stafford1500 wrote:Hungary Bill wrote:It takes power to go fast...curtis73 wrote: 130,000 hp worth of thrust.Ok, a C-17 makes slightly more than that with four engines from a 757. It weighs 170,000lbs, can carry a fuel load of 300,000lbs, and a friggin TANK (well, mobile artillery, but still) And they put that in a car!?!
Why am I reminded of the Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon attempt?
What sort of tires will withstand those speeds?
Actually, how do the salt flats react to that kind of use? I'm picturing friction and heat galore from whatever the contact patches are.
What sort of G load is this going to be under, let alone the poor bastard at the wheel?
Am I wrong in thinking it would be much harder, hotter, and mechanically stressing reaching these speeds on the ground instead of "up in the atmosphere" like a jet?
I don't expect anyone to have answers, these are just some things I'm thinking they'd have to deal with.
Wheels are likely to be metal maybe a thin plastic band.
The shock waves from the car will fracture the salt as the car passes, leaving dust for a considerable distance outward.
The aero requirements are generally a fair amount of downforce to make sure it stays on the ground and the vehicle will be heavy.
Yes going that fast on the ground is more challenging at VERY LOW ALTITUDE, mostly because you want to stay at low altitude and not fly off into the not so squishy air at those speeds.
Battery powered cars are interesting. I had a customer that wanted to touch 320mph in a streamliner that was powered by something like 4000 C-cell batteries. They were having some nose lift issues at ~280mph that made the pilot a little uneasy. They needed to design for more front downforce. Wind tunnel testing was the answer.
Over 14,000lbs moving that fast is a whole lotta force.
Several comments:
Driver is Andy Green, who holds the current record at 762, set almost 20 years ago, and RAF pilot.
The attempt will take place in South Africa, Bonneville is way too short and rough for these kinds of speeds anymore.
Advanced engineering? The Bloodhound wheels, which are all metal with no tires, are said to have to withstand 50G of rotational force at the rim. The car has taken many years of design and fundraising. Sure, it's a very high-dollar, high tech project, but it's still a daunting goal, and Andy Green must have unobtainium cojones to drive the thing.
That said, for a real GRM LSR, Danny Thompson, son of Mickey Thompson, is pursuing the wheel-driven, piston-powered LSR using the car that Mickey designed and built back in 1968. Last Saturday he ran 435.735 at Bonneville, unsupercharged, but blew an engine on his backup run on Sunday. He'll be back in October to try again. He holds the American unsupercharged record in the same car, set last year at 406 and change. The current piston record (supercharged)is about 439. These days Danny lives about 10 miles from me, outside of Ridgway, Colorado (population 900), does most of the work on the car himself (with his wife and friends help), except for about three months out of the year, when the car goes to southern California. There is very little in the way of sponsor support for wheel-driven LSR these days, due to the much higher speeds of the thrust cars. Check out Danny's website at thompsonlsr.com. It has in-car video of the 435 run, and interesting interviews. Danny is a good guy following a dream to see his dad's car take the piston wheel-driven record.
KyAllroad wrote: I know I'll catch crap for this but.... What a monumental waste of time, effort, and money! A 200 mph car has some tiny merit as lessons from that can be carried down line to every day cars. But a 1,000 mph car is just a plane without wings, and that's been done for 60+ years. Start a race series for these ridiculous things and maybe..... but just to set a bigger record that will stand until some other super rich guy with a micro-hootus comes along and wants to own the record is stupid.
in comparison, what true benefit did we get from going to the moon? what do we have to show for it?
on a smaller scale whats the point of going to a movie theater when you can rent a movie for cheaper? whats the point of going out to eat when you can cook at home?
no matter the scale people like to do extravagant things. and if they have the resources then why not?
I know a lot of you are guys are bagging about this run. But its cool to see something like this in a good news kinda thing with all the crap that has been going on in the world. we kinda need something cool to look forward to here and there and if its cool then way not. look at the first attanpt to fly a plane into space a few years ago, why bother with that? cause why not? Why go to the moon? why not? how about mars? why not or even getting into space at all or setting off into the unknown for finding a way to the far east to get spices or find new and itnresting places or find something new like bigfoot or something.
Exactly. For that matter, why race?
It's the adventure, the challenge, "to boldly go...". Why climb mountains? A young man across the street from me is in his early 30s, lost a lower leg to an IED in Iraq. He's a climber, but I didn't know how serious a climber. Last year he summited Everest, missed out on being the first military amputee to do it by a week.
Why do stuff that hasn't been done? Because that's one of the very good things we humans do.
KyAllroad wrote: I know I'll catch crap for this but.... What a monumental waste of time, effort, and money! A 200 mph car has some tiny merit as lessons from that can be carried down line to every day cars. But a 1,000 mph car is just a plane without wings, and that's been done for 60+ years. Start a race series for these ridiculous things and maybe..... but just to set a bigger record that will stand until some other super rich guy with a micro-hootus comes along and wants to own the record is stupid.
I'll give you crap for it 
Its no more a waste of time than any other motorsport, or any scientific endeavor for that matter. When we first broke the sound barrier in flight people thought it was a waste of time until they could fly commercially from NYC to Paris in 2.5 hours. Then they thought, "oh, pretty cool how that works."
Remember how in the 80s, every infomercial had some product with "space age material" in it? You can thank NASA and the Air Force for your non-stick skillet. The benefit to you isn't that someone broke a speed record, its that they developed new technology in the process. That is how science works. Research and experimentation.
It does sound like a waste of time and money, but quite honestly... its neither your time nor your money, and they might discover some technology that will end up working on your LeMons car. Or your skillet.
FYI about a question on the brakes on page 1: several years ago, I watched some sort of documentary about a LSR car that was quite similar to this (same? looked like a plane with no wings), and it used multi stage braking. To avoid liquifying physical-contact brakes, the engineers employed eddy-currents (interaction between copper and magnets)
to bring the vehicle down to a speed where physical brakes could take over. It would require some bonkers number of miles to slow down from its max speeds.
Many of the parts manufacturers involved in this project are being asked to build things that have never been built, forcing engineers, machinists, etc. to evaluate their processes and come up with new technologies that work. I'm sure Castrol is learning quite a bit from their research and testing on this car. There will be no way of knowing whether a new alloy, chemical coating, a new oil blend, or type of grease developed on this car makes your street car more efficient 5 years down the road or gets used in the space program. There may be benefits gleaned from this project that affect our lives for decades to come. Or it all may just be a monumental waste of time and money. Hey it's still a car that goes 1,000 mph! Eat that, you commie bastards!
ncjay wrote:
I can't make out the storage pod for my golf clubs. Meh. 
jmthunderbirdturbo wrote: I am actually in this camp, too, albeit for slightly different reasons. this is GRM, after all, and there is literally NOTHING 'GRM' about this. our collective nature of low budget hacks and racing on the cheap has conditioned me to practically resent anything remotely expensive to purchase, operate or repair. this ticks off all 3 of those boxes.
Do you subscribe to the magazine or just the forum? I'm truly curious, because on the front cover of the latest magazine are Group B rally cars, the back page has a preview of "the ultimate track car challenge", there's an article about a Ferrari 308GTB and there's coverage of many high dollar vintage cars at the Mitty. While this forum tends towards the low dollar side of things, the magazine covers a very wide range of budgets.
Besides, why not just enjoy something that is so incredibly berkeleying cool regardless of who is doing it or what they're spending?
Jim Pettengill wrote: That said, for a real GRM LSR, Danny Thompson, son of Mickey Thompson, is pursuing the wheel-driven, piston-powered LSR using the car that Mickey designed and built back in 1968. Last Saturday he ran 435.735 at Bonneville, unsupercharged, but blew an engine on his backup run on Sunday. He'll be back in October to try again. He holds the American unsupercharged record in the same car, set last year at 406 and change. The current piston record (supercharged)is about 439. These days Danny lives about 10 miles from me, outside of Ridgway, Colorado (population 900), does most of the work on the car himself (with his wife and friends help), except for about three months out of the year, when the car goes to southern California. There is very little in the way of sponsor support for wheel-driven LSR these days, due to the much higher speeds of the thrust cars. Check out Danny's website at thompsonlsr.com. It has in-car video of the 435 run, and interesting interviews. Danny is a good guy following a dream to see his dad's car take the piston wheel-driven record.
Wow. Without news from Bloodhound- that's really impressive. I've not followed Bonneville for a few year now, but I remember talking with a few people who were dreaming of 500 hp wheel driven. I saw 420- which was really amazing. 435 with a non-blown engine is amazing. Mind blowing amazing.
I'm all for this. I still love watching videos of the SSC runs in 1997. To me it's amazing to go that fast on land. I love speed in many forms, especially at this level.
Btw, like many here, I too contribute formally to those who are homeless and less fortunate.
You'll need to log in to post.
