Fun_People Archive
23 May
Where's the off switch...

Date: Mon, 23 May 94 20:22:51 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Where's the off switch...

From: Claude Ginsburg <claude@espresso.rt.cs.boeing.com>

     The Arizona (U.S.) Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering
     metal imbedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road,
     at the apex of a curve.

     The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a
     car.  The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene.

     The boys in the lab finally figured out what it was, and what had
     happened.

     It seems that a guy had somehow got hold of a JATO unit, (Jet
     Assisted Take Off, actually a solid-fuel rocket) that is used to give
     heavy military transport planes an extra `push' for taking off from
     short airfields.  He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert,
     and found a long, straight stretch of road.  Then he attached the JATO
     unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed, and fired off the JATO++

     Best as they could determine, he was doing somewhere between 250 and
     300 mph (350-420kph) when he came to that curve....
     The brakes were completely burned away, apparently from trying to
     slow the car.

     MORAL:

     Solid-fuel rockets don't have an 'off'... once started, they burn at
     full thrust 'till the fuel is all gone.

© 1994 Peter Langston