biuld a paddle boat like the old steamers on the mississippi river three times around the lake and you have a winer think the show is graet

-- George M Broadhurst (bhurst@mei.net), January 10, 2001

Answers

Me like.

-- Aaron Brown (jude570@ctcn.net), January 11, 2001.

Human Powered All-terrain vehicles have a great history, All three members of Team Art Aattack are long time "Kinetic Pilots". They got on the show because of their ability to take bicycle parts and make vehilcles capabile of allmost any task. Typically these machines take fare more than ten hours to make however.

-- Gordon Soderberg (gordon@inkpeople.org), January 11, 2001.

human powered amphibians would be workable... the course used would be close to that used for the fireboats, with 2 team members making the out, 2 making the return... approaches usable can be a 2 pontoon tamdem with paddle wheel power, and a trike, with driven front wheel, a 'bathtub' hull,and a prop...

-- mike plant (system@mercury.aic.edu), January 12, 2001.

My thoughts were along the same lines with a few constraints. The twist is that NO propellers or screws are permitted. All machines must be mechanically powered (no sails). This would leave the possible propulsion methods as paddle wheels (stern or side wheel) or water jet from a pump of some sort (centrifugal pump). Others would be possible. Developing a caterpillar drive (Hunt For Red October - movie) would be outside of the range of available design possibilities (not enough time :). Since props are banned, an airboat would be out of bounds UNLESS they used a LARGE squirrel cage blower (no fan or propeller). As for the course, you can work that out. One detail would be to make the course long enough that human power wouldn't quite make it, eliminating simple boats, rafts or canoes with oars. This would mandate mechanical powered boats and force some real engineering design effort.

-- rayb (rayb38@hotmail.com), January 29, 2001.