Posted on 11/07/2004 12:28:19 PM PST by KevinDavis
And why bother?:
- A prototype is likely to cost more than the prize;
- The human race has been there; done that.
- Hero, call your office.
--Boris
Here's the catch:
Prize-winning hardware and rights to manufacture will become property of XCOR Aerospace, Inc.
Call Detroit. They bought and shelved all the patents on steam, hydrogen and the Wankle in the 60's.
IIRC the Stanley Steamers were were fast, quiet and efficient. Just couldn't find a place in the gas combustion econoomy. (And prone to nasty accidents)
"In the midst of this commercial battle were twin brothers F.E. and F.O. Stanley, known for their Stanley Steamer. Their innovative vehicles were in very high demand early in the 1900s. Their shop constructed several thousand cars in the early part of the nineteenth century but they were overshadowed by the petrol powered internal combustion engines gaining prevalence in the market.
"The car was constructed by the Stanley brothers and was a technological marvel for its day. The Stanley brothers created a car that had extremely low drag, incorporating as much inside the cigar shaped body shell as possible including the suspension springs. The engine was a twin piston double acting type with a displacement of 184 cubic inches or 3.1 litres. This corresponds roughly to an internal combustion 4 stroke V8 with a displacement of 735 cubic inches or 12.25 litres. The working pressure claimed to be either 275 or 1000 psi depending on the report with a temperature of 700 degrees F. With the power required to drive the vehicle at the recorded speeds the 1000 psi is most likely the correct figure.
"The car was 16 feet long and 3 ft wide at its widest part with a total frontal area of 9 sq. ft including wheels. The total vehicle weight was 1675 lbs.
Source: http://www.steamcar.co.uk/Challenge/Stanley_Steamer.htm
LOL. They _do_ have a very...pretty...website though - looks like a company of entrepreneurs with "plenty of solutions awaiting the problems".
good idea, now if NASA would just adopt it, and if they would put up some descent prize money, that's the best way to get into space, or get a battry powered car, or get a steam car, etc.
Stanley Steamer, - It seems to me that a Stanley Steamer, ran IRRC 180 mph at Daytona Beach, about 100 years ago, setting the world speed record.
Bump
Bill Lear, on the other hand, moved in different directions. In 1968 he turned his eyes towards low emission engines for cars and began toying with steam power. He correctly believed the external combustion engine could be much more efficient then the internal combustion engine. Lear vapordyne steamers actually used fluorocarbons (Freon) in place of water, and ran it in a closed loop so there was no fluid loss.
Lear recruited English turbine engineer, Ken Wallis, who had been involved with Andy Granatelli in the STP turbine Indy car. Ken believed Lear could earn publicity by running two steam cars at Indy in 1969. Later that idea was shifted to 1970, but Wallis resigned in June 1969 before the cars got on the track.
One Indy racer was finished before the project was shelved. A former Lear employee purchased it and stored it for several years, but more recently it had been standing under a cotton wood tree in a field of alfalfa in Nevada. After disappearing for 28 years the Indy car prototype still exists, and was recently fixed up, displayed at a couple of shows, and was recently sold at auction.
The "Steam Powered Indy Car" was developed during the gas crunch years when the petroleum supplies were in question. It was intended to lead America into the world of steam power and save us from Detroit's dirty, environment damaging, internal combustible engines.
Lear actually had a small fleet of vapordyne cars running at Bonneville and was getting some amazing performance out of them. He even had steam powered busses running that he used to ferry the press about. I recall reading reports on a regular basis at the time in either Popular Science, Popular Mechanics or Mechanics Illustrated on Lear's progress. The technology looked very promising at the time.
As I recall, the biggest technical problem was the start up time, that is the time it took to build up a head of pressure in the boiler from a cold start. I believe Lear had reduced this down to less then a minute. The fact that few took Lear's ideas seriously didn't much help either.
If Lear had been successful you might be driving a vapordyne steam turbine powered car today that would burn kerosene or alcohol. And it would get better mileage, and possibly be a lot zippier.
sorry I lost the link and the quote for my last post, but Bill Lear was a magnificent man, who invented all kinds of things, and I am certain his efforts were blown away by detroit and the oil companies.
He had almost finished his cars development and then they 'disappeared', and he went out of the steam car business, because he suddenly 'discovered' that his steam engine had to heat up for a single minute before starting off..
My partner saw the engine in Reno that ran the buses and it was realy small with few moving parts. He was having 2 problems, his personal criteria and the size and thinness of the boiler tubes (related to his criteria).
If he had backed off only 10% on his startup time all the problems would have disapeared.
My partner tried to buy the rights and the remaining engines that were in Reno but couldn't make a deal.
wow - I was very impressed by Lear and all his many inventions, and thought we finally had gotten someone who would persevere and succeed, and then it died.
Somewhere around that time, the famous NASCAR racing team, Holeman and Moody, developed a Ford Mustang which got from 55-96 mpg - they swore that it worked, wouldn't be stopped, and several local car people and reporters drove it locally up and down from Daytona Beach to Melbourne Florida. Then it disappeared.
I worked on synthetic fuels, developing oil and gasoline from coal and shale, giant projects, in the early 80's, and they disappeared.
Was aquainted with Holeman and Moody when we ran Parsons NASCAR Ford in 56.
It's too bad that Lear's wife wouldn't let go of the steam engines, a change in boiler tubes that would add about 15 seconds to the startup time would have made the engine marketable.
16 - "It's too bad that Lear's wife wouldn't let go of the steam engines,"
You seem to know more about this than anyone I have run across. I was not surprised when Lear stopped, because I figured his invention would be 'disappeared', but I was very disappointed.
The only reason it was tried at all was that the U.S Taxpayers "offered" to give these companies a few billion to try it.
18 - "I don't know about the car, but the reason oil-from-shale disappeared was that it took more energy to extract the oil than you could get back. Not only that, but you had to rape entire mountains of the stuff for your feedstock - not a pretty sight.
The only reason it was tried at all was that the U.S Taxpayers "offered" to give these companies a few billion to try it."
Sorry - I was personally involved in numbers of these projects, and your belief is just flat wrong. We developed ways to extract the oil from the shale and coal, without disturbing the upper ground, so it was limilar to the small footprint of an oil well, though not quite that small. We were actually doing an excellent job in developing new procedures. However, the costs were still high, and we got it down to a break even point of $50/barrel oil. Then oil dropped to $8 per barrel and the whole oil industry took a nose dive, and the syn-fuels took a total dive. That's how I got into 'space', as in the 80's, I couldn't get a job for love or money in oil.
That's why I am not against the high price of oil. Because, at $50 per barrel, we have enough oil in the US and we did have the technologies to extract it, to last us in the US, another 500 years. You would be surprised at some of the techniques/technologies we developed back then, to extract/convert and maintain the environment.
There is a 50 million dollar prize for whoever builds a spacecraft capable of ferrying 6 people back and forth to the ISS/Space Station. Word is Rutan might consider it, since he's already under contract to start building a similar spacecraft for Richard Branson. This is privately donated money, from a man who's big in the hotel business.
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