No hamsters
June 13, 2014 8:05 AM   Subscribe

 
Andy enters his office via a carbon fibre hatch, 500mm in diameter, just below the jet air intake. At full power, the EJ200 fan sucks in 65 m3 of air per second, so the hatch will be fastened using latches able to withstand loads of 2.5kN (quarter of a tonne) to prevent it from getting ingested into the engine.

... !?
posted by flabdablet at 8:07 AM on June 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


Craig Scarborough has a number of pictures on his twitter feed.
posted by Runes at 8:19 AM on June 13, 2014


flabdablet: "... !?"

???
posted by zamboni at 8:25 AM on June 13, 2014


This seems like an awful lot of money and engineering directed at a not particularly useful goal, even by the standards of speed records.

I see from their web page they solicit donations from companies and individuals. I assume the individuals are people really into fast cars. Why would a company want to donate to this effort. It doesn't seem like it would be particularly good advertising value per dollar spent. Are they getting useful technical data?
posted by pseudonick at 8:41 AM on June 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


2G's of force for 2 minutes seems like a lot; is that something that human body can reasonably endure?
posted by Old'n'Busted at 8:43 AM on June 13, 2014


'The office' is long-established and slightly self-deprecating pilot's jargon for the cockpit, and Andy Green's a very experience fast-jet type.

Likewise, for a fit pilot, 2 Gs should be eminently sustainable for 2 minutes, especially if they're wearing a G-suit (I don't know if Bloodhound will be using one, but it would seem plausible).
posted by Jakob at 8:49 AM on June 13, 2014


130,000 Horsepower???!!!

What could possibly go wrong?
posted by Benny Andajetz at 8:55 AM on June 13, 2014


It is worth the watch just to hear him say "extraordinary" and "aluminum" in his accent. Watch 2:08 to 2:12 to hear them in succession. There's an "extreme" tossed in for good measure.
posted by Walleye at 9:03 AM on June 13, 2014


Isn't this the thing that needs a Formula 1 racing car engine to start the MAIN engine? Outstanding.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 9:07 AM on June 13, 2014


Interesting that they plan to use aerodynamics to slow intake air to subsonic speed before it enters the engine
posted by exogenous at 9:11 AM on June 13, 2014


It has a jet engine and a rocket engine.

To break the speed record, it has to go in one direction, and then, less than one hour later, it has to repeat the performance in the opposite direction.
posted by eye of newt at 9:11 AM on June 13, 2014


This seems like an awful lot of money and engineering directed at a not particularly useful goal, even by the standards of speed records.--pseudonick

There's always somebody. "Why climb mountain Mount Everest? Why fly a balloon around the world? Why jump from a really high altitude? Why go to the North Pole? Why race cars at all?"

Why does everything have to be 'useful'? Are you some kind of emotionless robot ruled by pure logic? Do you ever do anything that can't be described as useful, but you do it anyway because it is challenging and fun?

I can actually think of a a ton of useful things they are learning, given the many engineering challenges involved at pushing things to the limit, but that's probably not the main motivation for why they are doing it.
posted by eye of newt at 9:18 AM on June 13, 2014 [3 favorites]


Interesting that they plan to use aerodynamics to slow intake air to subsonic speed before it enters the engine

Sort of like one half of a SR-71 inlet spike, eh?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:25 AM on June 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


But will he go through the mountain?
posted by hanoixan at 9:41 AM on June 13, 2014 [5 favorites]


But will he go through the mountain?

No matter where you go, there you are.
posted by The Bellman at 9:53 AM on June 13, 2014


Old'n'busted: if you want to be an astronaut you'll have to put up with a lot more than 2 G's. It takes about 850 G-seconds of thrust to get into low Earth orbit; around 30-35 G-seconds to hit Mach 1. Shuttle launches pulled a relatively sedate 3 G's for a few minutes — sedate by space rocket standards; Soyuz, Saturn V, et al all lifted off quite slowly then hit 4-6 G's on the way up, and a capsule typically experiences a peak decelleration of 5-6 G's during re-entry. (However, AIUI Apollo capsules came in hot, fast, and heavy, and a Soyuz capsule making an uncontrolled ballistic re-entry (as has happened when things don't go right) can hit 8-12 G's briefly. It's survivable, but very uncomfortable.)
posted by cstross at 10:04 AM on June 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oh man, Buckaroo Banzai quotes ... don't get me started ... “Buckaroo, I don’t know what to say. Lectroids? Planet 10? Nuclear extortion? A girl named ‘John?’"
posted by buffalo at 10:21 AM on June 13, 2014


What's this, Professor?

... It's your hand, Buckaroo...
posted by Naberius at 10:29 AM on June 13, 2014


Most impressed by the Rolex speedometer that goes up to eleven.
posted by ewok and chips at 10:39 AM on June 13, 2014 [4 favorites]


One of the good things that can come out of efforts like this are real-world tests of materials.

I love old cars and working on them, but one of the consistent lessons I learn is that our cars are heavy, new ones even more so on average than old ones. When you lift a differential from an elderly Jaguar onto your workbench, it's a cube roughly a foot on a side and weighs over 100 lbs...my back is always "surely there are materials capable of doing this lump's job which weigh less."
posted by maxwelton at 11:17 AM on June 13, 2014


Exogenous: as far as I know, any jet engine will slow the incoming flow to subsonic before it hits the compressor face, because the shock systems that would occur with supersonic flow would really mess up compressor efficiencies. Research into supersonic compressors is ongoing, but as far as I'm aware nobody's made a working one yet - the only jet engines with fully supersonic flow paths are experimental ramjets (or scramjets).
posted by Jakob at 11:38 AM on June 13, 2014


Big-boo-TAY!!
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:50 PM on June 13, 2014 [2 favorites]


Came for the car, stayed for the Buckaroo Banzai quotes.
posted by Sphinx at 4:18 PM on June 13, 2014


ewok and chips: "Most impressed by the Rolex speedometer that goes up to eleven."

Loved that. A speedometer that measures speed in hundreds of miles per hour. Of course it goes to 11.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:52 PM on June 13, 2014


Because that's one faster.

A lot of blokes, they'll be screaming through the saltpan and everything's turned up to ten, all the way across the board, like this, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten. But then when you get to the point where you need that extra push over the cliff, where can you go?
posted by flabdablet at 10:46 AM on June 14, 2014


What, no Oscillation Overthruster?
posted by valkane at 5:18 PM on June 14, 2014


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