Somewhere in a box is a fist sized chunk of asphalt with a stick rubber blob on it i picked up and saved.
That last night, when after the top fuel final, the next vehicles to run the track were bulldozers.
I miss Lyon's raceway!
Andy
Sounds to me like he was in the wrong career field. MIght've been better suited to meteorology or political polling.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
For a copy of my TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter, send email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com
I miss Lyon's, Irwindale and Orange County as well! :(
technology,
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That "first time" was at the Green Valley Raceway in Grand Prairie, TX, sorely missed now. Fortunately we now have the Texas Motorplex which hosts two NHRA events each year. Woohoo!!
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I like to relate this acceleration to the space shuttle...about twice that of the shuttle. Granted it's only for about 3 to 4 seconds, and the shuttle is 8 minutes...
Some more shuttle fun facts...
It takes only about eight minutes for the Space Shuttle to accelerate to a speed of more than 17,000 miles (27,358 kilometers) per hour.
The Space Shuttle main engine weighs 1/7th as much as a train engine but delivers as much horsepower as 39 locomotives.
The turbopump on the Space Shuttle main engine is so powerful it could drain an average family-sized swimming pool in 25 seconds.
The Space Shuttle's three main engines and two solid rocket boosters generate some 7.3 million pounds (3.3 million kilograms) of thrust at liftoff. Compare that with America's first two manned launch vehicles, the Redstone which produced 78,000 pounds (35,381 kilograms) of thrust, and the Atlas, which produced 360,000 pounds (163, 926 kilograms).
The liquid hydrogen in the Space Shuttle main engine is -423 degrees Fahrenheit (-253 degrees Centigrade), the second coldest liquid on Earth, and when burned with liquid oxygen, the temperature in the engine's combustion chamber reaches +6,000 degrees F. (+3,316 degrees C.)
The energy released by the three Space Shuttle main engines is equivalent to the output of 23 Hoover Dams.
Each of the Shuttle's solid rocket motors burns 5 tons (5,080 kilograms) of propellant per second, a total of 1.1 million pounds (500,000 kilograms) in 120 seconds. The speed of the gases exiting the nozzle is more than 6,000 miles (9,656 kilometers) per hour, about five times the speed of sound or three times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet. The plume of flame ranges up to 500 feet (152 meters) long.
The combustion gases in a solid rocket motor are at a temperature of
6,100 degrees Fahrenheit (3,371 degrees Centigrade), two-thirds the temperature of the surface of the sun. While that temperature is hot enough to boil steel, special insulation inside the motor protects the steel case so well that the outside of the case reaches only about 130 degrees F. (54 degrees C.).A stacked booster is the same height as the Statue of Liberty (not including pedestal) -- 151 feet (46 meters) -- but weighs almost three times as much.
The four engines of a Boeing 747 jet produce 188,000 pounds (85,277 kilograms) of thrust, while just one SRM produces more than 17 times as much thrust -- 3.3 million pounds (1.5 million kilograms). A pair of SRM's are more powerful than 35 jumbo jets at takeoff.
If their heat energy could be converted to electric power, two SRMs firing for two minutes would produce 2.2 million kilowatt hours of power, enough to supply the entire power demand of 87,000 homes for a full day.
The Shuttle's Remote Manipulator System (RMS), or robot arm, provided by the Canadian Space Agency, weighs about 905 pounds (411 kilograms) on Earth but can move cargo in space weighing 66,000 pounds (29,938 kilograms), objects about the size of a Greyhound bus.
SNIP
I wonder who will volunteer first to blow up a $150,000 motor on a dyno so they can measure the hp's?
You should see a 1/24 scale dragster doing over 100 mph. It ain't quite like a real top fueler but it does the scale 1/4 mile in under .500 seconds.
John Emmons
"Tom" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:
The first time I went I noticed that the shock waves from the engines were shaking my hair!
The second time I went we walked down to the finish line. If you've never experience true "fight or flight" response to stress, having two screaming top-fuel dragsters coming at you at 300 mph only about 50 feet away will do the trick.
It's so loud and intense that you can't even think. Pure adrenaline rush for the spectator.
The dragster could get up to 17,000 mph in 3 minutes if it had a fuel tank that big. ;~)
Mark and Kim Smith remarks:
I think they went past that without looking. Clothing one of my granddaughter's was wearing on Sunday was more '70s, and early at that.
I expect pretty soon the college boys will be back to wearing worn chambray work shirts and torn jeans, just as if they'd actually worked for a living, just as did the '60s and '70s types.
Charlie Self "Health food makes me sick." Calvin Trillin
Both Irwindales... sigh. :-( j4
And I remember a high school physics teacher who "proved" to the class that ice cubes would come to a boil faster than a pan of room temp. water with the same volume due to the rate of temperature change being so much higher.
He also "proved" that an atomic bomb would produce a straight-line wind of about 400MPH 120 miles away from the detonation point. I don't remember what power he assumed for the bomb, but I still don't believe it.
Mike
Mike Patterson Please remove the spamtrap to email me.
Now that I think about it, there were at least three. Perhaps four. They moved it at least once in the area around Arrow Hwy and Live Oak, IIRC. Gawd that's purely ancient history. Sigh. jo4hn
I took my son and one of his friends to Pomona a few years back. They let you in the pit area while they're tuning and setting up the dragsters (like 20 feet away!). Talk about loud! And the nitro fumes were something else too...
Next closest thing I can think of is being the track director when a "super mod" puller is headed toward you with 5 or 6 full blown alky burners @ full scream, running about 40-50MPH with that damn sled right behind it!
produce a straight-line
Let's not find out.
On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:11:19 -0600, "Tom" brought forth from the murky depths:
The smell of nitro alone is worth the entrance fee. But the sound (take ear plugs/muffs) of the exhaust is felt all the way down in the core of your soul (and your bones).
Yeah, you see the tree go green, instantly feel the blast of exhaust noise, and they're gone, almost out of sight in mere seconds.
I prefer the funny cars and remember one time when the front-engined car (wow, long time ago) lost a blower and sent fuel exploding into flame inside the car. Thank Buddha for Nomex suits, the guy was alright.
Ah, fond memories of Carlsbad Raceway in SoCal. They held some of the major motocrosses there, too.
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Cool!
Rob
I doubt it! I think the dragster would beat it! You Chevy would excelerate with gravity, where a dragster peaks out at 8X at launch and probably averages 4X the force of gravity through the run. A dragster would kick ass on you falling Chevy!
Any math geek want to prove/disprove this?? Greg
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