Fun fact for gearheads..... A little something for all the gearheads and engineers out there. Read this thru slowly and try to comprehend the amount of force produced in just under 4 seconds! The last paragraph puts it all into perspective ! There are no rockets or airplanes built by any government in the world that can accelerate from a standing start as fast as a Top Fuel Dragster or Funny Car...and that includes any aircraft launched by a catapult from an aircraft carrier. Nothing can compare... DEFINITION OF ACCELERATION One top fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows of stock cars at the Daytona 500. It takes just 15/100ths (0.15) of a second for all 6,000+ horsepower (some believe 8,000 HP is more realistic - there are no dynomometers capable of measuring) of an NHRA Top Fuel dragster engine to reach the rear wheels. Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1-1/2 gallons of nitromethane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced. A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster's supercharger. With 3,000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle. At the stoichiometric (stoichiometry: methodology and technology by which quantities of reactants and products in chemical reactions are determined) 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture of nitromethane, the flame front temperature measures 7,050 deg F. (Oxy-acetylene on "cut" is 6,300) Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases. Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder. Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during one pass. After halfway, the engine is dieseling from compression, plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1,400 deg F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel flow. If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half. In order to exceed 300 mph in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate an average of over 4G's. In order to reach 200 mph well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8G's. Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed reading this sentence. Top fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light! Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load. The redline is actually quite high at 9,500 rpm. Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimate $1,000.00 per second. The current top fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.428 seconds for the quarter mile (11/12/06, Tony Schumacher, at Pomona , CA ). The top speed record is 336.15 mph as measured over the last 66' of the run (05/25/05 Tony Schumacher, at Hebron , OH ). Putting all of this into perspective: You are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter 'twin-turbo' powered Corvette Z06. Over a mile up the road, a top fuel dragster is staged and ready to launch down a quarter mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run the 'Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and pass the dragster at an honest 200 mph.. The 'tree' goes green for both of you at that instant. The dragster launches and starts after you. You keep your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums and within 3 seconds, the dragster catches and passes you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter mile away from where you just passed him. Think about it, from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 mph and not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1,320 foot long race course. ....... and that my friend, is ACCELERATION!
When it comes down to raw power and acceleration, nothing compares to the- The F-1 rocket engine... a true marvel! Rocketdyne F-1 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "The F-1 burned 3,945 lb of liquid oxygen and 1,738 lb of RP-1 each second, generating 6.7 meganewtons (1,500,000 lbf) of thrust. This equated to a flow rate of 413.5 US gal of LOX and 257.9 US gal RP-1 per second. During their two and a half minutes of operation, the five F-1s propelled the Saturn V vehicle to a height of 42 mi and a speed of 6,164 mp. The combined propellant flow rate of the five F-1s in the Saturn V was 3,357 US gal per second. Each F-1 engine had more thrust than three Space Shuttle Main Engines combined"
It took me only seconds to find military defense rockets with far greater acceleration. Anti-ballistic_missile: "Sprint was a very fast missile (some sources claimed it accelerated to 8,000 mph (13 000 km/h) within 4 seconds of flight—an average acceleration of 90 g)" Sprint (missile): "The Sprint accelerated at 100 g, reaching a speed of Mach 10 in 5 seconds."
Wow! That's all pretty impressive. OTOH... My car does zero to 60 mph in around 4 seconds, and yet averages about half as much energy use, and about 1/3 the energy cost, under fairly hard driving, as a Prius driven conservatively, and without contributing any carbon to the atmosphere, since my electricity comes from hydro. And I don't need a motor rebuild every quarter of a mile. And I go so quietly that if you're walking on the sidewalk and not looking, you won't even know I drove past. But I do admit, those dragsters are impressive. More pollution in less time than anything else on four wheels.
Wonderful machinery. It might be hard to beat the acceleration of some fungal spores though, which may exceed 100,000 times the force of Earth's gravity PLOS ONE: The Fastest Flights in Nature: High-Speed Spore Discharge Mechanisms among Fungi A larger (and less rugged) object would not look like much after that ride. But it is how every one of them has gotten to a new resource patch (often animal dung) for the last, oh, 200 million years or so. They only go a meter, no quarter mile. I grant that. But for some reason that is not really clear, they do it in a godawful hurry.
Ummmm Bra... those might move a bit more quickly, but no man rides em... The OP is ALL about an occupied vehicle Bra... And I read somewhere some folks on the 1320 circuits riding nitroburners felt up to 9 G's... 9 G's... WOW I've done 6 - 6.5 I'm fairly sure... in Pitts, a 300L, and Marchetti's lately (others were older craft, but mission developed by minds of war - not straight performance)... and that's about where I have a hard time keeping my cookies down. I used to be able to fly by myself - not anymore since I lost my medical - but, I know about G's... I buy time-in-type to play now and again when I get the chance to get up in the air... plus, it's a heck of a lot cheaper not having to actually own a plane, or share the cost with some friends/others not so friendly. I will not comment on my share in the 172... I don't need that crap... Anyways... acceleration... yeah... it's not the norm... neither is falling... I dig em both. Hmmmm... My third done tonight, I'd best say g-night. Personally... I think it's second rated compared to inverted spin recovery practice... just saying.
On a personal note... with my son in the Prius at a light on the ramp, to verify it if that's what you want... I was at a stop light with a Mustang next to me and the kid in the Ford was revving his stuff... (sbf, no spooler)... I told my son "Watch this" and when the light went green... we lit off the line at full throttle... The Mustang caught up to us after I let off, not before... My son said "Wow Dad, you're not supposed to be doing that with this car... he has a hot rod", as we leave him trailing... I said, "Son, any car can be made to perform... but a car designed to perform on a roadway is a memory worth enjoying, and, is why we have a Prius, the Corvette, a Jeep, and a Voyager in the driveway... each of em has a purpose that they do darn well. Shoot... now I want a pickup truck again...
Even when limited to human-occupied vehicles, this still doesn't match the rocket sled tests. See post #3.
Close encounter with a black hole. Assuming the radiation does not get too high (not a safe assumption!), depending on distance, perfectly survivable. Bob Wilson
