Month: January 2017

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How Expensive is Formula 1

Posted on by Rubayat M.
formula-1-car

The Formula One came from the European Grand Prix Motor Racing. Grand Prix motor started in France around 1890. After the second world war, Grand Prix racing teams agreed upon to make some changes to the racing industry. That is when the idea of Formula 1 racing was born.

The reason it called Formula 1 or F1 because unlike Grand Prix Motor Racing, Formula 1 maintain some strict guideline or rules. These guideline or rules ware first imposed in 1950. Over the years many of the guidelines has been changed or updated Here are some of the guidelines or rules-

Guideline 1 : Chassis

  • An F1 car can be no more than 180 cm wide and 95 cm tall. There is no rule for maximum length.
  • The car must only have four wheels
  • Front two will be used for steering
  • Rear two will use for drive.
  • The cockpit must survive a 25 kN or 5,600 lbf) of pressure.

Guideline 2 : Engine

Engine size not not allowed to exceed 2.4L. The crankshaft must be made of steel or cast iron. As a matter of fact engine design need to follow the maximum number of guidelines.

Guideline 3 : Refueling

Every car starts with a full tank and refueling is no longer permitted during the race.

Guideline 4 : Tires

Currently there is only one official supplier – Perelli. Tires comes with five difference specification – ultra soft, super soft, soft, medium and hard. Different types of tines can only be used based on track condition. So same type of tire cannot be used in all types track.

Guideline 5 :How Winner is Decided

Winners are decided by number of points. To earn points, driver may not need to complete the race, but 90% of the racing distance must be completed during a race.

Guideline 6 : Communication between Driver and Team

  • Driver must drive the car completely unassisted.
  • Racing teams are prohibited to supply all types of track related information to the driver.
  • Driver need to win and complete the race using his driving skill and cars performance.
  • There are may other guidelines and regulation for safety and standards

 

Drivers License

Formula 1 driving license criteria list is quite long. No one can drive a Formula 1 car without a FIA Super License. To be a Formula 1 driver, one must have long driving experience.Here are few of them –

  • They must be 18 years or older and meet strict performance standards.
  • Driver must an experienced race driver and only one way to do that is to be in the racing industry for long time,
  • Driver must have different type of speed racing experience and must win numerous race. Because this is how they will collect points. Once a driver accumulated certain point they can apply for a formula 1 drivers license.
  • Licenses fess (include all regulatory fees) can go more then US $250000 dollars a year.
formula-1-logo

Formula 1 Official Logo

Speed Record

Gilles-Villeneuve (Canada) 325 km/h (203 mph),
Indianapolis (USA) 335 km/h (210 mph),
Maxium Monza (Italy) 360 km/h (225 mph).

 

Cost of the Car

Cost of the car depends on the team. Teams like Mclaren and Ferrari can spend up-to $500 million in a session. The car itself has many parts and each has it’s individual price. But the engine is the most expensive section. 2011 Mercedes spent $178.6 million on its F1 engine division.

So it all cost of the car depends how much each team is spending on different parts. On an average each formula 1 car can cost more then five million.

Driver’s Salary

Formula 1 is the ultimate goal for a speed car racer and only few can make it. It is the most expensive sporting event. Depends on the racing team, a driver can easily make millions in a years. Here are some of the driver who made big in 2016

  • Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari) – $50 million (£33.4m)
  • Fernando Alonso (McLaren) – $40 million
  • Lewis Hamilton (Mercedez) – $31 million
  • Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull) $5.5 million
  • Pastor Maldonado (Renault) $3.2 million
  • Felipe Nasr (Sauber) $185k

Writer – Rubayat M.

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The last man to walk on the moon has died

Posted on by Rubayat M.

Astronaut Eugene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17 and the last man to walk on the moon, died Jan. 16, 2017. Eugene was a member of a very prestigious club. A club that has only 12 members and they all walked in the moon.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden released a heartfelt message after Eugene’s death.

“Gene’s footprints remain on the moon, and his achievements are imprinted in our hearts and memories. His drive to explore and do great things for his country is summed up in his own words:

‘We truly are in an age of challenge. With that challenge comes opportunity. The sky is no longer the limit. The word impossible no longer belongs in our vocabulary. We have proved that we can do whatever we have the resolve to do. The limit to our reach is our own complacency.’

“In my last conversation with him, he spoke of his lingering desire to inspire the youth of our nation to undertake the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) studies, and to dare to dream and explore. He was one of a kind and all of us in the NASA Family will miss him greatly.”

Read the full NASA message here.

Writer – Rubayat M.

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Problems with Driver-less Car

Posted on by Rubayat M.
Driver-less-Car

In last few years we have notice significant improvement in autonomous car or driver-less car or self-driving car technology. Let me explain what is an autonomous car – “autonomous car/driver-less car/self-driving car is a vehicle that is capable of navigating without human input.”

How it works

Autonomous car is actually a combination of software and hardware. If you compare us, the humans with an autonomous car, then software works as the brain of the body. There are three major parts.

Part 1 – Sensors

These vehicles have multiple sensors. These sensors collect data. These sensors are designed to detect pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles, road work and other movement from a distance in all directions. Collected data then send to the data processing software.

Part 2 – Software

Cars have specialized software that analyze the collected data and then make decision.These highly sophisticated soft-wares are able to predict the behavior of not only the cyclist or other vehicles, but of all the pedestrians in it path and around .

Part 3 – Mechanical

Rest of the body is a typical car. Except with few enhancement. Like the decision made by the analyzing software, is transferred to the car’s driving mechanism through an array of hardware.

The Problems

Driver-less cars are going to be the future. Soon it will be a house hold item. And will replace the human drivers from the public and commercial transportation system. People who work in those industry as drivers, will need to find a new career. But I am not here to talk about the future unemployment issue.
The idea of driver-less car is great but has some serious ethical and legal issue. Unless we have a clear answer of these questions, we need to think carefully about this technology.

Ethical Trust issue

Will the car ever harm or even kill the owner in order to save pedestrians ? In a serious emergency situation, who can stop the car from thinking or deciding, that saving five life (pedestrian at street) is better then saving one life (owner inside the car) ?

Car Maker Company File for Bankruptcy

To be on the road, these cars are need to be connected to various tracking system like GPS satellite, These service is provided by the car maker. Without these tracking system, the car will not be able to move. What if the car maker goes out of business completely, what will happen then ? None of the system will be available for the car to use. Scary part is no body cannot even provide any guarantee, that this will not happen.

When we have some assurance about these question, only then we can we can have full trust on driver-less car. Other wise, driver-less car will nothing but a big inconvenience to us.