Several people at the Steam Automobile Club of America meeting are working on the Land Steam Record – a race for the top speed in a steam car. The current record is 148 mph, set in 2009 by the British. Here is an interview with Chuk Williams, lead developer for the US Land Steam Record (USLSR) team:
Land Steam Record from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
USLSR is teaming up with Cyclone Technologies, discussed in the last post, who will provide the lightweight, high performance steam engine for the project. Here is a picture from a post in Make magazine:
Our interest in USLSR, after meeting Chuk- lies in moving steam power technology forward – while breaking misconceptions regarding the feasibility of steam cars – and while pointing out the multi-fuel, clean-burn, lubrication-oil-free nature of steam engines like the Cyclone. For those of you concerned about cost, studies by Dutcher Industries done back in the 1980s in California showed that the cost and weight of a steam car engine is comparable to the cost and weight of gasoline engines. Contact Tom Kimmel at SACA for a copy of this study if you are interested. And as far as modern steam goes – the complete Cyclone Technology engine may weigh less than an equivalent gasoline power plant.
Here we team up to introduce a crowd funding basket for the USLSR project. They need money (just like us, Chuk is not made of money), we think they are worth supporting, so if you think so as well, chip in. This Chipin is addressed directly to the USLSR account. Chuk is volunteering his time, and all proceeds go to materials and real costs. Spread the word.
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If I understand correctly, chipping in for this helps put steam on the table, so it gives steam extra visibility.
Does it also help open-source tech? I guess it does help indirectly, because Marcin is learning from the steam community, and the steam community gets extra exposure. My very small question is, does it help directly too?
Glad to see progress and alliances!
If someone at OSE wanted to build a steam race car, I imagine that Chuk would be glad to help out. However, this is not a priority for us, unless we were interested in diversifying our operations to a task much different than the mundane open-sourcing of the world’s critical infrastructure technologies:)
Chuk is one of the people in the Steam Automobile Club of America (SACA) who actually knows what he’s talking about. As far as direct help, it puts us as a close ally of the steam club – but I think we already have full access and support of SACA. Our proposal for the open source steam electric generator was very well received. I will blog a summary of the prospects tomorrow.