A 1,000 MPH Car

ABOUT THAT 1000 MPH CAR: Please, please, please - add a bigger tail and put the rear wheels farther apart.

I know a thing or two about driving at speed and the pressure on the nose is many times that of the pressure at the rear! Trying to push a tail-less rocket car without a tail at over mach-1 is like trying to fly an arrow tail first - it will always want to try to spin around. At that point its going mach 1 sideways and that's when the ride ends real fast.

As for the wider wheels: There is an incredible amount of roll oscillations
that set in and narrow wheels cannot dampen it out. That baby as its currently designed will probably hit a small bump at speed, and the roll-oscillate until its on its side. For great stability, put the wheels out at the tips of small wiglets, inside of flarings, and use these flarings as the stabilizer tails that this vehicle needs. If you make these changes, then there will be no problems.

...and how will your increased rear track and the associated drag it will induce help anything? If it goes wrong, the wider rear could turn a rolling crash into an end-over-end crash. With flying debris. Hundreds of pounds hurtling in any variety of directions and traveling at supersonic speeds....

Beyond that, if the car is to go supersonic, to what extent would the widened rear be engineered to withstand the stresses of such speed and the aerodynamic requirements of dealing with sonic booms?

Not saying you're wrong, though..

As an American Fighter Pilot, I am absolutely appalled at this spectacle of trying to make a car go 1000mph. Having flown in excess of 2.5 mach in a late fifties designed plane (the F4 Phantom), it is easy to attain plus mach speeds. Why on earth, no pun intended, would you want to exceed mach one on the ground? The issue is not speed, it is the engineering to keep the vehicle touching the ground at the speed of sound. It must be that most fast car drivers are frustrated fighter pilots. Let's get over it!

The point is, there are better things to do. I know there are some people who love to see a car go fast, but just look out your window sometimes and watch a fighter go over, it is the same thing! Speed is speed. Let's concentrate on making a car go 70 miles per hour forever, or at least for two hours on a gallon of gas. What about small rails to put cars on so they can go upwards of a hundred miles an hour safely. Let's get over meaningless speed just to satisfy some guys ego.

Jorient