How can I now allow this man To hold dominion over me? This desperate man whom I have hunted He gave me my life. He gave me freedom. I should have perished by his hand It was his right. It was my right to die as well Instead I live... but live in hell.
And must I now begin to doubt, Who never doubted all these years? My heart is stone and still it trembles The world I have known is lost in shadow. Is he from heaven or from hell? And does he know That granting me my life today This man has killed me even so?
Having traveled more than 2,000 miles in such vehicles, I can tell you that we are very aware of the risks of solar car racing. FaustII, U of T's car, was built to race in the American Solar Challenge. The safety regulations can be found here. Notable points are that the team must have a lead and chase vehicle to protect the car from traffic, there must be a roll cage (including a steel roll bar), and the driver must wear a motorcycle helmet and a 5 point harness. The body, suspension, and systems of a car are inspected, and the braking and steering are tested dynamically. In the 2003 American Solar Challenge, of the 28 teams that showed up, 8, including the previous champion, did not qualify due to safety concerns. Faust II met these requirements, as well as the rules put in place by Ontario's Ministry of Transportation. Safety is the top priority, if for no other reason than the fact that you won't win races if the car breaks down, or if the driver doesn't feel safe (and therefore refuses to go over 5 miles an hour). The people who run these races and drive these vehicles are not dumbasses; a very real and very large effort is made to see to it that these vehicles are safe.
Clearly, some part of the safety process was inadaquate. I am confident that what ever the cause of the accident was, the problem can be corrected, and solar racing can continue not as the safest sport in the world, but probably safer than, say, mountain climbing. I just can't unterstand how some people get off trashing the efforts of people they've never met in a task they know nothing about.
Some information on solar cars: They have operated on public roads for about 15 years. They participate in long, cross country races, the two most popular being the American Solar Challenge (various routes, the most recent was from Chicago to Los Angles) and the World Solar Challenge (Accross Australia, from Darwin to Adelaide, on the Stuart Highway, an unfriendly road shared with road-trains (think a semi truck, but around 200 feet long, 180 tons)). Given the number of miles that solar cars have covered, their safety record has been pretty damn good.
From the limited information I've seen, nothing indicates that the design of the car or the actions of the team posed any threat greater than that of riding a motorcycle. A boy lost control of his vehicle. and died. and yes, it does happen every day. and it's sad.
There will certianly be an investigation into the cause of the accident, whether the rules governing solar cars should be changed, or if solar cars should even continue to be operated on open roads.
But now is is the time for grief. My heart goes out to Andrew's friends and family, Blue Sky, and UT.
Horowitz and Hill's The Art of Electronics Is a wonderful review of basic EE concepts, from circuit design to device physics. Though it moves pretty quickly, and therefore might not provide the best introduction to the range of subjects it covers, I have found it an invaluable reference for those things that you learned a while back but can't quite recall. Doesn't get as detailed as a book on a more focused subject would either, but usually tells you enough to acomplish what you're trying to do. Detailed index; can look up that one equation you need, and be done.
I've learned a lot about solar cells with the team at my school, including why development of new cells can be a poor investment of resources.
Solar cells have a theoretical maximum efficency of not more than 50%. Currently, triple junction GaAs cells will get you about 35% (pretty close to the limit). Such an array for a solar car (5m by 1.8 m) can cost in the neighborhood of 500,000 USD. Meanwhile, a 19% Si array can be had for 70,000, and a 13 - 14% array for 10,000. As you can see, the price of an array has something of an exponential relationship to the efficency. To inprove the maximum efficency, you have to have the money to play with some very expensive toys. Only a few companies can afford such equipment (such as Honda and Aurora) and no school that I know of has a suffcient budget. We can (and do) play with making cells, but to commit to designing them and trying various chemistries and encapsulations requires more money than we have. Our object is to make cells that at a given efficency are cheaper than the ones on the market.
Meanwhile, the only things that slow you down are rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag. Cutting weight usually requires nothing more than a lot of thought into material selection and structural design (not hundreds of thousands of dollars).
Aero is a little more interesting, as there are tradeoffs betweeen the effective efficency of your array and your aerdynamic drag (for example, a taller car can catch more sun in the mornings and evenings, but will have more drag). These tradeoffs are related to how fast you want to go, and the conditions of the specific race you are designing for (whether it is primarily from north to south or east to west effects how you handle these tradeoffs; a car sloped to a particular side doesn't help if that side never faces the sun).
Also worth mentioning is that all the American college teams that I know are in the WSC just came off competing in the American Solar Challenge. Teams that did not have large budgets in that race competed in stock class, where they were only allowed to spend $10 per watt that they expected out of their array (limiting them to silicon cells) and lead acid batteries. I do not know if any of those teams went to WSC, but that would explain their use of lower power cells.
Photovoltaic cell research is one of the mose exciting fields of renewable energy, but when it comes to racing cars, you're more likly to win by buying the best array you can afford, and improving the other aspects of your car.
Even if the technology for transmission was availible 40 - 50 years ago, the batteries certianly were not. I have a phone that's about 6 years old, and by todays standards is considered massive, but only lasts 8 hours or so, with less than an hour of conversation.
I suppose you could have carried a battery box several times more massive than the ones used with cell phones in the late 80's. Picture: buisnessmen importantly wheeling shopping carts through the streets, differeing only from the homeless in the content of their carts.
Or you could have a little hand generator as remote radio operatiors did in Vietnam. Picture: buisnessmen in a restaurant imortantly spinning a little wheel as they talk to whomever.
That is probably why car phones were seen in media, as has been mentioned by several other posts, but having a personal phone always with you was not.
All of these are good general arguments for any organization to use open source, but the government deals not with profit, but with life, death, and other matters of global importance. Therefore, it has particular reasons for needing to know exactly what its computers are running:
If computerized ballots catch on, who knows what they are really running? Could there be a "bug" that automatically gives a particular candidate more votes than s/he receives? Easist way to know for sure is to have the program be open source.
Social Security and Welfare software, again, has the potential for coruption. Open Source helps reduce that risk.
The Department of Defense has an inherent interest in knowing that the modeling software it and its suppliers (Lockheed, Boeing, etc.) uses is accurate. For example, the Marines would hate it if Boeing's design software had an error that led to the deaths of, say, a few dozen Osprey passengers and pilots.
I'm sure that any organization, including the government, would love to be able to review, and perhaps modify the programs it uses, if for no other reason, the increase security and accountability.
Slashdot Mirror
Eugene Volokh, one of the authors of the Google white paper that the author discusses, has posted a response here.
How can I now allow this man
To hold dominion over me?
This desperate man whom I have hunted
He gave me my life. He gave me freedom.
I should have perished by his hand
It was his right.
It was my right to die as well
Instead I live... but live in hell.
And must I now begin to doubt,
Who never doubted all these years?
My heart is stone and still it trembles
The world I have known is lost in shadow.
Is he from heaven or from hell?
And does he know
That granting me my life today
This man has killed me even so?
Funny you should mention that; I recently tried running Solaris10 on my AMD64 3200 with MSI K8N Neo2 mobo.
But it couldn't find either of the 2 built in ethernet adapters.
So it's back to good ol' Linux!
Having traveled more than 2,000 miles in such vehicles, I can tell you that we are very aware of the risks of solar car racing. FaustII, U of T's car, was built to race in the American Solar Challenge. The safety regulations can be found here. Notable points are that the team must have a lead and chase vehicle to protect the car from traffic, there must be a roll cage (including a steel roll bar), and the driver must wear a motorcycle helmet and a 5 point harness. The body, suspension, and systems of a car are inspected, and the braking and steering are tested dynamically. In the 2003 American Solar Challenge, of the 28 teams that showed up, 8, including the previous champion, did not qualify due to safety concerns. Faust II met these requirements, as well as the rules put in place by Ontario's Ministry of Transportation. Safety is the top priority, if for no other reason than the fact that you won't win races if the car breaks down, or if the driver doesn't feel safe (and therefore refuses to go over 5 miles an hour). The people who run these races and drive these vehicles are not dumbasses; a very real and very large effort is made to see to it that these vehicles are safe.
Clearly, some part of the safety process was inadaquate. I am confident that what ever the cause of the accident was, the problem can be corrected, and solar racing can continue not as the safest sport in the world, but probably safer than, say, mountain climbing. I just can't unterstand how some people get off trashing the efforts of people they've never met in a task they know nothing about.
Some information on solar cars:
They have operated on public roads for about 15 years. They participate in long, cross country races, the two most popular being the American Solar Challenge (various routes, the most recent was from Chicago to Los Angles) and the World Solar Challenge (Accross Australia, from Darwin to Adelaide, on the Stuart Highway, an unfriendly road shared with road-trains (think a semi truck, but around 200 feet long, 180 tons)). Given the number of miles that solar cars have covered, their safety record has been pretty damn good.
From the limited information I've seen, nothing indicates that the design of the car or the actions of the team posed any threat greater than that of riding a motorcycle. A boy lost control of his vehicle. and died. and yes, it does happen every day. and it's sad.
There will certianly be an investigation into the cause of the accident, whether the rules governing solar cars should be changed, or if solar cars should even continue to be operated on open roads.
But now is is the time for grief. My heart goes out to Andrew's friends and family, Blue Sky, and UT.
Heh. flame wars not make one great.
Horowitz and Hill's The Art of Electronics Is a wonderful review of basic EE concepts, from circuit design to device physics. Though it moves pretty quickly, and therefore might not provide the best introduction to the range of subjects it covers, I have found it an invaluable reference for those things that you learned a while back but can't quite recall. Doesn't get as detailed as a book on a more focused subject would either, but usually tells you enough to acomplish what you're trying to do. Detailed index; can look up that one equation you need, and be done.
Solar cells have a theoretical maximum efficency of not more than 50%. Currently, triple junction GaAs cells will get you about 35% (pretty close to the limit). Such an array for a solar car (5m by 1.8 m) can cost in the neighborhood of 500,000 USD. Meanwhile, a 19% Si array can be had for 70,000, and a 13 - 14% array for 10,000. As you can see, the price of an array has something of an exponential relationship to the efficency. To inprove the maximum efficency, you have to have the money to play with some very expensive toys. Only a few companies can afford such equipment (such as Honda and Aurora) and no school that I know of has a suffcient budget. We can (and do) play with making cells, but to commit to designing them and trying various chemistries and encapsulations requires more money than we have. Our object is to make cells that at a given efficency are cheaper than the ones on the market.
Meanwhile, the only things that slow you down are rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag. Cutting weight usually requires nothing more than a lot of thought into material selection and structural design (not hundreds of thousands of dollars).
Aero is a little more interesting, as there are tradeoffs betweeen the effective efficency of your array and your aerdynamic drag (for example, a taller car can catch more sun in the mornings and evenings, but will have more drag). These tradeoffs are related to how fast you want to go, and the conditions of the specific race you are designing for (whether it is primarily from north to south or east to west effects how you handle these tradeoffs; a car sloped to a particular side doesn't help if that side never faces the sun).
Also worth mentioning is that all the American college teams that I know are in the WSC just came off competing in the American Solar Challenge. Teams that did not have large budgets in that race competed in stock class, where they were only allowed to spend $10 per watt that they expected out of their array (limiting them to silicon cells) and lead acid batteries. I do not know if any of those teams went to WSC, but that would explain their use of lower power cells.
Photovoltaic cell research is one of the mose exciting fields of renewable energy, but when it comes to racing cars, you're more likly to win by buying the best array you can afford, and improving the other aspects of your car.
I suppose you could have carried a battery box several times more massive than the ones used with cell phones in the late 80's. Picture: buisnessmen importantly wheeling shopping carts through the streets, differeing only from the homeless in the content of their carts.
Or you could have a little hand generator as remote radio operatiors did in Vietnam. Picture: buisnessmen in a restaurant imortantly spinning a little wheel as they talk to whomever.
That is probably why car phones were seen in media, as has been mentioned by several other posts, but having a personal phone always with you was not.
All of these are good general arguments for any organization to use open source, but the government deals not with profit, but with life, death, and other matters of global importance. Therefore, it has particular reasons for needing to know exactly what its computers are running:
If computerized ballots catch on, who knows what they are really running? Could there be a "bug" that automatically gives a particular candidate more votes than s/he receives? Easist way to know for sure is to have the program be open source.
Social Security and Welfare software, again, has the potential for coruption. Open Source helps reduce that risk.
The Department of Defense has an inherent interest in knowing that the modeling software it and its suppliers (Lockheed, Boeing, etc.) uses is accurate. For example, the Marines would hate it if Boeing's design software had an error that led to the deaths of, say, a few dozen Osprey passengers and pilots.
I'm sure that any organization, including the government, would love to be able to review, and perhaps modify the programs it uses, if for no other reason, the increase security and accountability.