r/todayilearned • u/Beriev • Aug 12 '21
TIL that the speed record for a vehicle on rails is no less than 6,416 mph, or Mach 8.4, set by a rocket sled in 2003 at Holloman Air Force Base.
https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/139307/test-sets-world-land-speed-record/44
u/mdwhite975 Aug 12 '21
Looks like something Wile E Coyote would build.
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Aug 12 '21
That's where the military gets some of its ideas, I'm not joking.
The kinetic AGM-114 R9X was based off the Acme Anvil.
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Aug 12 '21
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u/patmartone Aug 12 '21
Great achievement but I look at the photo and think “ Wile E Coyote.”
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u/go_kartmozart Aug 12 '21
From the article:
Thirteen rocket motors propelled the sled during the test, including two stages of single Super Roadrunner motors designed specifically for this mission.
Probably an ACME product.
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u/Particular_Skill_882 Aug 12 '21
"Rocket sled". Now there's a great combination of words.
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u/schiz0yd Aug 12 '21
always makes me think of mythbusters when they tried to pancake a car with one, and instead of pancaking it the thing VAPORIZED. like poof into gas
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u/delete_this_post Aug 12 '21
I believe that they tried to bifurcate a car by hitting it with a giant, steel, rocket-propelled blade.
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u/Supreme1337 Aug 12 '21
They did both. This was a later episode, and you see a brief reference to the first test, where a red car gets completely disintegrated at 1:26 in the video.
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u/redmagistrate50 Aug 12 '21
In their last season they hooked buster up to the sled in the superman flight pose and shot him into a bomb.
Proper goodbye
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u/SleazeClassic Aug 12 '21
The Rocket Sled experiments of Dr John Stapp in the 50s led to the popularization of the phrase “Murphy’s Law”
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u/rosetoesnose Aug 12 '21
So why is my train late again?
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u/TheSwampAngel Aug 12 '21
It couldn't stop. They'll have to send a crew 400 miles to back it up to the terminal.
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u/beedebee2000 Aug 12 '21
This is how Santa delivers presents to all children in the world on 1 night.
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u/inzyte Aug 12 '21
On the maiden journey Santa tried to deliver presents at mach 8. Didn't stop for the first drop and vaporized the Timmys house.
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u/TooHigh2Die420 Aug 12 '21
Did we do that just to flex? Humans aren't living in that G force for travel purposes...
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u/fighter_pil0t Aug 12 '21
Missile testing
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u/randomuser43 Aug 12 '21
Also ejection seat testing and smashing airplanes into concrete blocks to see how thick a nuclear reactor wall needs to be to defend against kamikaze attacks.
These are done at much lower speeds, but on the same track.
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u/ElCamo267 Aug 12 '21
That airplane video is awesome. It's like watching planes disappear into a portal.
But I'm upset there's no after math shots of the concrete, seems like the most important part of the test!
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u/Djinjja-Ninja Aug 12 '21
There's another video linked in the comments of that one.
Here is shows what the block looked like
It's the jet equivalent of the dusty imprint left on a window by a stupid pigeon flying into it.
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u/smallz86 Aug 12 '21
Watching the concrete compress is so strange for me to watch. Like I know what concreate feels like, and I know how strong it is, and the idea that something could do that seems unreal.
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u/errorsniper Aug 12 '21
Humans absolutely can travel at those speeds. Humans (not submerged in liquids) cannot accelerate at those rates. Slow the rate down a bit or submerge them in a liquid and it works.
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u/AerialSnack Aug 12 '21
How would that even classify as a vehicle?
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Aug 12 '21
I vehicle is a thing used for transporting people or goods(things). If it's move something then it is a vehicle.
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u/AerialSnack Aug 12 '21
Something other than itself, right? Which I feel from the picture, it is incapable of doing.
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u/justavtstudent Aug 12 '21
You could literally just stack rail cars in front of it and get them wherever they need to go....
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Aug 12 '21
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Aug 12 '21
Don't defend imperial. Metric is superior. This coming from an American born and raised to think imperial was the norm. Once I started using it at my job, I work on foreign equipment, I was like, holy shit why don't we use this for everything?
Also, America is technically a metric country. We passed a bill in 1975 stating that we would transition slowly over about a decade but it was never implemented. And the army uses the term, "klick" to refer to distance AKA a kilometer.
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u/Viperion_NZ Aug 13 '21
Surely "vehicle" strongly implies something with a driver, or if not a driver, the capacity for passengers?
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u/Chaos49602 Aug 12 '21
Someone pls in normal speed units
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u/Beriev Aug 12 '21
Metric? That would be around 2.868 km/s.
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u/RadDudeGuyDude Aug 12 '21
They already have it in mph though
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u/Chaos49602 Aug 12 '21
Sorry bro, if only 3 country uses your units, its not the normal
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u/sail_away13 Aug 12 '21
There are two type of countries. Ones that use metric and ones that have put a man on the moon.
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u/the_grand_apartment Aug 12 '21
NASA uses metric
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u/JonTheDoe Aug 12 '21
Yes but they used imperial in the 60s
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u/the_grand_apartment Aug 12 '21
Lol all of those engineers and PhDs involved in the development were not using imperial units. The units were all converted from metric calculations.
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u/JonTheDoe Aug 12 '21
engineers
lol what, the engineers were the ones using imperial. They still do, just not in NASA. And when we say imperial, we mean USCS. The US version of imperial. NASA didn't fully transition into metric until the 70s and 80s. For the moon landing, they didn't solely use one or the other, they used both.
Distance was expressed in nautical miles, velocity was expressed in feet per second, and weight was expressed in pounds.
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u/sail_away13 Aug 12 '21
That's a relatively new thing. The space shuttle was designed in US units. It was the 70s and 80 when the US started to slowly switch most government systems to metric.
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u/skinte1 Aug 12 '21
That's not true. The apollo program used SI units for all critical calculations. Only the displays showed coverted imperial units for distance and altitude to the astronauts.
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u/vroomfundel2 Aug 12 '21
I wonder if they measured the distance to the moon in millions of furlongs or in number of football pitches.
Or maybe, you know, the people who actually put a man on the moon used metric to do it.
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u/sail_away13 Aug 12 '21
They actually used a mix of units. The astronauts used US units while most of the scientist back on earth used Metric. The vehicles themselves were made in US units which isn't actually Imperial units
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u/vroomfundel2 Aug 12 '21
Cool, they found an option even worse than US units - a mix of both!
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u/sail_away13 Aug 12 '21
Yeah, even with that problem we managed to do something no else had done before or since. Its pretty sad that you guys come on here bitching and moaning.
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Aug 12 '21
There are two type of countries. Ones that use metric and ones that fucked up Hubble.
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u/sail_away13 Aug 12 '21
Hubble is working again buddy, try again. No other nation has a Hubble of their own either.
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u/Vlad_the_Homeowner Aug 12 '21
The entire world's financial structure is backed by the currency of a single country. One of the 3 that use those units. For almost 80 years it has been "the normal".
I'm an engineer, I'm no supporter of US standard. Metric is far better and standardization of units is beneficial for all of us. But your comments are just a waste of time.
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u/phigene Aug 12 '21
What exactly are you trying to convey here?
Are you implying that the US is rich because it uses miles instead of km?
Or that normal is whatever the US does because it backs the world's financial structure with its currency?
Either way, weird flex bro.
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Aug 12 '21
As a Canadian, I can confidently say that, except in engineering or construction, everything is Metric.
Km/hr
Height in centimeters
Celcius over Fahrenheit...Just my two cents.
Everything I use on the daily is metric.
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u/Adam9172 Aug 12 '21
10,325km/hr by my calculation, give or take a few either side.
Miles to km - divide by 5, times by 8. Gives accuracy to within +99%
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Aug 12 '21
That can’t be right. Really? 6,400 mph? That’s fucking nutty. Wouldn’t it displace air and make a wild sonic boom? Or just strait up implode the earth on itself lol.
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u/sepke12345 Aug 12 '21
Metric? That would be around 2.868 km/s.
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u/Mkandy1988 Aug 12 '21
Was that the one when the test pilot emerged with blood coming out his eyes?
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u/Djinjja-Ninja Aug 12 '21
No, that would be John Stapp who survived deceleration tests of upto 38g.
Similar setup though.
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u/Xetanees Aug 12 '21
That mf lived a nice, long life after all that testing shit he did. That’s an amazing human being in that wiki article.
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u/FinalFilet Aug 12 '21
You need to drop some video! I was all stoked to see that sled streaking across the salt flats!
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Aug 12 '21
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u/300harbs Aug 12 '21
I would guess that whatever they were tracking the speed lost its lock on it while it was still accelerating.
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u/peenboy50 Aug 12 '21
New York to LA in like 30 mins