Putting acceleration into perspective

[herr_oberst]

The place to spectate at a nitro race (as far as I'm concerned) is a few yards before the lights, when the cars are still accelerating hard and are at just about max velocity.

I tremble for the drivers in that moment, because they are going so fast and it is so loud
that it's impossible to imagine how anyone can control something that powerful.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by JackDidley

Ive been to the US nationals a couple times. As said above, there is nothing like being near a fuel car at full throttle. What amazes me is, John Force won funny car 2 weeks ago at the age of 72. Hard to believe he can have his stuff so together at that age.

At one of the recent Porsche Parades, Michelin hosted a drive and compare event. The had two new Cayman S models and we got to do a launch control drag race. We swapped cars to make it even and that was the different tire compounds, and it is a blast to do launch control in a car that I don't have to pay for.

I beat two guys, so several runs, but I was beaten. The overall winner with the best time was a "old man" in his late 70s that was a former NHRA drag racer. Many years of practice made him impossible to beat.

The Cayman S is by no means a drag racer, but it is ton faster than my antique 85 911 with a 915 transmission and ME as owner and provider of labor and funds for all repairs. The Michelin guys said they do the same type of event for other makes at their conventions. He has only the Porsches survive a week of launches with zero issues. The other makes usually have at least one failure.

[Zeke]

This is acceration:

[JackDidley]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

I beat two guys, so several runs, but I was beaten. The overall winner with the best time was a "old man" in his late 70s that was a former NHRA drag racer. Many years of practice made him impossible to beat.

Whats that saying about old age and treachery over youthful exuberance ?? Must be true.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Tervuren

It'd be interesting to see a video comparing a top fuel dragster to the space shuttle.
Unfortunately all the videos of a space shuttle launch I had ever seen were slow mo.
My mind was not wired for how short what I was about to see would be.
Seeing it in person, even if 10 miles away, wow.
It did not waste time getting to several hundred miles per hour, then it hit a cloud layer and went out of view.

The shuttle limits it acceleration for pilot and passenger comfort.
It'd be capable of more at full tilt.
Just amazing.

I don't actually think that what you see with the space shuttle is in slow motion, and it's not slow. It just looks slow because our brain doesn't fully appreciate the scale.

But yes, the acceleration is limited to 3G. It's still at least 2.25x faster than what the quickest street car can manage, but it doesn't begin to touch a drag launch which approaches 8G so almost 3x that of the space shuttle.

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/466711main_AP_ST_ShuttleAscent.pdf <-- This link has a chart that shows the Time (s), Altitude(m), Velocity(m/s), and Acceleration(m/s2) over the first 520 seconds of the STS-121 launch.

I think the really impressive part is that it probably averages 2.5G of acceleration for minutes which gets it up to 17500mph.