[Land-speed] Fw: Ford's Hydrogen 999 racer shooting for fuel cell land speed record > Hybrid News

Ed Weldon 23.weldon at comcast.net
Thu Jul 12 22:45:30 MDT 2007


Forwarded with edits
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ed Weldon" <23.weldon at comcast.net>
To: <webmaster at landracing.com>; <drmayf at mayfco.com>
Cc: "LSR List" <land-speed at autox.team.net>
Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2007 9:35 PM
Subject: Re: [Land-speed] Ford's Hydrogen 999 racer shooting for fuel cell
land speed record > Hybrid News


> Jon-- I'm pretty much with you on this subject.  But we still don't have a
> lot of experience with compressed hydrogen fuel in everyday transportation
> use.  I think erring on the side of caution is a good idea until we're
well
> past the possibility of the "Gawd, I wouldn't have imagined that anything
> like that would happen" stage.  I think a lot of us have been cowed by the
> pictures of the Hindenburg disaster.  Recent research and learned analyses
> of that incident have shown that the process or burning of the airship was
a
> lot more complicated than we thought.
>
> Hydrogen has the useful property of diffusing extremely rapidly making the
> maintenance of an explosive mix with oxygen in the atmosphere a very
> transient condition.  The net result of this is IMHO the maintenance of a
> substantial volume mixture of explosive potential fairly difficult; i.e.
not
> a good bet for really big "bangs".  In this statement I'll readily defer
to
> the wisdom of guys like Roy Creel or people with real world experience.
>
> I think if gasoline powered automobiles had just been invented there would
> be an incredible outcry about the hazards of carrying around 10 or 15
> gallons of the stuff in human controlled vehicles that travel at 70 mph
and
> can crash under conditions of improper operation.  So I'm a bit hesitant
> about jumping on the fear bandwagon with respect to hydrogen fuels.
>
> All of this notwithstanding I remain very skeptical about the
practicallity
> of compressed gaseous hydrogen as a motor fuel for consumer
transportation.
> Still I'd encourage Ford to go forward with their research and prove me
> wrong.  This is something we have to explore even if it ultimately fails
to
> prove to be a great commercial success.
> Ed Weldon
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Jon Amo" <webmaster at landracing.com>
> To: <drmayf at mayfco.com>
> Cc: "LSR List" <land-speed at autox.team.net>
> Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2007 9:01 PM
> Subject: Re: [Land-speed] Ford's Hydrogen 999 racer shooting for fuel cell
> land speed record > Hybrid News
> > Im not sure why you are so scared of the Hydrogen projects and im not
sure
> > why the SCTA is taking special precautions for the vehicle..........
> > Jon


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