Following on from my route map above for the World Solar Challenge (click to zoom), here are some personal route notes (revised from 2015 and 2017). The WSC has confirmed that the control stops are as indicated.
The graph below (click to zoom) shows approximate altitudes (taken from the Stanford 2013 elevation profile for this version of the graph). The highest point on the route (about 730 m) is 20 km north of Alice Springs, although the steepest hill (Hayes Creek Hill, summit 203 m) is about 170 km from Darwin.
Darwin – Start
Solar Team Eindhoven’s Stella starts the race in 2013 (photo: WSC)
University of Toronto’s Blue Sky Solar team leaves the Dunmarra control stop in 2013 (photo: Blue Sky Solar)
Dunmarra once served the Overland Telegraph Line. Today it is little more than a roadhouse, motel, and caravan park. In previous races, this was a control stop.
Tennant Creek – 987 km – Control Stop 3 / End of Cruiser Stage 1
Tennant Creek (population about 3,500) is a small town serving nearby mines, cattle stations, and tourist attractions. Shopping can be done at Tennant Creek IGA.
For 2019, Tennant Creek marks the end of Cruiser Stage 1. Cruisers must arrive between 14:00 and 17:00 on Monday (with penalties for arriving after 14:00). Cruiser teams will spend the night, and have the option of metered recharging between sunset and 23:00.
The 1,802 hectare Karlu Karlu / Devils Marbles Conservation Reserve lies along both sides of the Stuart Highway about 100 km south of Tennant Creek. It is home to a variety of reptiles and birds, including the fairy martin (Petrochelidon ariel) and the sand goanna (Varanus gouldii). Race participants, of course, don’t have time to look (unless, by chance, this is where they stop for the night).
Barrow Creek once served the Overland Telegraph Line and nearby graziers, but is now nothing but a roadhouse. The Telegraph Station is preserved as a historical site.
Ti Tree is a small settlement north of Alice Springs. Much of the local area is owned by the Anmatyerre people. In previous races, this was a control stop.
The sign at the Northern Territory / South Australia border shows Sturt’s Desert Pea (Swainsona formosa), the floral emblem of the state of South Australia.
Marla (population 100) has a health centre, a roadhouse/motel/supermarket complex, a police station, and a small car repair workshop. The name of the town may be a reference to the mala (Lagorchestes hirsutus) or to an Aboriginal word for “kangaroo.”
Coober Pedy – 2,178 km – Control Stop 7 / End of Cruiser Stage 2
The town of Coober Pedy is a major centre for opal mining. Because of the intense desert heat, many residents live underground.
For 2019, Coober Pedy marks the end of Cruiser Stage 2. Cruisers must arrive between 16:30 and 17:00 on Wednesday (with penalties for arriving after 16:30). Cruiser teams will spend the night, and have the option of metered recharging between sunset and 23:00.
At Port Augusta, the highway reaches the Spencer Gulf. From this point, traffic becomes much heavier, which makes life more difficult for the drivers in the race.
Adelaide – Finish
Adelaide makes quite a contrast to that lengthy stretch of desert (photo: “Orderinchaos”)
Adelaide, the “City of Churches,” is the end of the race. The official finish line marks 3,022 km from Darwin.
Cruisers must arrive between 11:30 and 14:00 on Friday (with penalties for arriving after 11:30).
Here is a further update on the 49 teams (29 Challengers, 20 Cruisers, and no Adventure cars) from 23 countries aiming for the 2019 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge in Australia this coming October. Many teams are busy with construction, and below is my best understanding of the current team status, updated to match the official list of teams. Teams are sorted in team number order.
Recent BWSC news is that Bochum and Minnesota will be racing existing cars (thyssenkrupp SunRiser and Eos II). We have also seen new car reveals from HUST (pic) and Top Dutch (video). Promised new car reveals include Twente: 21 June, Blue Sky: 24 June, Lightyear One: 25 June, Kogakuin: 27 June, MDH: 29 June, Tehran: 2 July, Agoria: 3 July, Eindhoven: 4 July, HK IVE: 6 July, Michigan: 19 July, Aachen: 22 July, and JU: 30 August.
Challenger (new car: Nuna X) – these are the champions formerly known as Nuon. See their 2017 aftermovie. They have named Tom Salden, Max van der Waals, and Maxime Croft as the new drivers. There has been no word on a car reveal.
Challenger (new team) – their car is a GaAs bullet car resembling Michigan’s 2017 Novum. It looks so good that at this stage I’m calling them “best new team.” There are Dutch media reports about their plans. They revealed their car on 12 June (video).
Challenger (new car: BluePoint) – they have some (top secret) production moulds and are now sponsored by Agoria. They held a mock race with the old car. They will reveal their car on 3 July.
Challenger (new car: Unlimited 3) – they won the American Solar Challenge last year (with their Challenger car Unlimited 2.0). There has been no word on a car reveal.
Challenger (new car: Red E) – they are already producing regular vlogs (in Dutch), and have also produced an (English) day-in-the-life blog post. They have revealed their design, which is a GaAs catamaran (see the animation here). They will run a MOOC explaining the design of their 2015 car, and will reveal their 2019 car on (of course!) 21 June.
Challenger (new team with car: HeartTwo) – their render showed a bullet car, much like Michigan’s 2017 entry, although the chassis suggests outriggers of some kind (with the associated drag issues). They revealed their car on 11 June (pic), but without any really good pictures of the completed vehicle.
Challenger (new car: Axelent) – they have a rolling test chassis, a body, and a battery. The body design seems long and thin. They will reveal their car on 30 August.
Challenger (new car: Eleadora 2) – their new catamaran will look like this. They have made a mould for their body, but the shipping date must be approaching fast.
Challenger (new car: Areej 1) – they had hoped to race at ASC 2018, but did not make it. There has been no word on a car reveal, but progress seems good, and they have both a rolling chassis and a bottom shell. The car name is a pun: AREG/Areej is an acronym for Alfaisal Renewable Energy Group but also means “the scent of a flowery garden” in Arabic.
Cruiser (new team with car: The Golden Bear) – they have removed references to attending the WSC from their website. There has been no word on a car reveal.
Challenger (new car) – they have announced their participation and held a “Solar Team Welcome Party” for new members. They will reveal their car on 27 June.
Challenger (Éclipse X.I) – they came an excellent 3rd in the ASC, 102 minutes behind Western Sydney, and hope to go even faster with the new battery pack in their modified car. Planned improvements are summarised in their winter newsletter.
Cruiser (new team) – their team is a mixture of lecturers and students from five universities across Australia. They have tested a model in a wind tunnel. There has been no word on a car reveal.
I recently re-read the science fiction classic Cities in Flight by James Blish. The galaxy-wide sweep of this four-part novel had stuck with me ever since I first read it as a child – likewise the role of the city that has two names twice. However, I had forgotten that the story opens in what is now our present (2019, with a prelude set in 2013 and a brief reference to an event of 2018). It was interesting to compare Blish’s vision of the future with our reality – where are our planetary outposts, for example? On the other hand, we have already begun forgetting facts, and letting computers remember them for us. Likewise, we have already started automating all “ordinary” jobs.
As an aside, it should be noted that the fourth part of the story, A Clash of Cymbals, was published in the U.S. as the less poetic The Triumph of Time.
The basic premise of this four-part novel is that a newly invented antigravity spacedrive allows cities to lift off into the galaxy and become “Okies” or itinerant labourers. Depressed American steel towns, for example, take off in search of planets with ore that needs refining. People, however, are still people, and not all the cities are friendly.
The writing is classic “hard SF.” There are even differential equations! The plot is heavily influenced by Oswald Spengler and the overall view of humanity is rather pessimistic (though not as pessimistic as some other novels). The second of the four parts, A Life for the Stars, focuses on a teenager (unwillingly) joining the exodus of cities, and thus has the form of a “coming of age” novel. The fourth part, like Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero and some other classic “hard SF,” ends with a sort of Big Crunch/Big Bang (although, as usual, the philosophical implications of a cyclic universe are inadequately explored).
The timeline of the novel spans more than two millennia:
2018: Jovian expedition (in progress as They Shall Have Stars begins)
2019–2021: development of the “spindizzy” antigravity spacedrive and first interstellar expedition (They Shall Have Stars)
2105: fall of the West; earth ruled by Stalinist “Bureaucratic State” (hinted at in They Shall Have Stars)
2310: the Battle of Altair begins the Vegan War, which in turn leads to the formation of the Hruntan Empire
2375: rediscovery of the “spindizzy” on Earth; “Okie” cities begin to spread across the galaxy
2522: collapse of the “Bureaucratic State” on Earth
3111: New York, N.Y. leaves planet Earth (its career in space forms the major part of the novel)
3602: Earth police take action against the remains of the Hruntan Empire (Earthman Come Home)
3975: the Battle of Earth (Earthman Come Home)
4104: the End (A Clash of Cymbals / The Triumph of Time)
As a classic, this novel is well worth a read, in spite of some writing flaws that are obvious on a re-reading. See here for a more detailed review and plot summary. Goodreads rates the combined novel as 3.95 stars, which is consistent with my 3.5 (I have a tougher scale).
The Albi Eco Race 2019 has begun. The solar-car segment (“Niveau 3”) includes Bochum University of Applied Sciences with their legendary 2011 car, SolarWorld GT (top left), as well as their sexy 2015 car, the thyssenkrupp SunRiser (top right; it will make a comeback at WSC later this year) and their 2017 car, the thyssenkrupp blue.cruiser (not shown). The French (or rather, Breton) team Eco Solar Breizh is fielding their challenger Heol and their new urban mini-Cruiser hx2 (bottom). I understand that the Lycée Jehan de Beauce (Project 28) is also participating, along with the fantastic Ardingly Solar team from the UK (who will take their Cruiser to WSC as well).
Edit: it seems that the SolarWorld GTsuffered some damage, which means that only two Bochum cars are competing. Also, hx2 is not competing in the solar-car segment. Below are the speeds from the qualifiers.
Further edit: The thyssenkrupp blue.cruiser won the event on points. The thyssenkrupp SunRiser came second, with 119 laps in 8 hours, i.e. an average of about 53 km/h. Heol from Eco Solar Breizh came third.
From the point of view of getting into the final, it seems to be bad to sing about Heaven (Montenegro, Portugal), war (Croatia, Finland), cell phones (Belgium, Portugal), or cold (Latvia, Poland, Romania). On the other hand, it’s good to sing about lights (Germany, Norway, Sweden).
I recently read Origin, the latest Dan Brown novel. Just about every Dan Brown novel covers topics dear to my heart, such as cryptography, computer simulation, the theory of computation, and artificial intelligence – but also the history of science, the history of Christianity, Dante, and Galileo. Dan Brown routinely promises an accurate depiction of these background topics (in this latest novel, he says “All art, architecture, locations, science, and religious organizations in this novel are real”). However (as I also pointed out for his Angels & Demons), the reality of his novels doesn’t quite live up to this claim. To pick just three examples, Yves Klein did not invent the pigment in International Klein Blue; “Pope Innocent XIV” was an Argentinian antipope, not a Spanish one; and it is not suprising when computer simulations produce results reflecting the assumptions built into their design.
Gaudí’s la Sagrada Família (image credit) plays a major part in the novel. It has been on my bucket list for decades. It still is.
Even as a work of pure fiction, Origin still disappoints. As with Dan Brown’s previous novels, the constant appearance of crazed gunmen doesn’t make up for the plot weaknesses. And a major theme of the novel is artificial intelligence – now, I don’t object to this being portrayed far in advance of current technology (that’s not uncommon in fiction), but the theme of artificial intelligence has been handled far better by (among others) Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick, Michael Crichton, and Peter F. Hamilton. I also found the book’s ending profoundly anticlimactic. However, if you’re a fan of Dan Brown novels, you’ll probably like this one too.
For other reviews, see The Week (“Dan Brown is a very bad writer”), The National (“The idea that a computer simulation would fundamentally destroy the faith of billions in their religions is so utterly, cluelessly juvenile that it seems right at home in a Brown novel”), and The Stream (“It’s sci-fi done by someone who knows nothing about sci-fi”).
