Thank you Robin, Sparky, Sid, Milwaukee Midget, entropy, joea, and Tom,
for your responses.
I admit I was angry when I learned that the World Finals were cancelled.
I'm still angry, but not as much now. It's more like frustration. I do understand
about the "business/money" stuff (used to be a businessman myself. It wasn't
easy) . . .
If SCTA doesn't expect good salt a month from now, it appears to me that a
HUGE factor here is lack of salt. Moisture, of course, is a different issue that
certainly plays its own huge role.
While I do encourage all concerned to help get salt returned to the flats, I also
suggest that we do some thinking about other venues (longer than 8 miles).
I got interested in drag racing about 1966. At the time, there were 1/4 mile and
1/2 mile drag strips. Don't know whether any 1/2 mile drag strips exist any more,
as the length seems to keep getting shorter. What used to be 1/4 mile has been
changed to more like 1000 ft. (was 1320), and at least one 1/4 mile track I raced
at is now only 1/8 mile.
Compared to a large place like Bonneville, I can't get as excited by a one-mile, 1.3 mile,
or 1 1/2 mile top speed event (although I enjoyed watching the Mojave mile-and-a-half
in April this year, and El Mirage's 1.3 miles before that).
I am not denying the facts, such as encroaching population/economic pressures that
make it more and more difficult for land speed racing to happen on long courses. And
I'm trying hard to not criticize Intrepid. I'm willing to give them the benefit of any doubt
regarding returning brine to the salt flats . . . although I think Intrepid and their
predecessors are the ones whose actions most affected how much salt remains there.
I believe now that much effort and money will be required to "refurbish" the Bonneville
salt flats to make it suitable again for racing (with, say, 11 miles of "good" salt). I don't
claim to have many answers regarding how; it has been suggested that salt from the
general area be "concentrated" onto a "race course", having thicker salt -- and sides to
keep the salt contained. This sounds reasonable to me, although the brine may still tend
to soak deeper and deeper into the underlying ground, eventually being insufficient.
Maybe some other venues can be "developed" (or at least investigated) for land speed
racing purposes. For example, what do we know about Diamond Valley in Nevada? Is it
a suitable surface (salt? dried mud? how wet?) for land speed racing? How accessible is
it? It seems to be pretty close to Interstate 50. Is it private or public land? Does the
BLM let people onto it? Has any jet car team contacted the BLM about this?
There's also a dry(?) lakebed about 20 miles east of Lovelock, Nevada. What do we know
about this?
I imagine that somebody could conceivably build a paved raceway, say 12 miles long
and 100 ft. wide. I don't know how much it would cost to buy the property for this,
but after the purchase is a done deal, construction would only cost about $100 million
per mile. What are we waiting for?
More realistic, perhaps, would be some discussion related to the actual ground
surface at Bonneville (even if the salt is thin or relatively non-existent). Can vehicles
race safely on a mixture of dried mud and salt / salty dried mud? What would this
require? Of course, this presumes that people are still allowed to do this.
tallguy