Sure, but there was a long history of automobile brakes; people knew how to build them to a reasonable degree of reliability.
The era of moving wings was before my time, but I gather they were somewhat prone to failure; much more so than brakes. The wing on the Chaparral (and some of the early ones in F!, I think) were attached directly to the wheel hub mechanism. They pressed the wheels against the track without compressing the car’s suspension. That must have meant some kind of flexible attachment, and lots of movement as the suspension went up and down, and changing loads as the wing changed its angle. There must have been lots of ways for that to fail.
This. It’s the only engineering-sensible way to do it.
Those are also track-centric coordinates whether upright, banked, or inverted. Or at least car- and track-centric systems are the same until something goes badly wrong with the experiment.
It’s only upforce in Earth-centric coordinates, the least useful of the three.
Whenever coordinate transforms come up, I always think of this bit of science:
True. But that’s only profitable to the sponsor if this makes a big enough splash. Paying for eyeballs that don’t show up is a losing game.
For sure in all manner of advertising, including sponsorships, it’s darn hard to clearly attribute specific sales results to specific advertising efforts. Profitability analysis is as much voodoo as it is accounting. IMO, IANA expert.
This one just seems especially a far-fetched long shot to me. I have no doubt the team will succeed at flying the car. What’s far fetched is that the economic returns all around the effort will make it a profitable venture for team and sponsors.
Red Bull in particular have sponsored lots of extreme sports events, stunts, and other activities. Although I have no inside information, I would be stunned if RB wasn’t his number one sponsor goal.
Didn’t you see the bit about the parachute after he flies off the end of the track?
The £14 million price tag for the track was more than they were able to persuade sponsors to cover. But as Scott explains in this video, the engineering firm they went to for that estimate was a major top-level company whose focus wasn’t necessarily making it as cheaply as possible.
So after trying unsuccessfully for almost a year to raise that sum, they’ve gone to a smaller engineering group who think it can be built for only £3 million. And now he goes back to potential sponsors.
