The maximum speed of a combat aircraft. Old models that have not lost their power
There are people who live at top speed. They chase records and strive to be the fastest. And it doesn't matter how they do it - behind the wheel of a racing car or on the back of a racing camel. The bottom line is that speed is in their blood.
If BMW were a person, the same could be said about it. Great performances in the DTM series and European touring, in Formula 1 and motorcycle racing - speed has been an integral part of BMW's life throughout its history and remains so today.
Technologies developed on racing tracks and during record races, used by BMW in the development of road cars. Firstly, this is evidenced by the quality of German technology, repeatedly tested by extreme loads. Secondly, many “civilian” models of the company breathe speed, for example, the “charged” 370-horsepower beauty BMW M2 Coupe, capable of accelerating to “hundreds” in 4.3 seconds and limited to 250 km / h only electronically for safety reasons. Finally, it is worth mentioning the BMW M Performance range of accessories, which allows you to customize in a sporty style. various models companies. A drag-reducing carbon body kit, a power package, sports exhaust and brake systems, interior accessories - the ability to turn a car from a regular car attracts many.
Therefore, today we are talking about speed records. About the brilliant engineers who build fast cars, planes and ships. About fearless pilots who take risks to become one of the fastest. About the records, simple and complex, ordinary and strange - about what a person cannot exist without.
LAND SPEED RECORDS
ABSOLUTE SPEED RECORD ON THE LAND:
1227.986 km/h
VEHICLE: THRUST SSC
POWER UNIT: TWO ROLLS-ROYCE SPEY RB.168 MK.202 TURBOFAN ENGINES
PILOT: ANDY GREEN
DATE: 15 OCTOBER 1997
WHO WILL BEAT: THE BLOODHOUND SSC CAR
Today there is only one team in the world that consistently breaks one absolute speed record after another, and this situation has persisted for 30 years. It all started with the fact that back in 1983, Richard Noble on a Thrust 2 jet accelerated in the Black Rock Desert to a speed of 1019.47 km / h. A decade and a half later, Noble acted as a designer - his pilot Andy Green on the mighty Thrust SSC set two speed records in a row. Today, the same team is preparing for the next race the monstrous Bloodhound SSC, which should accelerate to more than 1600 km / h. Thrust SSC became the first car to overcome sound barrier. Its design used two aircraft engines with a total power of 110,000 hp, similar to those installed on the F-4 Phantom II fighter-bomber and burning 18 liters of fuel per second. Not very economical, but the record has been holding for almost 20 years. Because no one but Noble is trying to beat him.
CAR WITH HYDROGEN ENGINE:
487.672 km/h
VEHICLE: BUCKEYE BULLET 2
POWER UNIT: HYDROGEN FUEL CELL ENGINE
PILOT: ROGER SCHROER
DATE: 25 SEPTEMBER 2009
WHO WILL BEAT: BUCKEYE BULLET 3 IN 2017-2018
Although hydrogen-powered cars have been around for a relatively long time, until 2004 no one tried to build a special car to set a speed record in this area. The first was BMW, which presented the record-breaking car BMW I I2R with a giant 12-cylinder engine, which eventually accelerated to 301.95 km / h. The record held until 2009 when it was broken by a team from Ohio State University in a custom Buckeye Bullet 2. It is worth noting that the same guys hold the electric vehicle speed record (495.526 km / h), set a year later on the Buckeye Bullet 2.5 car. The third generation of the car is currently in development.
STEAM CAR:
238.679 km/h
VEHICLE: INSPIRATION
POWER UNIT: TWO-STAGE STEAM TURBINE
PILOT: DONWAILES
DATE: AUGUST 26, 2009
WHO WILL BEAT: 2017-2018 TEAM STEAM USA CYCLONE
The steam car speed record was held for 103 (!) years. Back in 1903, pilot Fred Marriott on a record-breaking Stanley Rocket accelerated to 205.5 km / h on Daytona Beach. Until the mid-1980s, no one simply bothered with the need to break this record. In 1985, American pilot Bob Barber on the Barber-Nichols Steamin Demon steam car reached a speed of 234.33 km / h, but the record was not recognized by the FIA due to a violation of the rules (Barber drove both races in one direction, while the FIA requires them to be held in opposite directions within one hour). Finally, in 2009, a British team led by Glynn Bowsher built a steam-powered Inspiration that surpassed the bar set by Marriott. Now two teams - Steam Speed America and Team Steam USA - are preparing their steam cars for races, and one of them is likely to overturn the British achievement.
MOTORBIKE:
605.697 km/h
VEHICLE: TOP OIL ASK ATTACK STREAMLINER
POWERTRAIN: TWO SUZUKI HAYABUSA TURBO ENGINES
PILOT: ROCKY ROBINSON
DATE: 25 SEPTEMBER 2010
WHO WILL BEAT: ROCKY ROBINSON HIMSELF IN 2017-2018
In the 2000s, the fight for the speed record on a motorcycle was very intense - pilots Rocky Robinson and Chris Carr surpassed each other's achievements four times, alternately finding themselves at the top of the record pyramid. Robinson put an end to the streamliner Ack Attack, becoming the first motorcyclist to overcome the bar of 600 km/h. The record-breaking motorcycle was powered by two mighty Suzuki Hayabusas with a total volume of 2598 cm3, reinforced with Garret turbocharging. Interestingly, in record practice, the line between the concepts of “car” and “motorcycle” is very thin - motorcycles with a side support (“sidecar”) are very similar to cars, history even knew the case when Craig Breedlove’s Spirit of America record car was “retrained” into a motorcycle after the race, although one way or another he showed in 1963 an absolute speed record for any vehicle.
AIR SPEED RECORDS
PROPELLER AIRCRAFT:
871.38 km/h
VEHICLE: PASSENGER AIRCRAFT-1M
POWER UNIT: 4 GAS TURBINE ENGINES NK-12
PILOT: IVAN SUKHOMLIN
DATE: MARCH 24, 1960 WHO WILL BEAT: NOBODY. SMALL PLANES ARE NOT CAPABLE FOR THIS, AND LARGE PLANES WITH PROPELLER THRUSH ARE NO LONGER BUILT
Not all records belong to the British and Americans. For example, the speed record for an aircraft driven by propellers (that is, not a jet) has been held for more than half a century by Soviet test pilot Ivan Sukhomlin, who accelerated to 871 km / h on the Tu-114.114 was, in fact, the last large passenger turboprop aircraft, and at the time of creation (1957) - the largest passenger aircraft in the world in general! It was driven by four huge NK-12 SNTK Kuznetsov engines, and each rotated two propellers with a diameter of 6 m in opposite directions. Today, the era of turboprop aircraft is a thing of the past, and it is unlikely that anyone will ever invest millions of dollars in building a machine, capable of breaking this record.
MUSCLE:
44.26 km/h
VEHICLE: MUSCULAIR 2
POWER UNIT: NONE
PILOT: HOLGER ROCHELT
DATE: OCTOBER 2, 1985
WHO WILL BEAT: SOME OF THE ENTHUSIASTS, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY EXACTLY
Musculolet is an unusual and rare device; in the entire history of mankind there have been hardly a hundred. The first flight of an aircraft on a muscular (pedal) thrust occurred only in 1961, and the first flight not in a straight line, that is, allowing you to change the direction of movement, was in 1977. The German engineer Günther Rochelt was one of the muscle building enthusiasts, having created two record-breaking vehicles Musculair and Musculair 2. Musculair became the first muscle car in history to lift a passenger (Günther's son Holger Rochelt was a Nilote, and daughter Katrin was a passenger). And on the second generation, Holger set the hitherto unsurpassed speed record for a muscle-powered apparatus. In fact, there are enough enthusiasts of this unusual direction in the world, and sooner or later Holger's record must fall. But obviously not in the next three or four years.
HELICOPTER:
508.6 km/h
VEHICLE: EXPERIENCED BELL 533 HELICOPTER
POWER UNIT: 1 LYCOMING T53-L-9A GAS TURBINE AND 2 PRATT & WHITNEY JT12 TURBOJETS
PILOT: LUHARTWIG
DATE: APRIL 15, 1969
WHO WILL BEAT: SIKORSKY S-97 RAIDER IN A SPECIAL CONFIGURATION
The classic helicopter speed record, the Westland Lynx, has been held since 1986 at 400.87 km/h.
But there is a way to fool the nature of a rotorcraft: attach a push/pull propeller or jet engine to it so that the main rotor creates only lifting force. Actually, Bell 533 was the first experimental helicopter with a jet pusher. And if the pusher propeller of the promising Sikorsky S-97 Raider is replaced with a turbine for experimental purposes, it will be able to block the Bell record.
AIRPLANE:
3529.6 KM/H
VEHICLE: STRATEGIC SCOUT LOCKHEED SR-71 BLACKBIRD
POWER UNIT: 2 PRATT & WHITNEY J58 AIR-JET ENGINES
PILOT: ELDON JORS
DATE: JULY 28, 1976
WHO WILL BEAT: MOST LIKELY, NOBODY - JUST NOBODY NEED IT
The famous Air Force strategic supersonic reconnaissance Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was not a special record aircraft. Just in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, the task was to develop an aircraft that, due to its high speed and high altitude, could evade both observation and attack by the Soviet Air Force.
In particular, the MiG-25 was being developed in the USSR around the same time. One way or another, the Blackbird turned out to be very unusual - its design seems futuristic to this day, although it made its first flight on December 22, 1964. And in 1976, test pilot Eldon Georges set an absolute speed record for aircraft, and at the same time an absolute altitude record for a planned flight (without the help of a record “candle”), 26,929 m. The SR-71 also holds several other speed records in different disciplines. Interestingly, in the 1980s, pilot Brian Schul claimed that during the Libyan operation of 1986 he reached even higher speeds on the SR-71, but the instrument readings did not confirm this.
SAIL AND RAILS SPEED RECORDS
ABSOLUTE WATER SPEED RECORD:
511.121 km/h
VEHICLE: SPIRIT OF AUSTRALIA
POWERTRAIN: WESTINGHOUSE J34 TURBOJET
PILOT: KEN WORBY
DATE: OCTOBER 8, 1978
WHO WILL: THEORETICALLY SOME CRAZY. PRACTICALLY - NOBODY
In the 20th century, speed records on land and on water were equally prestigious and were often set by the same people - the great Malcolm and Donald Campbell - ..I ly (Henry Seagrave, Gar Wood. It seemed that in 1967 a point in the pipeline of records American Lee Taylor put the Hustler on the boat, but ten years later Australian Ken Warby appeared.He designed and built a plastic-wooden ultralight boat Spirit of Australia, on which he installed a Westinghouse J34 jet engine, bought at a flea market for $69. two speed records - first beating Taylor by 6 km / h, and then adding another 50 km / h to his result Warby's record is unique - no one today dares to repeat his crazy "trick" with a boat that weighed less than the engine that drove her in motion, and in the event of any accident would turn into a handful of lumps.
SAILING SHIP:
121.21 km/h
VEHICLE: VESTAS SAILROCKET 2 CATAMARAN BOAT
POWER UNIT: SAILS
PILOT: PAUL LARSEN
DATE: NOVEMBER 2012
WHO WILL BEAT: PAUL LARSEN HIMSELF ON THE NEXT GENERATION CATAMARAN
Surprisingly, the absolute speed record for a sailing vehicle has long belonged to ... surfers - first windsurfers, then kitesurfers (the sail for them is kite). Only for a short time in 2009-2010 did the French trimaran Hydroptere keep the achievement.
But in November 2012, the Australian Paul Larsen finally returned honor to the "normal" sailboats. Specially designed to set this record, the high-tech (carbon-titanium) and insanely expensive catamaran Vestas Sailrocket 2 has not weakly “broke” surfers who could not accelerate to more than 103 km / h - and most likely will not be able to, since surfing has technical limit.
CONVENTIONAL RAIL VEHICLE:
603.0 km/h
VEHICLE: MAGNETIC CUSHION TRAIN MAGLEV L0 SERIES
POWER UNIT: LINEAR MOTOR
PILOT: TEST GROUP INCLUDING JR TOKAI TEST CENTER HEAD YASUKAZUENDO
DATE: APRIL 21, 2015
WHO WILL BEAT: THE NEXT GENERATION OF JAPANESE MAGLEV OR ALREADY HYPERLOOP
If we still take a “normal” train, and not a jet sled for military tests, then in this area the record was set quite recently. For 13 years, the result shown on the Yamanashi test site by the SCMaglev MLX01 maglev (581 km / h) was kept, and now the next generation, the L0 Series maglev, turned out to be even faster, breaking the bar of 600 km / h for the first time in the history of passenger trains. The record train consisted of a locomotive and six cars. There were 49 employees on board. railway JR Central, and the train kept the maximum speed for 10.8 s. Such tests are carried out to find out the technical limit of the maglev system, as well as to understand how passengers feel about it. The actual cruising speed of the L0 Series is 10 km less. By the way, if we talk about conventional rail trains, then the French SNCF TGV POS has been holding the record (574.8 km/h) for nine years now.
RAILS:
1017 km/h
VEHICLE: SONIC WIND NO.1 ROCKETS
POWER UNIT: ROCKET ENGINE
PILOT: JOHN PAUL STEP
DATE: DECEMBER 10, 1954
WHO WILL BEAT: HYPELOOP - THERE ARE NO MORE CHALLENGERS
It's not about the locomotive, but about the jet sled. It is they who hold the speed record for unmanned ground vehicles, 10,326 km/h. Sleigh with jet engine, put on rails, are able to reach insane speeds. In the 1950s, Americans conducted a series of tests related to the effect of superspeeds on humans. Colonel John Paul Stapp sat in a chair bolted to a sledge. During the tests, he became for some time the fastest person on earth (then even planes did not fly so fast).
UNUSUAL SPEED RECORDS
ON THE MOON:
18.0 km/h
VEHICLE: APOLLO 17 LUNAR ROVING VEHICLE )