I don't understand how this car works.

BillRM:
You can align yourself with Allain if you like. You do share the quality that you're both idiots afterall. But at least understand his position. Initially he claimed it was impossible. He now claims that he doesn't know whether it is or not (although he seems to suggest that he now believes it probably is). He makes one very astute observation - and that is that HE can't understand it.

That is pretty much the definition of backing away from his initial position. But frankly, I don't understand why we're discussing another idiot when we have one right here that's not smart enough to take a 10:1 bet that's a sure thing according to him.

Second, note one of the biggest indications that this is a hoax is the behaviors of yourself and the other supporters of this device/theory.

Such yelling and beating of the chest would be what you expect from people trying to sell a hoax not a real scientific breakthrough.

Yelling people down and making it so unpleasant that people like Dr. Allain decided to walk away from the subject is not a mark of seekers after the truth.

Thank you for proving my point on may last post about your behavior.

In any case his statements are clear he does not see how such a device could work by his understanding of the laws of physics and concerning the claims that your bird does fly faster then the wind he had come up with either it is a fake or something is going on that he does not understand.

As in the start of this thread, my position was that if it does work we will need to revisit our understanding of some very basic laws of nature so the good doctor and I are on the same page indeed.

>>"As in the start of this thread, my position was that if it does work we will need to revisit our understanding of some very basic laws of nature so the good doctor and I are on the same page indeed."

Actually, we won't have to revisit any of the basic laws of nature. You and the good doctor will simply have to visit a remedial high school physics class.

There has been no yelling, and no beating of the chest. I am not "seeking the truth" because I know the truth. I put my butt in the car, go directly downwind and feel the wind in my face. You're not "seeking the truth" because you wouldn't know how to begin.

But most of all, we now know that you and the good doctor truly are on the same page. Neither of you are confident it doesn't work. If you were, you'd take my money. More silence on that offer?

Just a few weeks ago you were telling us that the trials would never happen. Now you are claiming we will never see the result..

Then you will claim it was rigged.

Keep digging Bill. Eventually you will get deep enough.

That wasn't his position -- his position, posted publicly on his educational blog was that it as IMPOSSIBLE.

He has now backed away from that claim and now says:


Not the sort of endorsment for your position that you were hoping for from academia is it Bill.

JB

Sorry I do not think he was claiming to be god and I consider your toy impossible also but if press will state that, I could be wrong.

Not at all likely in fact highly highly unlikely but not being god that the way any honest person would need to clarify any such flat statement.

It is impossible is the simple and short version.

Longer version by my understanding of the laws of nature and the universe it is impossible.

I do not see that you had gain a lot by that clarification.

That is a rather general statement, i.e. that "we will need to revisit some very basic laws of nature."

Given that there is ample evidence by independent experiments over several decades that the device does indeed work, it is also a rather extraordinary claim.

Can you name even one law of nature that the device violates? If so, can you show in detail where the device, as described in multiple places, using multiple different analogies to aid multiple people in understanding it, but always describing the same thing, violates the current understanding of that law?

No, of course you cannot do these things, and for two reasons:

1) The first is that the understanding of laws that you claim are violated by the device cannot be found by you (here it comes;-), like your keester, with

- both hands,
- a flashlight,
- a map,
- a can of beans,
- an audio-direction finder, and
- the tail of toilet tissue trailing from your trousers.

2) The second reason is that none of the correct descriptions of the details of the working device either claim to, or actually do, violate any laws of nature.

However, you have yet to make any accurate claim or observation about either the device or its relationship to any natural law, so it is clear that an understanding of the details of the device, like that of both basic natural laws and the location your keester, are beyond your ken.

That being obvious, one has to wonder how you can predict with any confidence that any natural law, which you don't understand, will need to be revisited if the device, which you also don't understand, happens to work.

The answer of course is that you cannot with any confidence make any such substantial claim because you cannot back it up. This is not about silencing people; this is about debating the facts of a matter, and since you have no idea of the facts about either the device or the relevant natural laws, your contributions have been consistently random statements which can be seen to be either prima facie out of touch with reality or so vague as to be meaningless.

About all you seem to be able to do is to manage to type them in via a keyboard and pretend you know what you are talking about. Anybody can do that, but in such a forum as this, backing them up with cogent analysis is what earns such statements an audience and the right to be heard. You are more than welcome to present such analysis, but as is by now painfully obvious, you do not have the resources to do so.

Mr. Bill (oh No-o-o-o-o-o) wrote:

and he also wrote:


[emphases added]

Well, Bill, which is it, "my" understanding or "our" understanding?

Is that the royal "we," as in "Bill & God," in the latter statement?

It certainly can't apply to "we" as in the entire human race because a significant number of independent members of that species have thought through to understanding and/or written papers about and/or built and/or and successfully tested such a device over the past several decades without threatening anybody's correct understanding of natural laws.

Perhaps it is time you admit that you grok neither natural laws nor the device and simply say "I don't understand" like the title of this thread suggests. In the end that is the only path to learning; doing the opposite without being able to back it up certainly hasn't gotten you anywhere.

>>"It is impossible is the simple and short version."

>>"Longer version by my understanding of the laws of nature and the universe it is impossible."

Those two statement could hardly be any more different. The second statement is the biggest step forward I've seen you take - by far. Admitting that YOU don't understand it gets you half way across the creek. Being willing to have a responsive discussion about it might get you the rest of the way across. Just let us know. I'm confident we can convince you if you're actually willing to have the discussion.

Ooops. JB pointed out to me that I misinterpretted your post Bill. I still think we shouldn't be having this discussion in a language you're not terribly fluent in. I took those to statements to be YOUR thinking. JB pointed out that you're almost certainly trying to explain Rhett Allain's thinking.

Of course you're wrong if this is the case.

If you hold out any belief at all that maybe you could learn to understand what's happening here, just say so. If you're absolutely sure we're wrong, take my money.

I am under no impression that your group is interested in a discussion unless it end by the other party agreeing with your position and seeing the light.

Dr. Allain seem to had drop the matter for that reason and a wish not to turn his blog into a platform for your positions and away from his own goals.

But once more the craft once at the wind speed the only energy to turn the props from the wheels drives come at the expense of the energy of the car movement.

So even with a perfect drive/prop system and no loss you would still go into steady state at wind speeds.

Er... why is this a problem?

Bad assumption leads to ...



Bad conclusion.

Garbage in ... garbage out.

JB

Bill, are you familiar with the basic 'Work', 'Energy' and 'Horsepower' calculations?

Ex: 'Work = force * distance'

If you are capable of working with these I propose that you and I walk through a short series of them together where you can check my work to your satisfaction.

If you are not capable of working with these, I propose that you really should learn how to before you claim the vehicle violates the laws of nature.

So, can you check my work on these simple calcs or not?

JB

@BillRM
>>"I am under no impression that your group is interested in a discussion unless it end by the other party agreeing with your position and seeing the light."

So, you refuse to have the discussion since you presume you know how it goes. Good thinking. We've asked several times. JB has asked again just above. I am all but certain you will either ignore his request or simply refuse to have the actual discussion (out of fear of where it leads).

>>"Dr. Allain seem to had drop the matter for that reason and a wish not to turn his blog into a platform for your positions and away from his own goals."

For someone that didn't want to talk about it, Dr. Allain sure brought it up often enough. He was happy to "explain" that it couldn't work, but like you he wanted no part of the discussion that would ultimately prove him wrong. For him (and you) science isn't about admitting mistakes - it's about hoping people will lose interest before it's proven.

>>"But once more the craft once at the wind speed the only energy to turn the props from the wheels drives come at the expense of the energy of the car movement."

Why the hell would I care about what nonsense you repeatedly spew if you're not willing to have a responsive discussion. You're like the religious folks that came to my house this morning. They didn't want to discuss anything either. They wanted to tell me the "truth" - so long as I didn't offer my own opinions and facts.

>>"So even with a perfect drive/prop system and no loss you would still go into steady state at wind speeds."

It would seem my analysis has an advantage over yours in that my analysis accurately predicts what happens in the real world. Your analysis explains that bees can't fly.

Bill, do you think that what you say there is a correct statement regarding the operation of the DDWFTTW cart?

First of all, let me make sure I understand what you are saying:

1) At any cart speed less than wind speed, it is possible for the wind to push the cart downwind and forward and thus to transfer energy to the cart to increase the cartspeed in the downwind direction and to push the wheels of the cart against the ground to turn the prop.

2) If the cartspeed reaches the windspeed downwind, it is no longer possible for the wind to push forward on the cart so the wind can no longer transfer energy to the cart to increase the cartspeed in the downwind direction or to push the wheels of the cart against the ground to turn the prop.

2.1) With the cartspeed at the windspeed downwind and the wind no longer able to transfer energy to the cart, the only energy available to push the wheels of the cart against the ground to turn the prop is the kinetic energy in the cart itself, and to use any of that energy to turn the prop the cart must lose kinetic energy and therefore slow down.

If you do think that is correct, please explain why. If you could describe why you think it is correct then perhaps we will find some of the flaws in your analysis.

On my 3 AM walk thank to the Blackbird group I had just came up with an idea that should allow the US to shut down 90 percents of it current power plants.

I am placing this into the public domain at once so that this idea will not be lost to mankind should I have a heart attack or get run over by a car in the near future.

Ok, here how we are going to end having any more poor coal miners dying a mile underground and stop placing co2 contain in many miles long trains loads of coal every hour into the atmosphere.

First, we lay rail tracks across the great plains for five or so hundreds miles East to West.

Next, we manufacture great wind generators that are build to ride those rails and to drive themselves along and tap the energy of the wind in a similar fashion to the Blackbird.

As the designer of the Blackbird had pointed out, in theory even a mild wind could be tap to allow such a device to reach 700 mph so there should be plenty of energy to drive these power stations along and still be able to tap megawatts of electric power to feed to a power grid on their West to East journeys.

Now if you happen to hit a dead wind area you just turn the power generators into motors and power out of the no winds areas.

You also would have the overhead of returning the generators stations back to the West however as I had learn on this thread you might be able to design them to go back under wind power even directly into the wind.

If not you, would just need to drive them back by taping the grid and count that as another part of your system overhead.

With the ability to tap the wind for almost unlimited power I would think that any likely overhead would not amount to a great percent of the total energy produce by this system.

A new age of very cheap non-green house gas producing electric power in coming thank to the Blackbird team and my 3 AM walk.

Bill,

Someone stole your idea. We already have a way to harness wind power (of course, the cart part is not necessary).

The principle is very simple... the wind has kinetic energy due to the fact the air molecules are moving. If you slow down the air molecules, their energy decreases... this energy is then converted (through the blades) into electricity.

Since the energy of the air (wind) is decreasing and the energy in electrical form is increasing, the law of conservation of energy is not broken.

These wind turbines don't break any physical laws (and neither does the cart).

>> "We already have a way to harness wind power (of course, the cart part is not necessary)."

Here's the crazy part ebrown... BillRM is right - in principle. We've seen this before. The only time some of these idiots get something right is when they state something sarcastically that they think is so ridiculous that it will make us all see how silly we are. People sometimes say "you might as well put a fan on the back of a sailboat and have it blow on the sail to make you go downwind". But guess what... that can actually work. In fact that's how a thrust reverser works on a jet engine.

As to BillRM's idea to put props and turbines on trains, it's actually true that we can in principle generate far more power on a moving platform than a windmill can generate on a stationary one. This is another very counter-intuitiive result - but also easily demonstrated to be true.

Now I wouldn't go looking for trains with props and turbines on top any time soon - even though our very own village idiot was good enough to put "his idea" into the public domain. The whole thing is quite sensitive to internal losses, so you'd have to operate on a very flat track, and you'd want to be careful to build your tracks so they go directly upwind and downwind (yes, it works in both directions). Then you'd have to figure out how to get this power from the moving platform into the grid. And be careful not to operate in the real world where wind directions change.

Now despite Bill being right only when he's trying to be wrong, he still manages to get some things horribly wrong - like...

>> "As the designer of the Blackbird had pointed out, in theory even a mild wind could be tap to allow such a device to reach 700 mph "

This is nonsense. What he's refering to is the notion that there is no theoretical limit to the multiple of wind seed such a device can achieve - given ludicrously highly efficient components. But the key word here is "multiple". Once you start reaching speeds in the region of 1/3rd mach (vehicle or prop tips) you start losing lots of efficiency to the compressiblity of air flow at those speeds. So yes, you can IN THEORY reach speeds of 50 mph in an arbitarily low wind if you have arbitarily high efficiency - but you can't achieve the lie that BillRM has ascribed to us.

So Bill, do you want to simply make fun of how silly I am, or do you want to take $100K from me and shut me up? It's a sure thing for you afterall - right?

But by all means Bill, if this wager scares you, becausre in reality you're not nearly so sure of your position as you claim, just ignore it and hope it goes away. Maybe no one will notice.