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Kids, Don't Try This At Home!
>From: ph@ama-1.ama.caltech.edu (Paul Hardy)
Subject: turbo-charged auto
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 1990 05:52:09 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Newsgroups: rec.models.rockets
This isn't exactly in the spirit of the group, but I had to post this
somewhere. I suppose my excuse could be that I want to make sure
nobody else tries it. I don't know where it's from originally, but
it came to me via "a reliable source":
The Arizona (U.S.) Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering
metal imbedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road,
at the apex of a curve.
The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a
car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene.
The boys in the lab finally figured out what it was, and what had
happened.
It seems that a guy had somehow got hold of a JATO unit, (Jet
Assisted Take Off, actually a solid-fuel rocket) that is used to give
heavy military transport planes an extra `push' for taking off from
short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert,
and found a long, straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO
unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed, and fired off the JATO!!
Best as they could determine, he was doing somewhere between 250 and
300 mph (350-420kph) when he came to that curve....
The brakes were completely burned away, apparently from trying to
slow the car.
MORAL:
Solid-fuel rockets don't have an 'off'... once started, they burn at
full thrust 'till the fuel is all gone.