Mythbusters question

[Adrian II]

It's a shame the producers of Mythbusters don't watch BBC's "Top Gear" motoring programme, because they put a car behind a 747 recently and it was blown over and over and over.

Excellent programme, Top Gear.



My favourite was the one in which they horrifically abused a Toyota pick-up (throwing it off a cliff, dousing it in petrol and setting it alight, putting it on top of a nine-story building about to be demolished with dynamite, leaving it in the surf on some merciless Cornish coastline for twelve hours) and it survived each successive onslaught to the point where it could still start and drive around the studio without a mechanic's assistance. Clearly the most robust car ever made.

Exhibit A


Anyway they proved the point about the 747 jet engine beyond a doubt.

Jet booster packs were used in attempts to set land speed records as well.

I am a huge fan of Adam and Jamie and their exploits in the Mojave Desert. It's their Jackass aspect that I love most, doings the things your mother warns you against when you are sixteen.

In fact the jet-assisted Chevy was featured in one of their pilots in late 2004. The original story went like this. The Arizona Highway Patrol once stumbled onto a blackened crater in the side of a mountain at the end of a long stretch of desert road. After an investigation, they learned that an Air Force sergeant from a nearby military base had attached a jet-assisted take off (JATO) unit to the roof of a 1967 Chevy Impala. He got up to about 80 mph, and then fired the things off. Within seconds the car was traveling at 350 mph. The crater was found in the mountainside 100 feet off the ground. The skid marks ran for 1.5 miles...

First off, the Arizona Department of Public Safety has already discarded the story because there is no such crater and there has been no such Air Force sergeant.

The first step of Mythbusters is to acquire a JATO unit, which produces 1,000 pounds of thrust for 15 seconds -- but Air Force won't give their permission. Adam and Jamie enlist Erik and Dirk Gates, who have over 20 years of experience in model rocketry. They decide to use three model rocket engines with 1,500 pounds of thrust for 4 seconds each. To get the same effect they must be fired successively.

Jamie and Adam buy a 1966 Chevy Impala with hydraulics kit on the cheap. They make it remote-controlled, use the hydraulic kit to keep the nose down for aerodynamic purposes, mount the three model rockets on the (reinforced) roof and take it to a dry lake bed. After a failed trial run and some repairs, the car 'takes off' and reaches 130 mph, it stays on the ground and everything works out perfectly.

So, myth busted, but this one could have been.

Exhibit B


Heroes