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Land Speed Record Broken: 0-6,400 in Six Seconds
linuxwrangler writes "Researchers at Holloman AFB have broken their own two decades old land speed record for rail vehicles. The rocket powered sled covered the 3 mile track in roughly 6 seconds. Preliminary numbers put the sled's speed at mach 8.6 or about 6,400 mph - it covered the last 1.8 miles in just 1.3 seconds. The previous record of 6,122 mph was set on Oct. 5, 1982. Other accounts are at the Alamogordo Daily News, the Denver Post, and CNN."
Apparently First Great Western trains (that's a UK train company, for those not in the know) have begun trialling this technology for their mainline service between Bristol and London.
Theoretically the time for this journey could be cut to just over a minute, but taking into account the breaking zone needed, and the areas of 'slow track' where the train runs at 30Mph maximum, the estimated time for this journey would be somewhere in the region of 2 hours; a marked 5 minute saving in time.
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Signs of nervousness in the Syrian leadership as the US announce they intend to build a new high speed rail link between Baghdad and Damascus as a gesture of goodwill.
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Who in the World would use METRICS? Such a complicated system where you have to *add* and *remove* 0's to convert?
No, it's _way_ easier to remember that there's 5280 feet on the mile and 202 US gallons on the cubic yard. Who can remember that there's 1000 meters on the kilometer? Or 1000 liters on the cubic meter? How non-standard is that?
Besides, who else than the rest of the World uses metric anyway?
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Are there even human beings "driving" it? No: My bet is on 6th generation space worms driving it...
Well, that's how they did it--they just took the same sled design from 1982 and painted "Type-R" on it to get it to go faster.
--- Jason Olshefsky
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Damn straight.
That's why I always quote my gasoline mileage in inverse acres.
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6400 MPH should be enough for anyone.
"Researchers at Holloman AFB have broken their own 6.49 x 10^8 seconds old land speed record for rail vehicles. The rocket powered sled covered the 4.8 x 10^3 meter track in roughly 6 seconds. Preliminary numbers put the sled's speed at Mach 8.6 or about 2.86 x 10^3 meters per second - it covered the last 2.9 x 10^3 meters in just 1.3 seconds. The previous record of 2.74 x 10^3 meters per second was set at 1982-10-05 . Other accounts are at the Alamogordo 8.64 x 10^4 secondly News, the Denver Post, and CNN."
There, that's much better, right?