Land speed record!!!!!!!!!! Wow

[Dave Vince]

Think your'e fast or a Top Fuel Dragster is fast or the SR 71 Blackbird is fast.
Check this out. The World Land Speed Record, or air for that matter, is 6,453 miles per hour. It was performed at the Holloman high speed test track in New Mexico on April 30, 2003.
It was done on rails with a 4 stage rocket making over 200,000 lbs. of thrust per stage. It was accelerating at 150G or 150 times the force of gravity. You would have to be picked up with a blotter if you rode in something with that kind of force.
It was done on a rail that is level to 25 thousands along its whole length, in a Helium filled plastic tube, (to reduce friction and drag). It was hooked to the rail with a shoe like device that wrapped around the track, so it wouldn't leave the earth.
At 150G of acceleration it would complete the 1/4 mile in well under 1 second.

[bru333]

Video of it

Dialup warning: 9.1 MB

http://www.46tg.af.mil/images/HUPLA.mpg

46th Test Group site:

http://www.46tg.af.mil/

[Rhode Island Red]

I'm impressed.

There are ideas on the books that in the future, odds are a mag-lev train system enclosed within a vacuum tube track will be able to traverse entire oceans under an hour. The speeds possible in a vacuum are absolutely mind boggling (think 1000's of mph)

Odds are what we saw here is development testing purposes of new delivery system for ordinance/armor. Very cool It just reminds me of an extreme engineering episode where the train in a vacuum idea was proposed

[Dave Vince]

bru333

Thanks for the video.

[Nightrage]

My LT1 has more low end torque than that!

That was really cool, for the 4 seconds it lasted lol

[MarkFL]

...At 150G of acceleration it would complete the 1/4 mile in well under 1 second.

if my calculations are correct, and we assume constant acceleration from a standing start, then 150 g's of acceleration would result in a timeslip as follows:

E.T.: 0.74 s
trap: 2,434 mph

oh...and the 60 ft time would be 0.158 s.

[Dave Vince]

Calc

Thanks for the calculations. I imagine riding in that would be like getting hit by a bus going 80 mph for the whole run. Ouch.
Those times make a Top Fuel Dragster look like a snail vs a rabbit.

[MarkFL]

Thanks for the calculations. I imagine riding in that would be like getting hit by a bus going 80 mph for the whole run. Ouch.
Those times make a Top Fuel Dragster look like a snail vs a rabbit.

I should point out, that my calculations were as crude as they get, for no accounting of drag was done...basically formulae known experimentally to Galileo and later derived by Newton.

as for the reasonable bus analogy, 150 g's will get you from 0 to 80 mph in about 24.3 milliseconds. I don't know how long it takes the average human body to "explode." And like you said, unlike getting hit by the bus, the crushing force is there the entire time.

I weigh 190 lbs. At 150 g's, I would suddenly "weigh" 28,500 lbs. I would be pressed into a paste.

[Dave Vince]

G force

Your calculations are appreciated. The drag was reduced by running in a Helium filled plastic tube that disintegrated as it past by.
I don't think there is a line to ride that beast. Any living creature would be crushed by the force.
When they last tried a manned experiment at 40 Gs the rider lost his eyesight temprorarily and sustained other injurys, but he survived.
The Air Force discontinued any further tests at those G levels.
I also remember something about a vehicle in a vacuum tunnel with very high speeds predicted for that type of transportation.

[Steel2686]

I don't know how long it takes the average human body to "explode."

Depends on how far you live from a Taco Bell.

[Joe 1320]

It would be interesting to see how much work could be performed by that kind of thrust.

[Talon04]

The explosion would be more likely from negative gs rather then positive gs. Pilots in the airforce have been known to sustain 9 gs in a turn without blacking out (From lack of blood as it is forced to your legs), but a -4 G's your ears start to bleed as blood is forced to your heard and eyes causing a red out. If sustained it will cause your eyes to explode and then your head.

[MarkFL]

It would be interesting to see how much work could be performed by that kind of thrust.

hmmm...work can be found, for linear motion, from the product of the magnitudes of the force and distance vectors...or from the work-energy theorem, by measuring the change of kinetic energy. (again, ignoring drag)

The explosion would be more likely from negative gs rather then positive gs...

I was referring to the explosion of impact.

One of the results of Einstein's theory of General Relativity is the equivalence of gravity with acceleration, both warp spacetime in exactly the same way...both produce the same effects.

I'm sure you've been in an elevator and noticed when it accelerates at the beginning, you feel a bit heavier, then the elevator reaches it's cruising speed and your weight returns to normal. Then, the elevator slows down and you feel a bit lighter, until the elevator stops, and your perceived weight again returns to normal.

On elevators, the accelerations are small, so the perceived weight changes are small too.

Imagine now that you get on an elevator which accelerates uniformly and whose speed increases by almost 3,291 mph each second. This would be equivalent to being on a solid immovable object at the surface of a star almost twice as dense as our sun.

Either way it wouldn't be pretty, and the explosion would be uniformly spread over the entire body.

[sneitzel]

...then 150 g's of acceleration would result in a timeslip as follows:

E.T.: 0.74 s
trap: 2,434 mph

oh...and the 60 ft time would be 0.158 s.

IF you could get it to hook up properly.....

[Steel2686]

IF you could get it to hook up properly.....

It's rear-thrusted. Just put 'er in neutral.