Mythbusters?

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Wingarcher

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I was watching Mythbusters (Discovery channel) yesterday and saw the start of a show about the old "strapped a rocket to his car, flew his car into a mountainside" myth. They were going to use 4 *large* HPR motors in a rack on the roof..... unfortunately I couldn't see the rest of the show. What happened? What motors did they use? I can't seem to decide if something like that is bad press or not..... *grin*

N
:eek:
 
I remember seeing it. They had invited one of the Gates brothers, and they took the four cases and welded them to the top of the car, then went out to the salt flats out in the middle of nowhere and lit the motors. It was pretty cool, and there were no problems with the motors or anything (i.e. CATO) but I would say it is neutral press. Not good, not bad, but decent.

Jason
 
Actually, it was 3 motors. I don't know what motors they used other than it looked like they were Blue Thunder motors. The car went over 130mph since it outran the helicopter chasing it. They concluded in the end that the story was a myth.
 
From a posting by Paul Robinson on ROL, they were AMW N4000 'Blue Baboons'.
 
the mythbuster guys had to work out some bugs in their radio-control system and had to make a couple runs.
when they finally lit the motors, the car went a little faster, and held together, but came nowhere near 'flying'
I think the conclusion was that this myth was busted, like Mark Brown noted
 
I seen it, it was way groovy.:) I'd like to have one of those cases:)
 
I love that show. But for me, the urban legend part is secondary in entertainment value to the build stuff in a Hollywood-special-effects-equipped ultimate workshop with an unlimited budget. That would be pretty close to my dream job.

"Hey, whatcha up to?"

"Oh, nothin'. Just building a 1/8 scale replica of the Golden Gate bridge so my partner can see if he can destroy it with a hundred of those army-boot stomping robots he made. Then we're gonna shoot a frozen chicken out of this cannon at this airplane windshield a few times. Then we'll probably blow something up with about ten times more explosives than we really need."

S..
 
My only beef with the Mythbusters is that they could have come to AEDC and used the REAL chicken gun to bust that myth...but NOOO, they have to build their own. BTW, they didn't get it going nearly as fast as a two-stage light gas gun does. I have to say that one was inconclusive.

As for a dream job...sign me up too!!! Those guys have almost as much fun as Bowser on Junkyard Wars!!!
 
Originally posted by Bushrat
I love that show. But for me, the urban legend part is secondary in entertainment value to the build stuff in a Hollywood-special-effects-equipped ultimate workshop with an unlimited budget. That would be pretty close to my dream job.

"Hey, whatcha up to?"

"Oh, nothin'. Just building a 1/8 scale replica of the Golden Gate bridge so my partner can see if he can destroy it with a hundred of those army-boot stomping robots he made. Then we're gonna shoot a frozen chicken out of this cannon at this airplane windshield a few times. Then we'll probably blow something up with about ten times more explosives than we really need."

S..

LOL!! That's about accurate. I LOVE that show! I just saw the one where they made a cannon out of a tree. It made a SWEET cannon. They wanted to see if they could get it to blow up so they put 5 pounds of gun powder in it, capped the opening, then fired it. One word: awesome!!!! I nearly peed my pants with delight!! It basicaly vaporized the cannon!! hee hee hee hee!!!!:D
 
Originally posted by baxterl
My only beef with the Mythbusters is that they could have come to AEDC and used the REAL chicken gun to bust that myth...but NOOO, they have to build their own. BTW, they didn't get it going nearly as fast as a two-stage light gas gun does. I have to say that one was inconclusive.

Actually, the 'chicken' gun that they developed was very similar to the projectors that are used for bird impact testing. Canopies and leading edges are required (by mil-specs) to be capable of withstanding the impact of a three pound bird at such-n-such speed, and a ten pound bird at another speed, etc. Bird impact criteria can add lots of weight to military aircraft.

I have seen high-speed film of a bird ingestion test on a P&W engine operating at speed. They used one of those million-frames-a-second cameras, and when they slow it down the bird just disappears at the first fan stage. As the leading edges of the big fan blades swing around (4-5-6,000 rpm?) the bird gets shaved off one little bit at a time, the engine gives a little poof in the exhaust, and keeps right on going. Cool.

The mythbuster guys could have saved all that trouble in trying to do tests on a general aviation windshield. These are typically NOT rated to withstand any level of birdstrike. Of course the bird went right on through.

A light gas gun is used to move small aerodynamic models through a special gas atmosphere to study shock waves at supersonic and hypersonic speeds. No application there to bird impact testing.
 
I actually work at Arnold Engineering Development Center, home of the original Rooster Booster. It is a discarding sabot (balsa), rail guided bird strike test facility (supersonic). It is indeed a 2 stage light gas gun, using Hydrogen gas in the second stage.

I do know that the facility has been idle for years since a number of Universities have built similar capabilities, they may be using other poutlry acceleration techinques. Different speed birds require different guns I would imagine. I can personally vouch for the fact that there is still a freezer full of chickens, and a cockpit mockup in place here at AEDC.

(my personal favorite myth about the chicken gun is the one about the cat...)
 
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