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The car would have an electric motor powerful enough to
make it go 300 mile per hour. The trick is powering it, so
you'd put about 200 yards of ultralight solar panels with
wheels in a train behind the car.
It wouldn't be something you could commute with but it
should be able to break any
solar car speed records.
Richard Branson is clearly the man to fund this and drive
the vehicle into the record books and history.
[2:08] Hanan Einav Levi
http://www.youtube....watch?v=nTnmxybH3qU
video starts with a camel covered with solar panels [pashute, Jul 01 2013]
OK found it
http://www.tevahadv...mag-181/article-444
Honeymoon on solar bicycle (Hebrew) has pictures of the bikes and the tent [pashute, Jul 01 2013]
Physics of racecars - speed and horsepower
http://phors.locost7.info/phors06.htm
[pashute, Jul 02 2013]
[link]
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yes, hypothetically. I can also see a lot of reasons why it might also be impossible. sadly there isn't enough meat here to even cut apart, much less eviscerate the way I would like. |
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You mean it might work, but it might not? Clearly this is more complicated than I thought. |
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How did you come up with the //300mph// and //200yds// figure ? |
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Wild guess. Sounded reasonable. |
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The current record for a solar car is 55mph. |
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Why tow the panels? More efficient (in terms of
aerodynamics and wheelodynamics) just to have a
single very long, streamlined vehicle, shirley? |
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The panels are not towed by the car, but by a conventional locomotive. Surely? |
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Together with his then girlfriend later to be wife
and now widow, they crossed Israel from north to
south (from east to west its a 2 hour ride at most)
with a bicycle and electric motor, towing a battery
box, and solar panels. When they stopped for a
break, they opened the solar panels further, to
quadruple size, which served also as "roof" for a
tent if needed. |
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Hanan, a young friend of mine, suddenly passed
away this year. He was a rising star in the field of
renewable energy, (see his youtubes, and about
him) I'll give a link. |
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The second link shows the bikes. The first link
shows the person. A second look at his face shows
possibly fatigue - perhaps he new that he was sick
and just didn't tell. |
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Dropped towards the Earth, I suspect a solar powered car could go a tremendous speed. |
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//Why tow the panels? More efficient (in terms of
aerodynamics and wheelodynamics) just to have a
single very long, streamlined vehicle, shirley?// |
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The turning radius of a 200 yard long vehicle would
make parallel parking tricky. But seriously (not
that that was particularly funny) a snakey car
would be able to make turns on curvy roads. |
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I put this up halfway thinking I'd get a dozen links
of people having already done this. Is this really
something nobody's thought of? I saw the bike
towing a solar panel, not the same. I'm talking
about a solar panel train as long as necessary to
power a 300 mph vehicle. |
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The weight/drag to power ratio of the panels is
what would determine if this worked. Each panel
would have to give more power than required to
pull it obviously. I'm picturing those new super
light paper thin panels with wire spoke bike
wheels on a composite frame. |
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I think it might work. Of course the practical
upside of this might be super light railroad trains
on standard railroad tracks with a mile or so of
solar panels trailing behind it. |
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// I'm talking about a solar panel train as long as
necessary to power a 300 mph vehicle.// |
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Yes, but is the train independently powered, or does
the whole thing power itself? If the latter, I have my
qualms with regard to feasibility, even if anyone
were crazy enough to try feasing it. |
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//Yes, but is the train independently powered, or
does the whole thing power itself?// |
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You mean does each car have a motor on it? No,
this would be extra weight, they'd just be passive
rolling panels with a power cable leading up to the
1,000 horsepower motor. |
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By the way, have to look into losing the wheels
and having the whole train be on skids or very tiny
wheels and having air pressure just lift the whole
thing up. Like a model in a feminine hygiene
commercial running on the beach trailing a silk
scarf, the whole 200 yard long train of panels
would lift up and trail behind like a ribbon. Of
course you wouldn't want it too flimsy or you get
waves and fluttering that would tear the thing
apart at high speed not to mention adding drag.
So you'd bend it into an arc (looking at it from the
rear) so you'd get a little inherent stiffness in the
design. |
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It would just be a matter of tweaking the design
until "No you can't" becomes "Oh yea? Watch this!" |
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Why not put your panels in the road bed of circular track? Put electrically live circular railroad tracks on top of the panels. And only the motor car and crash rest dummy on top of the rails. |
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That way you don't have to pull a train of collectors. |
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also
Before you get to 300 mph, you'll need air foils. |
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It's a nice halfbake, might even work with a Yale motor
and a 64-speed gearbox, but you'll never get the solar-
powered land
speed record with it. The official land speed record must
be set by performing two rolling-start mile runs in no more
than one hour. I can hardly envision this buggy getting up
to a top
speed of 300mph once in an hour, much less twice. |
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// electrically live circular railroad tracks // |
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That technically makes it a rail locomotive, not a car, and
to set a speed record in that category it will be competing
with NASA's rocket sleds. |
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Maximum available energy is 1kW per square meter (which is 2 sqm of surface area, assuming the panel has a bottom), which isn't going to overcome drag. |
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How about a big array of mirrors on towers that focus sunlight onto the car as it moves? |
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Cheating. Gotta be self contained. |
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By the way, I think it's gonna need 2,000+ HP to
even start thinking about creeping over 200 mph. |
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That being said, think I'll call my buddy Richard
Branson and see if he wants to sponsor this. Great
press plus you get your name in the record books
big time. Each solar cell in that mile long train has
the Virgin corporate logo on it to boot. |
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Rich, babe. If you're reading this give me a jingle. |
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// I think it's gonna need 2,000+ HP to even start
thinking about creeping over 200 mph.// |
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I don't think it's going to work, but it may not be
utterly impossible. You'd need something
fantastically streamlined and with a slippy skin. And
it would absolutely not want to be articulated - huge
amounts of drag generated between the "carriages". |
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This would be fun to try with a little electric scooter
pulling a bunch of skateboards with those super
lightweight flexible solar panels on them. If you can
scale that up and make it work you'd get a test of
the basic concept and starting point numbers to
work with. |
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Sounds like a fun summer project. |
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How heavy are two basketball courts worth of
those
super light thin solar panels? With 1,000 hp car
pulling them could you just have them flying in
the
wind behind it like a really, really, really long
cape? |
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Like an airplane pulling an advertising banner sort
of
only horizontal to catch the sun. There's some
vector quantity (I think is the term) you'd have to
overcome but if the panels were light enough and
provided enough juice... |
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just an interesting question: whats the record speed
for wind powered sail-cars? |
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fastest sailboat is an icerigger, unofficial Guinness record of 143 mph, set over 60 years ago... hmm. |
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This is an interesting idea, but it misses something a
key bit of aerodynamics. Up to a point, longer is
better and minimal cross section is all important at
lower speeds, but as speeds increase, the drag of such
long body and the rolling resistance of either multiple
wheels due to the weight of a frame that would keep
the panels from breaking is going to catch up to you.
Still I consider this at least half baked, so (+). |
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You could always go for a small solar panel feeding a
massive battery. Twelve hours of standing still, two
minutes of warp speed. |
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//You could always go for a small solar panel feeding
a massive battery. Twelve hours of standing still, two
minutes of warp speed.//
Isn't this cheating? Couldn't you do this by using solar
to generate hydrogen and oxygen and then rocket to
300mph? I'd assume this would be possible. Heck an
argument could be made that most forms of energy
are solar based... |
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I think the only energy we use here that doesn't have a solar lineage is nuclear. Geothermal, nuclear power... that's about it unless I'm missing something. |
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Not in our sun, therefore the power is not solar-derived. |
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I would have voted for this had it been "300mph car powered by Richard Branson". Either making him pedal like a bastard or chucking him into the boiler as fuel would suit. Such is my disappointment that this is not, in fact, the idea proposed that a fishbone is sadly inevitable, alas! |
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