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The Car Faster Than a Speeding Bullet
pbahra writes "Formula 1 is seen as the apogee of engineering excellence and automotive power. So it says something that in Bloodhound SSC — the car that, if all goes well, in 2013 will shatter the current land speed record — the Cosworth Formula 1 engine is just the fuel pump. 'We are creating the ultimate car; we're going where no-one has gone before,' said Richard Noble, the project director. The car, which Mr. Noble says takes £10,000 a day just to keep it ticking over, will be powered by not one, but two other engines. The smaller one, the EJ200, is normally found in the British Royal Air Force's Typhoon jet. Its job is to get the 13.4 meter long car up to 350 mph. That's when the big one kicks in. The big one is the 18-inch diameter, 12-foot-long Falcon rocket, the largest of its kind ever made in the UK. Its job is to catapult the car through the sound barrier to its maximum speed of 1,050 mph. That is, literally, faster than a speeding bullet."
1050 miles per hour, at 1 foot per gallon.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The big one is the 18-inch diameter, 12-foot-long Falcon rocket, the largest of its kind ever made in the UK.
A rocket. On a car. Now why does that sound like a terrible idea?
That's a good use our our civilization's precious natural resources. Sorry, but I hate cars, and I hate spending money maintaining the infrastructure that makes them practical (e.g. without tons of Gov't funds for roads, oil subsidies, etc cars wouldn't have caught on).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
My God
The real challenge is not getting a vehicle to go that speed... It's getting a vehicle to stay on the ground and under control at that speed.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
LYTTE KVIIL! Bleeiiigggh!
I remember my dad telling me a story about a guy who affixed some jet-motor to his car out in the salt-flats. After engaging the motor and going for the land speed record, the car went airborne (he lost all breaking and steering naturally, flying him miles further than he thought and straight into a cliff wall.
All they recovered of him was some particulate bio-mass in the steering wheel, mostly finger-nail fragments. Hopefully these folks have an airborne contingency plan, for 1050mph is pretty unforgiving (thats faster than almost all commercial airliners fly). Just the bow shock alone on the desert floor seems like it will cause stability issues.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
1050 MPH? Thats not very fast for a bullet.
Well, maybe it is fairly good for a pistol.
But it is about half the speed of a 5.56mm NATO round from an M-16.
If there's anything that can make a triple jet powered car cooler, it's launching it up off a ramp.
...one of the oldest, most famous (and frankly, most blatantly obvious) email hoaxes of all time, or are you well aware it's a hoax and simply trying to perpetuate it?
I'm tending towards the latter. There can't be more than five people left on the internet who *don't* know this story's rubbish any more, surely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO_Rocket_Car
Wait, wait, wait - so what happens if I fire a speeding bullet from the car while the car is in motion?
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Formula 1 is seen as the apogee of engineering excellence and automotive power.
F1 may be the pinnacle of engineering excellence (though Le Mans racers may give 'em a run for the their money...?), but in terms of raw "automotive power," NHRA Top Fuel has F1 beat by an order of magnitude (F1 ~ 1k bhp, Top Fuel ~ 10k bhp).
True, a dragster may not be able to run for more than a few seconds without blowing up, but that's beside the point...
This is a missile with wheels.
I would consider it to be a car if it had a transmission, could idle, turn, stop and go again.
This "car" is ignite, hold on to dear life, and stop when the fuel runs out or you crash.
That'll cut down on the commute, but what's the CO2?
might we say the only diff between something like this and a plane is that it has wheels that stay on the ground (hopefully!). It's got surfaces tuned for precise lift (or lack thereof), jet engines, and stabilizing fins.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Also of interest, is the Australian Competitor. The "Aussie Invader" team is attempting to beat the Brits, while using a fraction of the budget.
I met Nobel and Andy the pilot/driver when Thrust SSC was going and they are both very enthusiastic, utterly committed to breaking land speed records and madder than a sack of badgers. Green said the weirdest thing about the whole drive was dealing with the brain's capacity to process relative speed, or rather the lack of ability to do so. At the end of the run he'd found himself getting ready to brake hard as the vehicle felt like it was going slowly enough and found he was still going around 400mph.
This reminds me of the many times I watched in fascination as I burned a plastic model I had built but no longer held my fancy. Really, is he going to wear a Wyle E. Coyote suit?
I hate to be the one to say it, but this does seem utterly pointless.
Not in the "we should be spending money on hospitals" sense, but rather "all you're doing is taking a rocket and trying to cripple its flying tendencies". There are so many more cool inspire-the-kids (which is the nominal point) projects they could do! Here are some crazier and more cool ideas I just had:
* A manned quadrocopter.
* A massive computer-controlled Archimedes mirror.
* An Asimov-style multi-speed travelator.
* A Back to the Future hover-board using active magnetic levitation.
Those would all be way more awesome than "Oh its a rocket with wheels attached". /rant.
At a bit over 1,500 fps, it's slower than most rifles and well under half the speed of some of the speedier calibers.
That is one slow bullet. Faster than a very slow bullet maybe, this is only modern pistol round velocities. Heck, some pistols like the FN Five-seven chuck rounds faster than this.
In my opinion, just because a rocket has wheels doesn't make it a car.
So the job of the 800 break horse power internal combustion engine is to deliver fuel into the rocket engine (not the jet engine). But the rocket is a solid fuel booster (essentially a glorified fireworks motor). Err wait, what? What do you need a fuel pump for a solid fuel rocket booster?
Experiments and other stuff
I've never been overly impressed with rocket car speeds. They're basically planes (or rockets) with as much down force as possible to keep it on the ground. Almost the same way the fastest person in athletic walking wont get too much respect.
See how fast you can get a vehicle by turning wheels. Then we can call that the fastest car.
What's the point, I guess. I guess that is what cliff walls are for, eh?
Technology that can be used to fly should not count for LAND-speed records. Strapping freaking jet engines and rockets onto a car and keeping it from lifting off just makes it a jet-rocket that never lifts off.
Is something like this really a car? The only thing it has in common is tires. If I strap tires to a whale, would that also be a car?
If you cannot drive it through normal city traffic, can it really be considered a car? This thing would have problems just avoiding tall buildings, shorter ones would just be flown over.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The Brits have always made the best engines in the world. Look at the history of Rolls Royce if you've any doubt about that - e.g. the only thing that gave Russian jets a chance in the Korean war was the fact that all our technology was donated to them.
Apart from the odd party piece like this car, we are nowhere now. Put that down to the inept policies of Thatcher and successive idiotic administrations.
I've just been scrolling through some of the comments above. "Why bother?" "Spend money on hospitals!" "What are we going to learn from this?" "This isn't really a car because the power isn't going through the wheels." "Waste of money!" "There are cooler projects to spend money on!"
You know what? Get over yourselves!
Every time I see a cool story posted on /. I find myself bracing for the impact of a squillion know-it-all comments about how useless it is from the usual armchair "I call bullshit" merchants who think they have all the answers to all the world's problems. Oftentimes it's American commenters from the "not invented here" lobby who want to pull a World Cup defence and say "Well it's a bullshit competition anyway so we don't care if we get whipped!" Grow the fuck up! The Brits have made the land speed record their own and I for one tip my hat to them. It's a great way to inspire kids to get involved in engineering, just like your toy with the heavy wings and expensive heat shield up there at the minute.
So the UK government is pushing a sponsorship-funded R&D project that doesn't have immediate commercial payoff. Big deal! What would you prefer to spend the money on? Another day in Iraq?
Jesus wept! Can we not have a story posted on here anymore without having to wade through all this obnoxious crap?
Oh, and I have karma to burn, so knock yourself out if you don't like a bit of straight talking.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Strictly speaking, the F1 engine is actually the oxidiser pump for the hybrid rocket engine - it runs the peroxide pump.
(i'll go back and lock myself in the basement now)
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
Pilot-in-training: "So my landing went well, don't you think?"
Flight Instructor: "Yes, but you forgot one thing. You are supposed to slow down before we land. We are now doing Mach 1, on the ground."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
this thing is sooo 80ies...
Free to do what we want that does not harm others. Free to express ourselves. Free to take risks. Free to just do it because no one else has done it before.
Sure the results are not useful, but is racing useful? Are any spectator sports useful? It all comes down to, did someone enjoy it, did someone find the technical limitations they had to engineer around interesting? There are many reasons to do this and I am sure many others not to do it. Yet where is the harm? Before someone screams "THE ENVIRONMENT" - go shove it, I really think there are bigger fish to fry than this.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The comparison to Formula 1, or any other kind of racing car, is ridiculous. This baby may be fast, but like bullets, it cannot turn (oh, yes, Oswald's could, I hear you say, whatever...). No, seriously. Putting aside the funny limitations the FIA adds to the rules every year. It's amazing these cars can even run! But at least they can make a turn...
Your vote is for mediocrity. Duly noted. Please drive through. Nothing to see, for you.
Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds
Your vote is for mediocrity. Duly noted. Please drive through. Nothing to see, for you.
Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds
Its about land speed record now, but it was about the sound barrier a few years ago - this SSC series cars this guy has made - they were pursuing breaking sound barrier.
.....
They were claiming that sound barrier wasnt broken on land, because the device that did it (budweiser rocket) had 3 wheels and didnt run a full course of some distance back and forth in some given amount of time. Budweiser rocket's record was determined with an air force radar.
The catch is this, these rules are the rules of british association of motor sports or cars or something. apparently, some people somewhere have the opinion that breaking sound barrier should happen on 4 wheels, and a round circu
aah never mind. as you can understand, like any other sane people on the face of the planet, i dont give a flying fuck about what some bunch of people who banded as an association somewhere think - sound barrier is going over ~340m/s, and a 3 wheeled rocket powered device has broken it long before anyone else.
im saying this, even tho im not american. so, go figure.
Read radical news here
F1 may be the pinnacle of engineering excellence
http://jalopnik.com/#!373884/f1-boss-max-mosley-caught-with-five-hookers-in-nazi-orgy-video-scandal
True, a dragster may not be able to run for more than a few seconds without blowing up
Well, how true that fits into this context.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Formula 1 is seen as the apogee of engineering excellence and automotive power.
Formula 1 is the apogee of engineering excellence, but that's engineering excellence under the restrictions on car development imposed by the FIA. As a consequence of those restrictions it's very easy to build a car that's better than a Formula 1 car. There are limits on the aero package and the engine size, for example. Features like traction control are banned and so on.
The FIA imposes restrictions on car development for three reasons:
1. Safety. So drivers can walk away from this sort of thing with just a few bruises: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIAG8DvUc9c
2. To promote good racing (i.e. making the races are competitive and unpredictable).
3. Cost control. Formula 1 imposes cost limits to ensure that the larger teams don't just out spend the smaller teams in car development.
If you don't have a thing that generates forward thrust by exerting backward force on the ground, you do not have a car. This is a rocket that drags along the ground. I wonder what the land speed record for actual cars is.
The British battle cruiser HMS Hood burned 7 tons per hour at 15 knots, 70 tons per hour at 32 knots. British engines of that era were notoriously inefficient compared to US engines, I think about one half.
(back of the envelope slackness in operation)
One ton is 2000 pounds, 7 tons is 14000 pounds. One hour is 3600 seconds, which goes into 14000 four times, 4 pounds a second. One gallon is six pounds, so 2/3 gallon. One knot is 2 feet per second. So 30 feet for 2/3 gallon or 45 feet per gallon. Double the efficiency is 90 feet per gallon. 45K tons battle cruiser vs 80K ton aircraft carrier with even better engines and hull form is probably a wash (power required is not linear with displacement).
Naw, way off, 960 inches per gallon, two orders of magnitude.
Of course I probably screwed this up. But what the heck. Post corrections here!
Infuriate left and right
I mean, we get supersonic vehicle to stay on the ground at speeds where it would most definitely rather fly. It's not all that useful. We develop air drag model and shape for a vehicle which has no practical purpose, nor ever will. We spend lots of money and resources just to develop a variant of a jet plane we forcibly keep from flying, for no good reason but to call it a "car" and beat a "ground" speed record.
Actually "we" don't get anything and "we" don't do anything. They are going to do it, they will pay for it, they will have all the frustration and fun, and they will get the bragging rights. You can go do whatever you think is useful like complain about other people being wasteful.
It's their money, their hobby, their time. It's nobody else's business.
Infuriate left and right
There is no real need to have "spam in a can".
I think they got this real time (remote) control thing down pretty good now.
It's all fun and games until something augurs in.
Can someone help by explaining this "car" thing with a computer analogy?
is Toyota sponsoring the brakes?
if so 400 mph might go for a while....
Not driven by wheels: check
Touching the ground at all times: check
Railed vehicles can be interesting. And since they've already gone faster this attempt is all about staying on the ground.
Mach 8.5 record for unmanned.
Only 630-something mph manned, but with an open cockpit!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_railed_vehicles#Rocket_sled
I'd be more impressed if they could break the sound barrier while delivering the power through the wheels. Mechanically would be amazing, electric motors would still be pretty neat. Not sure if either would actually be possible.
but not faster than a speeding ticket. 8-/
The fastest car in the world: Apollo 10.
Hit a verified 39,897 km/h on May 26, 1969.
Yeah, just a plane that doesn't take off, waste of resources, yada, yada.
I feel the same way sometimes; but if you don't want to do this, is there an alternative that's potentially productive, yet still satisfies the "need for speed"?
How about 143 mph with a 50cc engine
Of course, I'm sure that to some people both of these things will seem silly. I find the 50cc more interesting; because it's something I might actually be able to finance if I really wanted it. The point is though, whether you're horking a huge jet engine onto a car, or putting really tall gears on a 50cc, you never know what you might learn from it.
The space race had the biggest rockets after all, and arguably the very computer you're typing on is a spinoff from the space race.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Oh. Wait...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Whatever they learn will have NO practical application.
It's just a wealthy Brit playing with money, in the same manner
as the Campbells did. And I would not be surprised if it comes to
a similar end.
You obviously don't pay attention. How could an AC have a UID? harryfeet at least uses his eyes.
Infuriate left and right
I nerdgasmed over this. Made my day.
If someone can get this to actually work, it may save lives in the future! http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1995-04.html Sorry...
- If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? - Steven Wright
Really?
1050 mph = 1540 ft/s = 470 m/s
Faster than most handgun bullets, yes, but rifles routinely launch bullets at twice (or more) that speed.
Assuming I'm doing the math correctly 1050 MPH is only 1540 feet per second. That's half again as fast as a typical .22. The current crop of "speeding bullets" is pushing around 4200 f/s.
That's only about 1/6 the way through the speed range of a typical bullet. I'd say when you get to 5/6 of the higher end you can begin calling it "speeding".
It wouldn't be speeding if it wasn't breaking that limit now, would it?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Aside from the obvious engineering research benefits that Richard Noble and his predecessors such as Craig Breedlove have brought about, in addition to the decades-long tradition of high-speed research at Daimler (Benz had built a diesel engine capable of speeds in excess of 200mph in the 1920's, and used these vehicles often to test high speed safety features including crumple zones, ABS and airbags, the first two which they had made standard)... but here's a fun fact for those questioning the noteworthiness of 1050mph as it relates to bullets...
35 years ago, in 1976, the SR-71A Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft broke the world speed record for a fixed-wing aircraft (excluding rocket-powered types, e.g. Bell X-15) at 2193 mph (3216 ft/sec). That is faster than the muzzle velocity of a .30-06 bullet (2910 ft/sec max).
It is NOT a piston driven engine, so who cares about a grounded jet engine.
This ran in the 19th Century south from Exeter and along part of the south devon coast.
The big problem was the sealing of the tube.
There is still one of the pump houses standing at Torcross
The 10k pound budget must be because of the speeding tickets
Bullets tend to topple with wind gusts, when they hit the ground they spiral madly and ricochet. (e.g. the largest footage of speedboat accidents) If the design works, the miracle engineering will not be in the motors(Jets) but in the wheel bearing (electromagnetically suspended...I dunno) miracle bearings. As many have learned from powerful guns with short barrels....power is nothing without control.
I'm worried who in the world will drive a F1 car with an engine of a RAF Typhoon inside it, maybe Michael Schumacher? I mean, it's quite silly, in a good way. 1,050 MPH is a hell of a speed, but it cannot outrun maybe the velocity of an upcoming M1 Garand.
I admire the zeal that people have when it comes to setting new records. But really, is this necessary? I would be more interested in seeing them build a "car" that uses sunlight to recharge and then gets mom around town dropping off and picking up kids, buying groceries and running miscellaneous errands. I think momentum and mass were overlooked when I want to get this thing to the grocery store. Besides where do i park it.
Sounds like a rocket with wheels on it. Hardly qualifies as a "car" IMHO.