Saturday, July 29, 2017

1000 Miles Per Hour On Land

The Bloodhound SSC (SuperSonic Car)

This thing was supposed to start test runs back in 2012.   It looks like it might be starting to get close to the first testing runs at lower speeds, in 2017 or 2018? 

I'll keep you updated.

The car will be piloted by RAF Wing Commander Andy Green, the same guy that piloted the Thrust SSC and was the first to break the sound barrier on land.



15 comments :

  1. Replies
    1. AOW, And run # 66 was the final run. Highest speed 771.

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    2. AOW, I sure hope they run the Bloodhound. There will be So Much better video and documentary material.

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  2. Was it Craig Breedlove who said, "For my next trick, I'll set myself on fire."?

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    1. ED, I don't know if he said that but he did crash his F104 turned into a car at 675 mph and survived. :)

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  3. All very interesting, but don't you think we're all moving MUCH too FAST already?

    The impact of Technology, since it came to DOMINATE our lives, has been deleterious to SOCIABILITY, the use of the LANGUAGE, the ART of CONVERSATION and written CORRESPONDENCE, the development PATIENCE, the REWARDS of CONTEMPLATION, and of JOY and PRIDE in accomplishing worthwhile tasks ENTIRELY on ONE'S OWN.

    We have all-but-lost awareness of, as Albert Schweitzer put it, "the beautiful dullness of long labor."

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    1. The times they are a changin FT :-)

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    2. REGRETTABLY, they are, Kid.

      I'm four months past my 76th birthday, and no Luddite, but having known several people who were born in the MID-nineteenth century, I can tell you they were stonger, healthier, more resourceful, happier and more productive in that they took charge of their personal lives by making their own fun. They were also far more sociable than we are today, and spent most of their free time interacting with relatives and friends cooking for each ither, playing cards or board games after dinner, singing favorite tunes around the piano, growung fruits and vegetables, sharing produe with thers, canning everything they did not consume during the growing season, goung to club meeting, the Boy Scoua, Girl Scouts, the Masons, the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, Kiwanis, or vokunteering at the local hospital. They all planned weekend trips –– Picnics at State Parks, –– visits to State Beaches –– visits t Historic Houses –– trips to the nursery to get a new tree for the yard or a couple of bushes, or annuals for the garden –– trips to roadside farm stands to get fresh-picked corn, tmagtoes, preserves, homemade bread, apple cider –– and going to restautants with a group to get a break from routine. A lot of this was connected directly to church membership, a lot of it to family.

      I remember it well, and it was great. I've always felt cheated that all that easy camaraderie and happy group producivity virtually disappeared by the late nineteen-SICK-sties.

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    3. I spent all my earlier days at hard labor and at those kinds of activities. I'm happy to have grown up that way but I don't miss it. :)

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  4. ___ TO PROMOTE INNER PEACE ___

    Divorce yourself from everything that's "pop"
    Visualize a cabin in the pines
    Close by a silver lake or sparkling stream
    Detached from every aspect of the grid.
    Chop wood, fetch water so you may survive
    Eating fresh caught fish or game you kill
    Along with berries, nuts, and tasty leaves.
    Carry with you a supply of books
    Writing paper and a clutch of pens
    Allow yourself an oil lamp for the night
    Embrace austerity, and get to know
    Yourself, and only what may be essential
    To survival in the coming winter months.
    Emulating Thoreau may provide
    The antidote to hellish modern life.


    ~ FreeThinke

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    1. NOPE!

      Hey! I'm so old I remember when television did not yet exist. We had movies, long-playing records and the radio, but no ne was ADDICTED to being "entertained" passively ALL the TIME as they are today.

      It WAS a better world Kid. We were much more active. Much less rooted to the spot, and much less alienated from each other.

      The internet may
      Be as great as they say
      But it wouldn't be missed,
      If it didn't exist.


      ~ Piet Hein (adapted by FT)

      };^)>

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  5. ______________ STILLNESS ______________

    No sound beyond the dropping of the leaves
    Or shushing in the treetops of the stirring
    In the air and periodic whirring
    Soft of wings and bundling of sheaves ––

    Every now and then a bird may call
    Looking for or longing for his mate;
    Escaping still the hunter’s dinner plate.
    Scythes swish steadily as grain grown tall

    Submits to delicate compelling force.
    Workers silently bent to their task
    Over whom hot sunshine spills its rays

    Reap swiftly knowing pain could come, of course.
    Later, in the afterglow they’ll bask
    Dreaming foolishly of better days.


    ~ FreeThinke

    That sonnet was inspired by Brueghel's painting of peasants harvesting grain by hand in an open field. Are workers REALLY better off today than they were in the seventeenth century? Somehow I doubt it.

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    1. When you get up in age FT, I don't find the prospect of hard labor something I'd long for.

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    2. I agree, Kid, but that's not the point. Hard labor in the peace and quiet of a sunny field with nothing but the sound of the breeze in the trees, the swish of a scythe, and the twittering of birds is a helliva lot more appealing than hard labor in a dark, noisy factory or stuffy office cubicle surrounded by machinery and lots of hostility.

      NOISE POLLUTION –– a major contributor to the kind of stress that leads to neurotic, antisocial behavior –– was unknown before The Machine Age took over, and held us al captive.

      The Old World may have been less convenient, but it was not as hard on the nerves as the hectic hot mess most live with today –– and the cost of living was HELL of lo CHEAPER..

      Besides, some of my elderly relatives –– the ones born in the 1870's and 80's –– regularly took a FIFTEEN to TWENTY MILE HIKE after Church just because they enjoyed the exercise. And these were not young people. They were in their fities and sixties at the tome.

      They owned a car, but used it rarely –– only in special, carefully planned occasions or in an emergency. They always walked to church and to the grocery store –– and to visit friends and relatives acoss town or in neighboring communites.

      I couldn't BEGIN to do what they did when they were my age. And no I'm nogt making his up. . §;-]>

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