Any idea what amounts we are talking about? Also what would be the R&D budget that went into the "magic bike" versus that of, say, the "Madone 7", or the "P5"? Informed guesses welcome.

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^LOLZ

What a load of waffle

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Good piece on British Cycling success:

http://inrng.com/2012/08/british-cycling-funding/

To be clear, that is the UK budget for Elite cycling only!

Just to go off what I think eleviento is getting at, the bike is in some ways a contrast to the design of lots of engineering driven companies. Obviously they both follow the narrow is aero approach.

But just some examples on how their engineering differs:
UKSI has no the fork/down tube blending, whiich is incredibly common in aero bikes now
Whereas some companies "push" the top tube and down tube apart to create more headtube stiffness, the UKSI bike has them very close at the headtube juncture (this seems to be the weirdest part on the UKSI bike)

Some interesting information here...

I worked in F1 for a couple of years doing CFD. The aerodynamics of a bicycle are much easier to model than the aerodynamics of an F1 car.

An F1 car is basically an inverted jet fighter flying at a large angle of attack with massive amounts of flap. The bargeboards generate vortex lift along the undertray. The large exposed tyres create huge wakes. Any time you have vortices you have very high flow strain rates which make basic turbulence models irrelevant. You have to model the interaction between the vortices off the front wing and bargeboards and how they interact with the tyre wakes with changes in ride heights and yaw angles. Then you have to model the diffuser and any stall and how it changes with ride heights. Then you have to model DRS systems when your purposely stall the wing. And then you have to model how changes in exhaust gase flow-rate through the diffuser affect the entire package.

Compared to this, designing a bicycle for minimum drag is a walk in the park.

Battery powered self-heating cycling shorts.... that's their secret!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... PANTS.html

Are these companies truly 'engineering' companies? Or are they driven to cut costs and increase profitiability?

The UKSI design suggests that you can build a front-end stiff enough using a 1" steerer with proper carbon fibre. If its stiff enough for Mark Cavendish, why are other 'engineering' companies stating that 1 1/2" steerers are a 'must' for satisfactory front-end stiffness?

Could it be that a larger steerer diameter on a fork is much cheaper to lay-up and manufacture?