Sailing On the Ground, at 126 MPH

Greenbird smashes a decade-old speed record for wind-powered craft

By Amber Sasse Posted 07.17.2009 at 11:13 am 1 Comment

Running Like the Wind: The Greenbird uses an airplane-wing-like sail to obtain ground speeds of 126.2 mph Colin Leonhardt (See the Greenbird up close!)

The wind may be restless, but the fastest air-powered ground vehicle is surprisingly steady as it sails over the dusty ground. Called Greenbird, it was developed by English engineer Richard Jenkins and the U.K.'s largest private green electricity supplier, Ecotricity.

On March 26 in a dry lakebed in California, the craft broke the world land-speed record for wind-powered vehicles by more than 10 miles an hour, setting the new record at 126.2 mph. Greenbird uses a solid, vertical sail—shaped like an aircraft wing—to capture the wind. The craft's unique low-drag design, coupled with the power of "apparent wind" (a combination of true wind and the wind force created by forward motion), allows it to travel at up to five times the true wind speed.

California Zephyr: The 1,323-pound, carbon-fiber Greenbird races across Ivanpah Lake in the Mojave Dessert. It is 32.8 feet long, with an equally tall sail Peter Lyons

Previous Article: Scientists Teach E. coli Bacteria to Count

Next Article: New Theory Postulates Galaxy-Sized Neutrinos, Expanding Since the Beginning of Time

Want to learn more about breakthroughs in electronics, medicine, nanotech, and more?
Subscribe to Popular Science today, for less than $1 per issue!

1 Comment

Link to this comment

meyaht

07/20/09 at 7:25 am

in the caption of the second picture it reads "... with an equally tail sail..."

I'm not sure what that means. I'm not trying to knit-pick a potential typo I'm just interested in getting all the information I can from this article.