Maximum Velocity

128 mph


Kingda Ka: World’s Fastest Roller Coaster

When it debuts at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, this April, the Kingda Ka will blast from a standstill to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds, ousting Cedar Point’s Top Thrill Dragster in Sandusky, Ohio, for bragging rights as the world’s fastest thrill ride. Maryland-based coaster maker Intamin developed the $25-million ride with a hydraulic catapult rated at 12,000 horsepower, a technology inspired by a previous generation of steam catapults used to hurtle U.S. Navy jets off the decks of aircraft carriers. The Kingda Ka’s launch catapult produces explosive acceleration by releasing compressed hydraulic fluid and nitrogen gas stored in small tanks at pressures of up to 4,500 pounds per square inch. The system consumes three megawatts of power and can be fired and reloaded every 45 seconds, enabling the coaster to carry 1,400 riders an hour.


After blasting out of the station and reaching maximum speed, the ride tips skyward and ascends to a record height of 456 feet before nosing more than 90 degrees into a 41-story plunge embellished by a 270-degree spiral twist. The Ka then careens up a second 129-foot hill, allowing riders to experience a few seconds of weightlessness before sweeping back to Earth. From beginning to end, the G-force madness lasts 50 seconds.


763 mph


Thrust SSC: World’s fastest car

Roaring down a mile of desert in 4.7 seconds in 1997, the Thrust became
the first land vehicle to break the sound barrier. The 10-ton car was powered by two 25,000-pound-thrust Rolls-Royce Spey Mk205 jet engines built for a British variant on the F-4 Phantom fighter plane.


3,409 mph


Lockheed Martin LOSAT: World’s fastest missile

Fired from a Humvee, the LOSAT (Line-of-Sight Anti-Tank weapon) tops out at more than 5,000 feet a second—twice as fast as most ground- and air-launched missiles. The weapon, which will debut next year, has a five-mile range and is propelled by a solid-rocket motor. It employs no explosives; kinetic energy alone drives a penetrator rod into an enemy tank.




267 mph


Maglev: World’s fastest train

Since December 29, 2003, Transrapid’s Shanghai Maglev has traveled the 19 miles between the Chinese city’s financial district and its airport in less than eight minutes, hitting a maximum speed of 267 mph. Levitated on a magnetic field, the train floats half an inch above its track and frictionlessly rides a magnetic wave.


World’s Fastest Supercomputer
Every person on Earth would need to perform 100,000 calculations a second in order to equal the power of IBM’s Blue Gene, which posted a new record speed last November. Since 1976, when the original supercomputer, the Cray-1, debuted, supercomputer speed has increased by a factor of 450,000. When fully complete this June, Blue Gene’s projected speed will be almost five
million times that of the Cray-1.

Blue Gene’s power—achieved by 131,072 IBM PowerPC 440 processors—is already twice as great as the previous record set just last May.