Book Of Norm

Directly Downwind Faster Than the Wind. This simple idea has caused massive arguments all across the internet and academia. It got ugly. Notables such as the director of the Lawrence Livermore national lab declared that such machine would violate the laws of physics and banned the group who proved it did work from speaking at Berkley. Personally, this did not seem like a big deal to me - when I first read it, I didn't think it was all that crazy. Sailboats regularly go faster than the wind - they do so by using apparent wind and lift from the sails. Of course - they do this best going across or against the wind at an angle, where the apparent speed really works: no known sailboat can go faster than the wind, directly downwind. But to me, it seemed relatively simple: make a machine where the sails are always operating as if they were traveling across the wind, not down wind. In other words, equip your car/boat/iceboat with a windmill and the "sails" are always traveling ac...

Directly Downwind Faster Than the Wind. This simple idea has caused massive arguments all across the internet and academia. It got ugly. Notables such as the director of the Lawrence Livermore national lab declared that such machine would violate the laws of physics and banned the group who proved it did work from speaking at Berkley. Personally, this did not seem like a big deal to me - when I first read it, I didn't think it was all that crazy. Sailboats regularly go faster than the wind - they do so by using apparent wind and lift from the sails. Of course - they do this best going across or against the wind at an angle, where the apparent speed really works: no known sailboat can go faster than the wind, directly downwind. But to me, it seemed relatively simple: make a machine where the sails are always operating as if they were traveling across the wind, not down wind. In other words, equip your car/boat/iceboat with a windmill and the "sails" are always traveling ac...