No Cash Prize for Next DARPA Grand Challenge 107
General Lee's Peking writes to mention an Associated Press article about a sad development in the DARPA Grand Challenge. Because of some new DoD-related legislation, the organization will no longer be able to award the $2 Million prize to grand challenge winners. It's not all bad, though; they still get a trophy. From the article: "The absence of a lucrative cash prize has forced some teams to retool their game plan and others to drop out. Some fear it would be harder to attract corporate sponsors and hurt media coverage of the race, which drew a throng of reporters last year and inspired a PBS documentary. 'The icing on the cake is gone,' said Ivar Schoenmeyr, team leader of California-based Team CyberRider, which is retrofitting a Toyota Prius hybrid."
Re:Is this really so bad? (Score:4, Informative)
To be awarded posthumously?
It's easy enough to build such a car. Easy enough that it's been done many times over the past century.
All you have to do to achieve it is give up something else. We can strive for efficiency, but we canna change the laws of physics.
KFG
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
All they now have to do is get permission from their boss.
It appears they have chosen the ignorant route and - instead of getting requested authorization - simply claim they are not allowed
Sounds like typical Government Bureaucrats to me.
Re:Little investigation (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, you can maybe blame him for not vetoing the spending bill, but unless he really cared about this one expenditure, why would you expect him to?
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take a long shower, because I fell really dirty after actually defending the President. But can you please save your blame of him for the tons of things that are actually his fault?
Re:Little investigation (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure exactly what you mean there, but the Defense budget is the largest it has been in ages, it's perplexing that they'd choose to cut here
Two things:
That said, the US defense is the smallest it's been in ages and re-equipping three branches of the military is not cheap.
The Real Harm (Score:5, Informative)
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http://pave.princeton.edu/ [princeton.edu]
No New Taxes (Score:1, Informative)
We can't spend $2M on DARPA, which gives us results like the Internet, GPS, etc. We've got to spend it on 12 minutes in Iraq [speakupwny.com].
Re:Posthumously? (Score:3, Informative)
No. You'll find in my other posts that I am one of those people that thinks, small, light, uncrushable carbon fiber cars are safer ( with suitable crushables, say light foam, around the carbon fiber).
If you go back and read my post again I think you'll find that I'm one of those people that thinks the designer of the 100 mpg car has already died of old age. Hence the posthumous award.
. .
Unless you give up enough mass. There are limits to that. See the "beer can effect" in reducing bicycle weight by using thinner, larger diameter tubing. And of course mass will always be proportional to size, no matter the materials and construction techniques you use, so yes, size is one of the things you might have to give up to increase milage, which at least as important as reducing mass reduces frontal area.
The ability to decelerate quickly?
Throwing energy away is always comparitively easy. Any modern street car can be braked in excess of its ability to produce tractive force on clean, dry roads. Small, light cars with high tractive force can decelerate from 100 mph to 0 in less than two seconds with off the shelf (albeit expensive) parts.
But I'm not sure what this has to do with gas milage in street cars.
I have an MS in Astrophysics. .
Astrophysics has always been an interest of mine, but even as an undergrad my research always focused on . .
I will say this - when you're accelerating quickly you won't be getting your 100 mpg. But you can have the ability to accelerate quickly (say in an emergency) and still average 100 mpg.
Right, so you'll have to give up accelerating quickly. See my other post where I mention getting 60 mpg out of a box stock Fiesta.
Forgive me for saying so, but it's not rocket science.
I've done some work on rockets. I have a number of friends at NASA and its subcontractors. You're right, automotive engineering isn't rocket science. It's far more complicated.
OK, so maybe you'll have to give up your "8 MPG" license plate (I actually saw one of these), but really, is that asking so much?
My vehicle doesn't need a license plate and I typically run it on rice and lentils; with a few bananas and a handful of trail mix on the side. Oh, and Day Lilies when they're in season. I've "given up" a lot, but I've gained the world.
It can by hybridized to increase peak accelerations, but I'm not usually in that much of a hurry. To get the best milage all you really need to give up is your ridiculous schedule.
KFG
Found the Bill's Text (Score:3, Informative)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?c109:./temp/ ~c109i6ly2s [loc.gov]
Signed on October 17th. Look in Section 212, which has this:
(A) by striking `Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency' and inserting `Director of Defense Research and Engineering and the service acquisition executive for each military department'; and
Emphasis mine. You can see that now they have to add a dude (assuming that Director of Defense of DARPA is now "Director of Defense Research and Engineering", otherwise it's out of DARPA's hands all together). Maybe it's just a matter of signatures, but I can see how they have been forced to put the award on hold until they can, you know, obey the law as Congress has fiddled with it. And I confess that I haven't looked at the legislation that this section amends, which is:
Subsection (a) of section 2374a of title 10, United States Code