Shortened version to try to get this through.. deleted quoting
Well maybe the newspaper is a bad example of accurate reporting.. But
historically they stick to things that are hard to dispute.. I.E. John Doe had
an accident on I-95 when he apparently lost control of his car and went over a
bank. They generally leave out that he had the known to be defective brand X
tire and the car was just serviced at Joe Doe's service station where they
installed the tire...
I am not suggesting anything is being done wrong either only offering comment to
the statement Glenn made about lawsuits. I have had more than my share of
involvement with racing accidents and fatalities as well. I think that anyone I
have crewed for will acknowledge how safety minded i am and the lengths i go to
stressing driver safety. Funny as it might seem to many i spend more time with
the data acquisition systems looking at what the driver is doing. I want to know
if they are getting over their head or the car is starting to get unstable. It
is pretty easy to see if you start looking at throttle position and steering
angle, along with wheel speeds as well. Given the luxury of some strain gauges
and accelerometers goes even further.
Seth was going close to 470 ft/second for Bonneville that is around Mach 0.42.
If a car length was taken as about 20 feet he covered one every 0.0425 seconds..
To get an accurate picture of what happened on a one foot increment you would
have to sample at over 1000 samples per second. In light of that i suspect the
drivers recollection is just that. An interpretation based on incomplete data at
best. This is not to slight anyone's driving capabilities only to define the
time frame involved. I have yet to meet anyone that can process information at
that rate. To retain it would be even more remarkable.
The air speed calcs can be found here.
http://www.csgnetwork.com/atmoscalc.html
Just plug in 4500 feet, 470 ft/sec.
The dynamic pressure of 229 lb/sq.ft. is equally interesting. If some air gets
under the car for any reason at that speed the effects are pretty large.
Dave
|