Slashdot Mirror


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."

2 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. Re:In Britain .. by delphi125 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, I'll bite....

    First of all, a (rifle) bullet would not be able to break the land speed record - it would be travelling through the air.

    Secondly, a (long-range) rifle may have a high exit velocity (muzzle? I am not an expert), but this will only decrease after being shot - the bullet will be slowed down by air resistance.

    Finally, I know that laser pointers shout around 1c (speed of light), so it wouldn't be too hard to... oh wait, perhaps it IS hard? Perhaps that is why this is a record 20 years old being rebroken?

    Please feel free to think before you next post.

  2. Re:Metric Conversion by your_mother_sews_soc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sure we could take care of this using XML (or maybe not - I am ingorant in the area of XML). But if the W3C had included some "weights and measures" tags in the HTML standard then we could leave it up to the browser and/or client OS to apply localization rules and perform the proper conversions.

    Just a thought, but does anyone know of this was ever suggested?

    --
    My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.