Or maybe too much meth?

LOL, if you said coffee...I'd say ok.

But... think of the interplay of something traveling close to the speed of light and the human eye's disposition for persistence of vision (image holdover).... that 30 fps thing.

If something is moving close to the speed of light, you would almost be seeing it at multiple places at the same time... and your eye, doing that persistence of vision image retention thing, would retain the image long enough that it was still there while the next visual input hit. It seems that could cause a blur like on the Star Trek Enterpise entry to warp drive... don't ya think? Mathematically, it may not happen, but when interacting with our analog vision systems, it might be perceived as a blur.

I seem to remember something from college daze that caused tracers.... wave your hand quickly back and forth to see the Chinese kung fu movie strobe hand tracers effect.... seems like it might have been hemp or some other incense.

Hmmm, okay what if she left at the same time but went to another planet at 99% of the speed of light, approximately the same distance and time away, would she return to the same time as you?

As some of you may recall Make magazine published a story about a year and a half ago claiming DDWFTTW was a hoax. After we built the Blackbird and established a world record going directly downwind at 2.8X wind speed they invited me to write an article to set the record straight. It was posted Friday and should appear in the print version shortly:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/1 ... black.html

Today the publisher posted his own account of the events:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/1 ... carts.html

I think he did a nice job of it.

Game, Set, Match goes to the Spork and Crew! Bravo!

Saw the article in this month's Wired magazine (March,2011) ! Yahoo! Good job Spork and friends! "The truth is out there."

And now to bring an ancient thread back from the dead.... we've brought the downwind cart back from the dead. But we swapped out the prop blades for turbine blades and made some other mods. Now instead of going directly downwind faster than the wind, it will go directly upwind faster than the wind. The observers from the North American Land Sailing Association are on their way here to observe the attempt for a record going directly upwind. First attempt will be at New Jerusalem airport near Tracy, CA this weekend. Come join us if you want to see the silliness.

Unreal.

How do you start it? Ie. I understand how the other contraption get started..the wind pushing it, but in this, the wind pushes, and there is some initial quite a bit more resistance right? Will it first go downwind and then slow down and eventually move into the wind?

Nope. I think you just point it into the wind. The wind turns the turbine, the turbine turns the wheels, and acceleration happens. Of course, the faster it goes, the stronger the apparent wind becomes and the more efficient the turbine becomes, assuming it's tuned accordingly.

Can't wait to hear the results.

Cheers,
James