Well, there’s necessity as the mother of invention. (E.g., snowshoes.) Then there’s necessity as the daughter of invention. (E.g,. the smartphone.) Then there’s invention as the love child of technology, with the putative father either testosterone or a brain fart. Into this latter category, I’ve got to put the 1,000 MPH rocket-propelled car.
Yowza!
Talk about this is not your father’s Oldsmobile.
This one makes a Porsche look like a flivver.
That’s some automobubbling you could do, zooming along at a cool 1,000 miles per. Wonder what kind of mileage you get.
Not that there wouldn’t be something kinda cool about being able to hop in the car, and buzz out Route 90 in 60 minutes for lunch in Chicago with my cousin Ellen as easily as I can zip out to my cousin Barbara’s in North Grafton. (That car zip to N. Grafton is metaphorical: I actually don’t have a car, so I take the train.)
Still, when it comes to high-speed vehicles, my preference is for the bullet train, and not for personal vehicles that power up at such great speeds. Man, if these suckers ever hit the commercial market, I do believe my jaywalking days are over, one way or the other. Looking both ways wouldn’t help you out much here.
Anyway, I read about the Bloodhound SSC, a supersonic “car” that combines rocket, jet and race car in The Economist, which reported on a British effort to break the land speed record.
Talk about the ultimate hybrid.
The trick was engineering a vehicle, and its fuel, that could be accelerated and decelerated, rather than just being blasted off and burnt up. Which wouldn’t do, if you’re the driver. (That’s why the space capsule with the astronauts in it separates off from the rocket, which is unmanned.)
The engineering feat is being attempted by 27 year-old Daniel Jubb, who will not likely need anything much more to jet propel his résumé.
The driver will be RAF Wing Commander Andy Green, whom I don’t want to see a picture of. I want him to look like Errol Flynn, sporting a pencil-thin mustache, bomber jacket, and white silk scarf. Or like Sam Shephard playing Chuck Yeager.
Green is looking to break his own land-speed record, a formidable 763 mph (breaking a record and the sound barrier), which he set in 1997, when he put pedal to the metal in the Thrust SSC in Black Rock Desert, Nevada.
Unfortunately, the next record will not be set on America soil.
As with so much else, it’s been outsourced – just not to China, India, or Vietnam.
In order to find a long enough span of flat ground, the record will be attempted in South Africa.
I don’t see all that much commercial application for the supersonic car, but, then, I am not noted for my inventiveness, my scientific acumen, or my mercantile imagination. But I do want to go on record as saying that I don’t want to live in a world where the casual motorist is flying down the road of life in a supersonic vehicle. Bad enough the way that so many reckless a-holes drive now. Put them behind the wheel of a speed demon like the Bloodhound SSC, and lookout.
This will be far worse than when Hummers became the family car for a certain set. There were actually a few folks in my ‘hood who drove them. Maybe they needed them to get over the rugged terrain of the couple of Beacon Hill streets that are still cobbled, but I’m pretty sure that a Hummer wouldn’t have fit down those streets. Whenever I saw one lumbering down the street to pick up/drop off their kiddos at the private school bus stop, I always had to ask myself just how practical such a car would be in an area with narrow streets, scarce parking spaces, and low-ceilinged garages.
Ah, well. I haven’t seen many of the Hummers lately. I guess they’ve been replaced by the Porsche Cayennes and other yup-scale SUV’s.
Back to the supersonic car, an interesting thrust (sorry) of the record-breaking project is to get students interested in science and engineering, which is great. So far, 4,000 schools are involved. Not sure if they’re all in the U.S., but having a few more little head-ies – in the US or the UK – think about studying engineering rather than, say, marketing, is only for the better.
Sure, all of the inventions these engineers of the future will come up with won’t exactly be necessary. But some of them will no doubt make life better and easier for somebody.
Anyway, next year, I will be keeping my ear on South Africa, listening for the sound-barrier splitting crack when Wing Commander Green attempts his 1,000 mph land speed record.
Come away with me, Lucille,
In my merry Oldsmobile.
Down the road of life we’ll fly,
Automobubbling, you and I….They call me Baby Driver
And once upon a pair of wheels.
Hit the road and I`m gone ah.
What`s my number.
I wonder how your engine feels
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