Slashdot Mirror
The Bloodhound Will Stay On the Ground At 1,000 mph
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that engineers designing the world's fastest car, the Bloodhound SSC, built to smash the world land speed record of 763 mph set by the Thrust SuperSonic Car in 1997, believe they have a solution to keep the vehicle flat on the ground at 1,000 mph after initial iterations of the car's aerodynamic shape produced dangerous amounts of lift at the vehicle's rear. John Piper, Bloodhound's technical director, said: 'We've had lift as high as 12 tonnes, and when you consider the car is six-and-a-half tonnes at its heaviest — that amount of lift is enough to make the car fly.' The design effort has been aided by project sponsor Intel, who brought immense computing power to bear on the lift problem. Before Intel's intervention, the design team had worked through 11 different 'architectures' in 18 months. The latest modelling work run on Intel's network investigated 55 configurations in eight weeks. By playing with the position and shape of key elements of the car's rear end, the design team found the best way to manage the shockwave passing around and under the vehicle as it goes supersonic. 'At Mach 1.3, we've close to zero lift, which is where we wanted to be,' says Piper. In late 2011, the Bloodhound, powered by a rocket bolted to a Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine, will mount an assault on the land speed record, driving across a dried up lakebed known as Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape of South Africa."
Righto, time to ask the serious questions! But what happens when they hit 88 miles per hour?
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Why don't they make it drive on a treadmill?
Who in their right mind would trust an Intel FPU with their life?
Yeah, it may look like a troll, but some of us remember the FDIV bug.
Every billion, or so, calculations might be wrong, but, since you never know WHICH is wrong in an application, it must be assumed that they ALL are.
I thought we were all waiting for cars that fly. What a terrible waste of money, time and resources!!!
At last!
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Those are both wuss units. Real physicists measure speed in metres per second.
Please do remember that, originally, "car" was any vehicle drawn by animals.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
redshift.
Once again it fails to get off the ground.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I;m sure there is an equivalent of Godwin's Law for stories related to science or technology, regarding the correct size of the kilobyte. :)
Until someone names it though, remember that Hitler would have supported decimal kilobytes
his record would be in doubt. look at the video of his record. Notice how the background seems to keep repeating over and over again.
rewriting history since 2109
This story made me think of the phrase "not enough of him left to fill a matchbox".
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
1. Take rocket
2. Place it horizontal instead of vertical
3. ???
4. Profit!
Hopefully it includes SYNC or some other means of hands-free cell phone use. You know, for that ever-important phone call. Can't really consider it a car until the driver can yak away while driving...