Among the many things robots can do, it’s a lot of fun to follow how fast they are. They go from the Boston Dynamics cheetah, which first reached a record-breaking speed of 45,5 km/h, to the robot Charlie that broke the world half marathon record seven minutes faster than the existing human record. Recently, TianGong Ultra stunned spectators at the World Humanoid Robot Games when it covered 100 metres in 8,64 seconds, almost a second faster than Usain Bolt’s world record, before crashing spectacularly into a safety wall.
Talking about fast, there are some rather fast old-timers out there, like Hidekichi Miyazaki of Japan, who ran the 100 metres at the age of 105 in 42 seconds. Another very fast old-timer is 65 year old Wing Commander Andy Green, the fastest man on earth.
A few years ago I was fascinated by the story of the Bloodhound project, which aimed to set a new world land speed record. Bloodhound was powered by three engines, a Rolls-Royce Eurojet EJ200 jet engine, a custom Nammo rocket motor, and a supercharged Jaguar V8 auxiliary engine. South Africa rose to the occasion and produced a perfect pitch on Hakskeen Pan in the Northern Cape, enthusiastically laid out by the local communities for whom it provided valuable jobs.
It was an extraordinary engineering project, with the car designed to travel at more than 1600 kph. Preparing the track itself was an enormous undertaking, with thousands of tons of stones cleared by hand from the surface to create a track suitable for a vehicle travelling at these speeds.
Sadly, the project did not see the light of day due to funding issues, and it was a great pity. But one of the spinoffs was the generation of kids who became fascinated with the possibilities and were inspired to pursue a career in science. This is one of the benefits of these extreme engineering projects. Even when they do not reach their ultimate goal, they show what engineering could make possible.
Andy Green was to have been the man behind the wheel of Bloodhound. He had already proved his credentials. A former Royal Air Force pilot, he set the original land speed record in 1997 in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. He drove the jet-powered ThrustSSC, with two Rolls-Royce jet engines, at 1227,986 kph. In doing so he became the first person to break the sound barrier on land. Twenty years ago, he also set a world land speed record for a diesel vehicle in the JCB Dieselmax, with a speed of 529,099 kph.
He’s still the fastest man on Earth, and now he’s gone green. He thought himself retired until British hydrogen carmaker JCB called and asked him to drive its Hydromax car, the fastest hydrogen-powered vehicle of any kind in history. So, he did. “My wife signed me up for it there and then,” he says.
Green drove the hydrogen-fuelled internal-combustion car at 653,909 kph at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, the fastest a hydrogen-powered car has ever travelled. It’s not bad for a 64 year old, even if he is a former jet pilot. The Hydromax is powered by two hydrogen-fuelled internal combustion engines, producing a combined 1200 kW.
He says travelling at a thousand kilometres per hour in a car is very different from piloting a supersonic jet because of the need to remain in contact with the ground and the constraints of drag, acceleration and braking distances. “The ground comes at you very, very quickly. You’re driving five or six times as fast as on the freeway. Everything happens very quickly. The scale of the landscape itself changes and you can actually see the curvature of the Earth.”
The new record is interesting for another reason. Instead of the jet engines of ThrustSSC or the diesel engine of Dieselmax, or Bloodhound’s Nammo rocket motor, this time the technology is hydrogen. “You can hold a glass up to the exhaust and all that is coming out is steam, and when it condenses you can drink it,” Green says. “This is as zero carbon as it gets.”
It’s quite a satisfying progression. The man who became the fastest person on land in a machine powered by two Rolls-Royce jet engines, and who later broke the diesel land speed record, is now demonstrating what hydrogen technology can do. Meanwhile, going faster is not the only goal. These projects push engineers, materials and technologies to places they have never been before. As Bloodhound showed, sometimes their most important legacy may be inspiring the next generation to wonder what they can do next.
| Tel: | +27 11 543 5800 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.technews.co.za |
| Articles: | More information and articles about Technews Publishing |
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version