[Land-speed] Hydrogen Vehicles And Safety>From>Jim McNaul

[drmayf]

Actually I am sure that the fuel cell technology itself is pretty safe. 
Safety comes in in theupset conditions. Just running down the road is 
probably going to be perfectly safe and sane. It is th eunknowns that I 
get concerned with. For instance, how well are the H2 tanks tied down? 
Hopefully better than in the street car version. And there are 
additional tankage because the normal tankage would not let it run the 
full course. Now, see that is someting different than the proposed 
streeet machine. It has extrra stuff. It also has tankage for fuel cell 
coolants that are necessary because it has to run wide open for a long 
time (comparitively).  So all that stuff  has to be anchored to 
someting. And since this needs to be safe, there has to be some way that 
the rescue drew can disable the electricals in the event that the driver 
cannot. That has to be both H2 and electricity.  And because it is a 
fuel cell, there may very well be a sequence for shut down that must be 
followed in the event of upset. Otherwise, shutting things off out of 
sequence could in reality make them worse.  I amnot worried about the 
normal car aspects of that in this case especially soince Rousch is 
involved in that part of it. It is just all this other stuff that can be 
worrisome. Rick will do a wonderful job driving the car for all it is 
worth. But he is like a rest pilot taking the airplane out for it's 
first flight. The envelope edges have to be found carefully. And 
unfortuanately, issues is what permits us to move forward with bettr 
designs. I just hope Rick isn't on the bad end of someting because 
something was overlooked. Or somebody thought of someting but decided 
that it just couldn't possibly happen... Those things always jump up to 
bit you.  As to NASA, things that live in space a long while generally 
have thermoelectric power generators or solar panels. It is just the 
short term stuff that has the fuel cells, like Apollo and the shuttle. 
Or batteries.

mayf, way offf (base) and far out (in left field) in pahrump

Bryan Savage wrote:

> Wouldn't Ford go to the NASA technology transfer folks for about 40 years
> worth of experience Mayf.
> I'd go to them for a list of unknowns so I don't get blind sided.
> Bryan
>
>
>
> drmayf wrote:
>
>> That's a pretty impressive experience base. I wonder how many of them 
>> have endo'e at B'ville? In a one off car with extra fuel cells and 
>> extra h2 tanks. With lot sof ice water cooling tanks. I just want 
>> inspection to be very rigorous when it comes to safety for the driver 
>> and any response folk who have to potentially clean up a mess.
>> mayf