Jet Engines

I think I’ve been in love with the turbine jet since 6th grade. Everything about them is extremely exciting to me. But especially engine start-ups:

The engine slowly picks up angular momentum from the external pneumatic pump, and when there is enough rotation, fuel is pumped into the engine and combusted, at which point, the engine is started. It’s no lie that I’ve spent a large amount of my childhood imitating that sound because to me it represented power in the rawest form.

I forget how much horsepower they have, but modern turbofan engines have reached up to 100,000 lbs of thrust. That’s some ridiculous power right there. I mean think about it, getting those airliners up to 160mph in about 3/4 mile is not a very natural thing. Planes are humongous, often weighing between 100,000 and 300,000 lbs. That’s the result of thousands of pounds of thrust. I’ve always dreamed of having a jet powered anything… Car, truck, plane, scooter, but especially motorcycle. Check this out… man… I would kill to have this bike:

Like… its exactly how I dreamed it. I drew one on Corel Draw back in the day and they were very similar. Although the thrust is divided into a two hole exhaust pipe. Judging by some estimations, I would say that this thing gets about 1,600 lbs of thrust. Goes somewhere around… really fast… lol. I believe it should go up to 300mph and beyond, but they only give the fast acceleration record, which is 190 mph in 7.937. Hoof… take that in for a second.

The problem with jet powered bikes though, is that you can’t put the full package on them, you have to lose some power in order to have a practical, functioning bike. The same is not true for jet powered trucks, though. Sometimes they have these at airshows and man are they a treat. Usually they have them race a P51 Mustang (WW2 plane) across a runway. The Mustang comes in for a flyby above the runway at around 200 mph. The truck is sitting idle on the runway, and kicks in the afterburners as soon as the Mustang reaches the front of the truck. Interestingly enough, the truck will sometimes catch the airplane in about 3/4 mile (which translates to about 12 or so seconds). At that point, the truck is doing about 350 mph and has to spend the remaining mile of the runway slowing down.

Jets have been around since the 40’s in some form or another. I believe the first airliner to use turbofan engines was in the 60’s. The invention was ridiculously adhead of its time, as can be seen by the fact that we still use them today. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a new airliner set for release by the end of this year, is to be equipped with Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines, which get about 70,000 lbs of thrust each. Most airliners have Trent engines of some kind, the 1000’s just so happen to be the latest generation. They are beautiful pieces of equipment – beautiful in their simplicity and power. However, with gasoline prices on the rise, there may be some other alternatives soon. I don’t know anything about these alternatives yet, but I’ll keep you posted. I doubt that fuel cells will be useful in aircraft because of the lack of “explosive reaction”, but I could be wrong. If I had to guess, I would say that nuclear is the way to go. They do have nuclear RAM jets, but for some reason, these haven’t caught on. We’ll see.

~ by daveinthewest on February 28, 2008.