Slashdot Mirror
Landshark
An anonymous reader writes "This has got to be, or will be when they actually make one, the coolest amphibious vehicle around. It's a cross between a motorcycle and a jet ski, and it seats three. It can travel at 200 mph on land and 50 mph on water. Just what you need to get you from point A to point B."
If you drive into the water at 200MPH it will get messy
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
(knock knock on the door)
"Who is it?"
(mumbles)
"Who?"
"Unicef"
"Oh, why didn't you say that before!"
(landshark attacks woman who opens the door)
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
A boat is designed to be a wing. You want the least amount of boat in the water that you possibly can, so you construct it to lift up and out the faster you go. But on land, you want the vehicle to press down onto the ground, the opposite direction as in the water.
Like the space shuttle, this "landshark" sounds like it was engineered for coolness and not from genuine requirements.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Lady: Who is it?
... you're.. that crazy shark aren't you?
Landshark: Plumber.
Lady: I didn't hire a plumber. Who is it!?
Landshark: Flowers.
Lady: What... for who
Landshark: Plumber
Lady:
Landshark: No maam, I am just a dolphin.. will you let me in please?
Lady: A dolphin! Ok!
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
...apparently this motorcycle/jetski thingie can't outrun the slashdot effect.
Reading that last line on Landshark's homepage, I can only think of the next round of Darwin awards and wonder if should inform Mr. Baker of his nomination. ;)
Here's the google cache if you need it
The combined drive system is really clever, but I wonder how it will hold up... The impeller is mounted on the drive wheel, the wheel moves over the uneven surface of the road, and adsorbs shocks from all the bumps, so what I want to know is: how the heck are you going to build impeller seals that will hold up to that and still hold a tight tolerance?
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
If you just paint the thing black you will have a nifty Batman like toy. It looks like a veicle that only a supper hero would drive, not that that's wrong or eny thing. I think that the design would make an amazing remot controled veicle.
New thinkgeek blurb:
Do you want to scare your co-workers, destroy litle boats in park ponds, or just send mesages ashore from your house boat? Then this is the best thing that you'll ever want NEW MINI SHARK
Simple answer - Traffic. i live in Dublin near the coast. To travel to work every morning takes an hour and a half. With something like this I could be in work in 25 minutes by crossing Dublin Bay and travelling up the canal.
Although, somehow I doubt you'd ever get up to 200mph on any road in Dublin!
Gopher
Just you're average nitpicker.
Poor guy. I bet you never used to draw outside the lines as a child and your apples were always colored red and the sky blue.
"TEEACHER! Johnny colored his apple purple!!!"
Actually, the current land speed record holder is a three-wheeled gas turbine powered vehicle. Two wheels up front and a pair of co-linear wheels in the rear.. They had some stability issues at the prototype stage, but the car that they ultimated ran worked fine..
not passing us safety requirements. here's an article about that problem:
r .a sp
http://www.motorway.com/home/articles/amphibica
and a picture:
http://www.hemmings.com/images/amphicar.jpg
YES, there is a McDonald's in Hanoi Square.
Also note that practically nobody uses an SUV for the kinds of things an SUV is capable of. I know Landrover owners you *freak* if they get mud on it... wtf did they buy a Landrover for, then?
As for betting from A to B... who would use this for a daily vehicle? Recreation, definately, but recreational vehicles aren't genarally used for 'A to B' travel.
+4 Neat, +0 Useful
=Smidge=
That is about the most useful purpose of this thing is. :)
cutting me off at exit ramps because they couldn't see the sign.
Logically then, this should be called a Duckling. That's a far cry from a land shark.
Besides, what would you use to fence them in? :P
You can easily keep ducks in with chicken wire.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Note to landshark guys: It aint a turbine unless you're extracting power from the flow. In your case it's just a centrigual pump. Mount a forward pointing scoop that directs flow down the axis of the pump, then collect _all_ the radial flow and direct it out the exit.
PS. You are driving this thing with the equivalent of the guts of an air-raid siren. How appropriate.
Notice how there are no real pictures of this thing on the site? That's because the fine print says that it currently exists only as a "1/3rd scale clay model." The history page goes right up to the point (over a year ago) when they were trying to turn that model into a working ... 1/3rd model. Huh, I'll bet I know why the history stops there.
Most revealing line from the history: "Oct 2000, work put on hold as promised investment fails to materialise." That's because the investors realized this guy is smoking crack for all kinds of reasons.
Hey, I gotta clay model that'll do 60 mph on water and 240 on land. Really, honestly. It'll be roling off the lot just as soon as I get the funding. Can I get linked by Slashdot too?
is the trunk big enough to fit my Segway ?
This project will fail. Period. And I don't mean because of engineering problems (ie actually getting the damn thing to work). It will fail because of one simple rule that applies to almost all inventions of this type: Any device that attempts to do two completely different things will do neither of them well. Prime example: The "spork"- how many do you own?
I'd rtfa but the bugger's slashdotted.
.29 Cd vehicle, with a TON of aero work can do this pretty calmly. Take that exact same envelope to 195 or so and it's aerodynamics are no longer adequate to task, it's gets pretty hairy handling. (and takes 575 hp...more than the neon because it punches a bigger hole in the air, and there are differences in driveline efficency and gearing)
;)
be that as it may, it's _extremely_ difficult to make a vechicle do 200mph sustained. You can do it one of two ways:
a)Serious Cubic Horsepower
b)Serious Aerodynamic design
If you choose 'a' above, be prepared to generate 600+ hp, also be prepared to protect your occupant when the vehicle loses directonal stability.
If you choose 'b' above, you may be able to get along with significantly less hp (400-500), but be prepared to spend cubic dollars renting a wind tunnel, or hardware/software to perform a lot of number crunching.
Remember, HP goes up with the _cube_ of speed change. If your car does 150mph with a 215hp motor (Turbo Neon, this month's Road n track) and you want it to go 1.33 times faster, it'll take 1.33^3*215hp or 505hp to make 200 mph...
An additional datapoint: My vette has done 168mph with 350 crank hp (automatic, nevada, coupla thousand feet above sealevel, so figure some hp loss there.) So a
You go ahead, I'll watch from a safe distance.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
It can travel at 200 mph on land and 50 mph on water. Just what you need to get you from point A to point B.
/dev/null.
Nope. That's the fastest way to get you from point A to
My goodness people, can't you see humour when it's staring you right in the face. Did you not read the line "What will be next? Internet access for telephones?". Come on now, get up from the keyboard, but the coffee/jolt down, spend an hour with your girlfriend/boyfriend/hand/other device, get some sleep, go outside (don't forget the sunblock) and enjoy a real life for a little while before you come back and reply to posts again.
have any of you ever done 200 mph on a bike? The fastest I've ever gone was upwards of 130 on a friends gsxr750 (hwy 1 doesn't have a long enough straight away in the 10 miles north of santa cruz so I couldn't get it going any faster), and let me tell you that it's no picnic. It's kinda hard to imagine exactly how fast that is. I mean we've all gone faster than that in airplanes, but when you're on the ground, and you realize that a squirrel running in front of you will turn you in to a meat torpedo. It's pretty fucking scary.
I can't even imagine going to 200 mph on a bike with tires set for water. that would just be insane
I doubt top speed will be 50. I've owned Jet Skis, and one thing you learn about is cavitation, and something call the Scoop Grate.
Basically, the stock setup that came with my KW-650SX goes barely 40Mph. But it was because at 40Mph, not enough water is going through the impeller. So, with the simple addition of an after market scoop grate, I added about 3Mph (All it did was lower the scoop about 1/4 an inch. I got another 2Mph out of a stainless steel prop, and anouth 2Mph out of a new ride plain.
Pulling in water as it passes alog the side of a wheel just won't work.
It's a really cool design though to have the wheels sucking in water to pump out, but he really needs to redesign. Basically, you need to scoop the water in.
Also, since it's a fairly heavy thing, it can actually go faster on water that 50Mph because of the added stability. My stand-up jet-ski weighs about 260lbs and at 46Mpg its a not a pleasure cruise, but on a heavier 550lbs waverunner it is a pleasure to cruise at even 50Mph.
Rethink the water intake to something more direct and it'll go more like 75-95 on water. Horseopower isn't the issue, fluid dynamics is.
Three wheeled recreational all-terrain-vehicles (ATV's) were very popular in the 1980's, until people got tired of broken arms and collar bones from when they rolled in sharp turns. Almost all of the ATV's sold today are four wheelers.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Yay. Hundreds of SUV owners use their SUVs in some close approximation of how the television tells them it should be used.
Compare that to the thousands who use them almost exclusively to commute, pick up groceries, or take the kids to soccer practice.
Not to mention the whole debate you hinted at--that these vehicles aren't actually even appropriate for the kind of use that the television proposes. Or the debate about whether or not the drivers are properly qualified for these fantastical depictions of "extreme driving".
Your Landrover website aside, the trend seems to be as follows: Your television tells you to buy the SUV for its extreme driving capability. You do what you television tells you to do, and then use the SUV almost exclusively for mundane driving tasks.
Meanwhile, companies like Subaru and Volvo are making AWD cars that not only have superior extreme driving capabilities, but have smaller footprints, better mileage, better price points, and significantly less emissions.
I have no patience for your Landrover enthusiasts. The amount of money they're spending to bounce over muddy tussocks is laughable. The visual obstruction they pose on the highway, and the level of pollution they contribute in pursuit of their own amusement, promptly drains all the humor out of the situation. Go offroad all you want. I'm not against having fun. But keep your over-sized, gas-guzzling, luxury follies the fuck away from my commute.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.