[TAG] need information about sylpheed-claws

[Benjamin A. Okopnik]

On Sat, Apr 16, 2005 at 09:17:44PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 04:30:47PM -0600, Benjamin A. Okopnik wrote:
> > Actually, in my mid-teen years, I "invented" an inflatable car that
> > would go a long way toward that scenario.  Seriously. Did the research,
> > found out what it would take... looking back at it today, it's still
> > quite a reasonable proposition. It was an ACV, of course; tapped the
> > engine output to inflate and deflate (via a tiny two-chamber extraction
> > pump) the passenger compartment. You could stack these things, deflated,
> > on top of each other, in your garage or whatever.  Steered via a
> > joystick, *way* safer than a regular case in case of an accident... very
> > simple design, but - alas, I've never had the cred in that world or the
> > money/desire to do it myself. Oh well.
> 
> And it acts like bubble-wrap if you get in a crash.  Neat.

Hopefully without the popping sound :) - but yes, that was the idea. I
actually foresaw teenagers hotwiring the family car and playing
bumper-cars/wreck rally... us humans mis-use everything to its highest
capacity, but that one didn't seem to be nearly as bad as doing the same
with the metal boxes we've got now. Given that the energy of impact
(i.e., kinetic energy, KE=1/2mV^2) is *very* strongly dependent on
deceleration time - which, /ceteris paribus/, is strongly dependent on
the amount of 'give' in the colliding bodies - these cars would be
*much* safer than pretty much any other car on the road today.


* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://linuxgazette.net *