Word: solarity
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...weird-looking machines are the solar-powered cars competing in GM Sunrayce USA, the nation's largest ever race for vehicles propelled solely by power from the sun's rays. Built by science and engineering students from 32 American and Canadian colleges and universities, the innovative cars, capable of reaching speeds of up to 113 k.p.h. (70 m.p.h.), are following an 11-day, 2,639-km (1,640-mile) course that began in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., and will pass through eight states. The high-tech Soap Box Derby is scheduled to finish this week at the General Motors Technical...
...solution to the basic technological problem of converting fickle sunlight into sufficient electrical power to drive a vehicle across the country. Many came up with bizarre gimmicks that surprised even veteran engineers. The Florida Institute of Technology's secret weapon was a thin surfboard of a car with solar panels not just on its top, but also on its underside, to gather light reflected off the asphalt. Western Washington University built a car with two drivers seated back to back and a solar panel tipped rakishly, and permanently, to one side. In the morning students drove with the panel tilted...
When will all-solar cars be rolling out of local showrooms? Probably never, says Paul MacCready, the guru of low-powered transportation and one of the designers of the GM Sunraycer, winner of the 1987 World Solar Challenge across Australia. To run dependably on cloudy days, a solar car would have to carry sufficient power to make the trip on batteries alone. Better to charge the car from a wall socket and use the solar cells elsewhere -- perhaps at power stations to ease the load of generators running on nuclear or nonrenewable fossil fuels. The real value of Sunraycer, says...
...easy time. After the launch, engineers had to fiddle with stubborn antennas that refused to extend. When the antennas were fixed, the messages that came back to Earth indicated that the spacecraft was wobbling: when it swung from darkness to sunlight, the sun's rays striking Hubble's cold solar panels produced a minor vibration that caused the spacecraft to oscillate slowly. This motion confused instruments that were built to such precision that they could read a license plate 48 km (30 miles) away. NASA software designers are now writing programs to counteract the oscillations so that the telescope tube...
...Gossamer Condor now hangs in a permanent spot next to the Wright brothers' first airplane at the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum, where the Solar Challenger and the pterodactyl have been displayed. The Smithsonian has also acquired the Gossamer Albatross and the Sunraycer...