run over your dog or something.
Thanks Hal, that's about right (though to be fair, Michigan probably has more logistical support than Nuon these days, although Nuon still had the advantage of a huge cash sponsorship early in the project that allowed them to snap up the world's best solar cells before Michigan had any cash for a down payment - the teams would have likely been well matched without Michigan's accident).
Regarding the crash, Stanford was indeed ruled not legally culpable - but whether they were at *fault* or not, their support cars' panic brake in congested traffic certainly helped *cause* the accident. I think it was an unfortunate accident and Stanford did nothing malicious, but legal fault and cause are two different things - and the distinction is understandably blurry for someone who has to look at two years of their work smashed up on the side of the road. Driving in city traffic(solar races are on open roads) is a dangerous balance for solar car teams - drive close to your lead and chase cars, and you're protected from other drivers but you might collide with your own vehicles if they are forced to stop fast. But you can't really leave a truly "safe" stopping distance, because you end up with aggressive drivers cutting between your lead car and your solar car, an extremely dangerous situation. Of course this happens to everyday drivers as well - try maintaining the recommended safe interval between you and the car in front of you in rush hour traffic, and think about how often you avoiding an accident relies on the person in front of you being conscious enough to not slam on their brakes.
Regarding solar car brakes, Michigan does indeed use heavy duty downhill mountain bike disk brakes (which many if not most teams use). Why don't we use something more powerful? Because the brakes we have are plenty strong enough to immediately lock the wheels at speed - that is, our brakes supply more stopping power than our tires (low rolling resistance tires that are the same or equivalent to what every team uses) can apply to the road, so anything more powerful is just dead weight (which would ironically make us stop slower).
At any rate, any fault for the accident probably lies with the race officials, who violated their own safety rules by allowing the Stanford solar car to start the race without its support vehicles due to a huge snafu in the support vehicle staging area. This is a hugely dangerous situation, and there is supposed to be a system in place to prevent and correct this, but the rules were not followed. Had they been, Stanford wouldn't have had to come to a screeching near halt in morning traffic directly in front of the Michigan caravan while they were trying to rendezvous with their solar car.
Michigan's Continuum (despite its bad luck streak) is one of the safest solar cars in the competition, and rolled to the start line in Australia with literally thousands of miles of open road testing. Anyone who thinks otherwise might want to ask WSC second place finisher Umicore, who had a wickedly fast car but a wobbly steering system that barely kept them on the road. Or Twente, who also had a great car but suffered continual suspension failures. Or Stanford, who actually flipped their car a day or two after the Michigan incident (I think that one was due to a blown tire which led to a road departure followed by a suspension collapse). Or Aurora, whose 2005 car burned to a crisp due to a battery fire. Of course, the worst offender, although they've thankfully not had an accident, may well be 4 time WSC winner Nuon, who in 2005 had a driver's canopy so tiny that their driver had only a vestigial roll bar and could not even wear a helmet. Had they suffered Stanford's crash (which the Stanford driver walked away from, thank God), their driver would be dead. That, my friends, is sacrificing safety for speed.
As for Michigan's sportsmanship, apparently innovation gets called "gaming the race framework". Continuum had a solar concentration system on their car was one of only two successful implementations of s