New Motorcycle World Speed Record, 367.382 mph 253
An anonymous reader, apparently a member of the BUB racing team, wrote to let us know that on Thursday, their crew set the new ultimate motorcycle world speed record at 367.382 mph with the BUB Seven Streamliner at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The Seven is powered by a 3 Liter, turbocharged, 16-valve V4 engine that produces a claimed 500 hp and 400 lb-ft of torque at 8500 rpm. The pilot, Chris Carr, hit 380 mph during the run.
For those SI unit addicts. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:For those SI unit addicts. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:For those SI unit addicts. (Score:5, Funny)
Who uses SI anyway?
For those of us in the civilized world, it's 116,730,878 smoots / fortnight.
Re:For those SI unit addicts. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:For those SI unit addicts. (Score:5, Funny)
Does it make me a bad person if the first thought that crossed my mind when seeing this article was wondering how far the guy would fly if I pulled a trip wire the second he hit 360? Yea, I think so.
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Crosswinds (Score:2)
In my humble experience, (~125 MPH over Altamont Pass towards Livermore), when the winds are kicking up, the best policy is to go WOT. The gyroscopic effect of the wheels is increased, and the ride is much less scary than at 55.
Re:Crosswinds (Score:5, Funny)
When you go that fast, there's no point in being scared of much.
I think Jeremy Clarkson put it well when he wrote the following about the Bugatti Veyron at top speed:
( From: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/article596580.ece [timesonline.co.uk] )
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He is the one who thinks that going backwards through Pearly Gates is a good way to die. And his friend Hammond nearly succeeded [dailymail.co.uk] . OK, he was about to get in upside down through the gates, not backwards, but still.
Clarkson: "If you go through the pearly gates backwards in a fireball, that's a cool way to die!" Hammond: "I love that vision of just blasting through the gates, backwards, in a flaming Swedish supercar! 'Yes! I'm here! Where are the women?'"
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He is the one who thinks that going backwards through Pearly Gates is a good way to die.
Sounds like a pretty good way to die to me. I mean, compared to dying in a hospital unable to wipe your own arse or recognise your wife with a tube up your dick and a pint of morphine in your bloodstream, just for example.
Flying Low (Score:2)
I like how Bryan Harley referred to the rider as the "pilot".
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Hey, you ride a missile, you don't pilot one. Didn't you ever see Dr. Strangelove?
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Re:For those SI unit addicts. (Score:5, Funny)
Alternatively, 532.25 attoparsecs per picocentury.
Re:For those SI unit addicts. (Score:5, Funny)
To give you a more concrete feel of just how fast that is, it's about 3.25922905 * 10^-67 Universe diameters per Planck time.
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How about Libraries of Congress?
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And I have no idea how loud it was at top speed.
Eleven, I imagine.
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hard drive makers do, unfortunately...
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Incidentally, this is also about 3x terminal velocity, and about half the speed of sound.
It's no wonder it's enclosed...
Re:For those SI unit addicts. (Score:5, Insightful)
3x terminal velocity of a person in a balloon suit. Terminal velocity depends on shape, density, and size. An aerodynamically designed motorcycle is going to beat a person in a loose-fitting garment in that area any day of the week.
Further, terminal velocity is not necessarily "terminal" the way you're making it sound (a mouse walks away, a horse splashes and all that. see Haldane), and has nothing to do with horizontal translation anyway: terminal horizontal velocity, the speed at which wind resistance and other forces balance, if you're not including the powerplant in those forces, is precisely zero.
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Yes, yes, I know that's mph.
"Ultimate" (Score:5, Funny)
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And I don't think that joke is as funny as you think it is.
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
It refers to a specific SCTA class, and has nothing to do with your grammar pedantry. Good (uninformed) try, though chap!
Not mentioned in the article... (Score:3, Funny)
What they don't mention in the article is that they strapped the driver dow nto the motorcycle and dropped them both from a really tall building...
Re:Not mentioned in the article... (Score:5, Funny)
Funny thing that...you drop it off a building and it wouldn't go this fast. You need downforce and traction. Dude's got balls of Depleted Uranium.
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That wouldn't work as well as you think, as the governing body requires you to drive a full mile (really tall building) and you have to return on the same route. Not sure how fast you could get car/bike to go if it had travel straight up for a full mile.
Car Analogy? (Score:5, Funny)
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Motorcycle? (Score:5, Informative)
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http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/hog-wild-over-harley-davidson-the-hog-boys-of-early-h-d-history/ [wordpress.com]
Search for arrow.
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The monicker "streamliner" defines the bike as a different class of motorcycle with historical precendent.
If this is the car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC [wikipedia.org] and this is the trike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_America [wikipedia.org], then I don't see why the streamliner can't be the bike.
Instead of criticizing, you might take pride in the fact that the motorcycle land speed is still the last that isn't set with jet engines dragging rubber across the ground.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_land_speed_ [wikipedia.org]
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" the *motorbike* land speed "
erm, had to fix that.
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a motor vehicle with two wheels and a strong frame
I do, however, agree with you both. That ain't no motorcycle.
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define:motorcycle
A motor vehicle invisible to a lane changing SUV.
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I trim my greying beard from time to time, so it may not be as long as yours. But, I remember all the Harley heads laughing at my bike. "Riceburner" they called it. The only things they had more contempt for were cagers - and it was a close call at that.
IMHO - this is a bike. A very specialized bike, true, but a bike all the same.
I never managed to get my KZ900 up to the speed record set by the Z900, but I managed to get to ~180. Not bad, IMO. Maybe there will be a production bike made someday based o
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Well, the KZ900 looks a lot more like a motorcycle than the contraption in TFA. So much so, that only very confused people (such as some Harley heads) will call a KZ900 anything other than a motorcycle, and then for a different reason.
The TFA vehicle, on the other hand, is as cool as they come, but trying to pass it off as a bike is stretching it a bit, IMHO.
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Harley
AKA "Paint shaker made from farm machinery".
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Yeah, but it's still two wheels and a power plant. The streamlining is required at those speeds, no matter how may wheels, or how you sit on it. Google "The World's Fastest Indian" That bike was streamlined almost as much as this Seven, with only the rider's head sticking out. But, it was obviously an ancient Indian motorcycle when you opened up the sides. The movie is worth watching too! ;^)
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Re:Motorcycle? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a motorcyclist with gray in my beard, too, I totally disagree.
Two wheels, power other than human-generated applied through a wheel to the surface (not jet thrust); that's as much a motorcycle as there is. Sure it's purpose is limited, but that's true for all motorsports-specific bikes.
No way is a supermoto racer as useful a street bike as any of the ones I have at home. The MotoGP and World Superbikes are too small and cramped for a lot of people, and can't even be left unattended without a stand that isn't part of the bike. Drag race and hill climb bikes have wheelbases that are utterly impractical on the street. There are customs that are beautiful sculpture, but uncomfortable, to sit on, yet they have engines driving wheels and CAN be ridden. All of them are motorcycles. Just because the low-drag fairing is closed and the rider/pilot needs assistance getting seated (road racers have to have assistants steady their bikes while mounting, too), doesn't disqualify that as a motorcycle.
Got watch "World's Fastest Indian" and stop flaunting your narrow, overrated opinion of what constitutes a "motorcycle".
Motorcycle? (Score:2)
Kudos to the driver and the team, but that thing is a motorcycle in spirit only.
Can the definition of a motorcycle include an enclosed cockpit?
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Splat! (Score:3, Funny)
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I have the same feeling that others in this thread have had, that what they have built is really cool, but it barely counts as a motorcycle. Yes, it has two wheels, but I'd feel a lot better if the driver (rider??)had to actually turn it around themselves. I mean, do you have to countersteer in th
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I'm surprised no one else brought this up.
If the driver reached 380mph, why is the record not 380mph (or, as mocked above, how is the driver not very very dead)?
Greetings and Salutations....
Since no one else seems to have mentioned it....this is likely because the top speed recorded between the points that are the measured
course for the record was the smaller number, and, the bike was still accelerating at the end of the measure course. It would not take
much more time to reach a peak speed only 12.62 MPH faster than the record.
Regards
Dave
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The official record speed is the average over two runs.
Darwin Award (Score:2)
interesting stuff is in links from the second link (Score:5, Interesting)
IMO the first linked article was not very interesting. To get to the interesting stuff, you have to go to the second linked article, then click through to the links from there. The pictures of how they fabricated the engine block are really cool. I was surprised there wasn't more info about the tires. My understanding was that tires were the main limiting factor in land speed records -- or maybe that's only for cars. Tires tend to fly apart when rotated that fast. I would assume that at these speeds they get incredible gyroscopic stability, so I guess you don't have to worry about tipping over. They have to run the course in both directions without messing with the engine, which apparently is quite a challenge. I wasn't clear on what's involved in turning around to come back. The bike has both brakes and parachutes. Does the driver actually brake and do a steered u-turn at low speed, or do they use parachutes, then pick the thing back up and turn it around by hand?
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When doing a LSR run at Bonneville you have something like a half hour between runs. They let you refuel and check the vehicle over between runs for safety reasons. If you have a problem and can't make it back to the starting line on time you're toast. You one-way run doesn't count for anything.
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They'll probably turn it by hand, most land speed vehicles have a tiny, tiny amount of steering angle to keep a sudden twitch on the driver's part from turning into a two mile long barrel roll.
Well done BUB (Score:2)
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Motor Bike [feeddistiller.com] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]
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There's a fair bit of engineering and machining involved, stuff that no one has ever done really, no different than building a Mars rover, yet you probably wouldn't complain about the rover being mentioned on the front page.
yeah, but does it run Linux? (Score:2)
The Drag Coefficient is 0.08 (Score:5, Interesting)
A drag coefficient of 0.08 is amazingly awesome. For example, it's equal third place in the wikipedia concept car drag coefficient list (first is 0.07). And the frontal area is next to nothing, so the CD*A figure is going to be excellent too. Put a 100cc engine in it with appropriately tall gearing and it would most likely get better than 0.5 litres per 100km. Consider that the PAC-II has a Cd of 0.075 and gets 0.017l/100km equivalent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient [wikipedia.org]
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Re:And this is on slashdot why? (Score:5, Funny)
My wife says it's boring because it wasn't done by three guys in Hamtramck who bolted a V8 onto a Harley and made a fairing out of oil drums.
I find it interesting because it is about engineering. "IndyCars", on the other hand, are boring. All the cars are identical so it's just about the drivers. Who cares about the drivers?
Re:And this is on slashdot why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, spec series are about the driver's skill, which is pretty much what sports are about - the skill of the players.
However, it's much more fun to go out, get a cheap Miata, or if FWD is more your thing, a cheap Civic or Golf or something, and autocross it, than to sit around watching a spec series, IMO. Then, it's about honing your own skill, not watching others. (But, you can learn techniques from watching how they handle situations, so watching them can still be educational.)
Of course, the American Le Mans Series is ridiculously fun as a spectator series. Multiple classes of cars of varying power outputs, weights, visibility, handling, and (often) driver experience all out on the track at once, and the drivers and cars are surprisingly accessible. Oh, and it's about as far from a spec series as it gets - you can easily have a big heavy (ok, 900 kg/1980 lb, but still) V12 diesel car and a light (825 kg/1820 lb) 4-cylinder turbocharged gas car fighting for the lead of the entire race, the whole way, meanwhile weaving their way through traffic caused by big slow production-based cars.
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> Well, spec series are about the driver's skill, which is pretty much what
> sports are about - the skill of the players.
And players of any sport, unless they are personal friends, are boring.
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And players of any sport, unless they are personal friends, are boring.
Clearly you aren't acquainted with any sport that involves girls dressed in very little clothing then.
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Nah, autocross is boring. You wait a whole bunch of time to do one lap around a 50 second course in a mall parking lot dotted with cones.
Go to a track day, on a real road track, and get so much driving time that you'll be sick of it by the late afternoon.
You could also buy a shifter cart and drive all day for much cheaper and probably have an even bigger blast.
But friends don't let friends autocross.
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> I held that opinion for quite a while, but later came to amend it. I find it
> even more boring when it's like the Formula One races were for several years,
> with Nissan coming in 1st and 2nd every time because they came up with a
> particularly effective turbocharger.
That isn't even about drivers. It's about money. Useful stuff, but who wants to watch it?
Of course, now that they have taken to deliberately crashing cars maybe it will become interesting again, in a morbid, hockey-like way.
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"Really, car racing is boring as fuck to watch."
That has always been my attitude with sports in general. The only time I ever got excited over sports was in high school, then (much) later when my sons played sports. I've only RARELY watched an entire Super Bowl, NEVER watched an entire World Series, and nothing else even comes close. Wait - to be fair, I have a passing interest in track and field, and I've watched Olympic events pretty attentively. My career as a spectator pretty much ends there. I'd ra
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Us mechanical engineers aren't allowed to read Slashdot now?
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Mechanical engineering is obsolete. It's all done in software now.
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Ha. Care to back that up with anything?
Mechanicals have to know how to use software, but it sure hasn't replaced us.
Re:And this is on slashdot why? (Score:5, Interesting)
This all boils down to how you define geek.
I'm an automotive mechanic. My friends and family would also consider me to be a big geek. I fix their computers (yes yes, cars too), I build my own (computers, I haven't built a car from scratch... yet!). I love gadgets and hacking stuff together, and I have an abnormal interest in technology related politics (my girlfriend calls me paranoid). So to the general public, i'm a geek.
Among the Slashdot crowd, I don't have quite the same geek credentials. I don't use any flavour of Linux (besides the occasional liveCD like Backtrack) because my PC is a gaming rig first and foremost. I'm not a sys admin or a programmer. The last thing I "programmed" was fifteen years ago and written in BASIC. I don't run a website, and the extent of my HTML knowledge is frames and tables. I hate math and I don't get off on exciting new prime numbers or subatomic particles. Oh, and i've only played D&D like, twice. It was fun but time consuming. Am I still a geek?
My personal opinion is that geek has moved far beyond the 1980's definition of pocket protectors, glasses, and a calculator. Geeks come in all flavours now, from classical computing and math geeks all the way into sports and automotive geeks. The microprocessor really has changed the way we see the modern world, in virtually every way. A geek is now anyone who shares both a passion for a subject and the thirst for related knowledge, no matter what that subject may be.
The geek shall inherit the Earth. :)
Re:And this is on slashdot why? (Score:4, Insightful)
My personal opinion is that geek has moved far beyond the 1980's definition of pocket protectors, glasses, and a calculator. Geeks come in all flavours now, from classical computing and math geeks all the way into sports and automotive geeks.
My personal opinion is that geek still means carnival folk who bite the heads off chickens. "Nerd" or "boffin" are my preferred terms for people who are excited or obsessive about technical things. "Geek" has too many connotations of falsity, they remind me of the web-bubble MBA types who wouldn't like being called nerds, and think that "geek" has cooler connotations. But there's nothing cool about biting the heads off chickens.
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My personal opinion is that geek has moved far beyond the 1980's definition of pocket protectors, glasses, and a calculator. Geeks come in all flavours now, from classical computing and math geeks all the way into sports and automotive geeks.
Damn straight! I'm a former glasses-wearing high school computer nerd who has variously been a programmer, electrician, locksmith, auto mechanic, communications systems technician, process control engineer, and US Army Human Intelligence Collector/Infantryman over the last 20-odd years. I think "nerd/geek" is a much bigger tent than people realize.
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But does it... run... linux... *head explodes*
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This kind of speed on a motorcycle involves deep understanding of motorcycles as well as high speed behaviors. There are lots of ways in which anyone can get high powered engines sufficient for that kind of speed. But making it all come together into a machine that doesn't fall apart or become impossible to control requires serious mechanical and design talent.
In the 1950 era any street bike that reached 100 mph put its rider at great risk. I can reca
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This has little to do with understanding motorcycles. It's about balancing a huge speed machine on two wheels; I doubt it bears any but the most superficial resemblance to regular motorcycles. When you make such a stretch to call it a motorcycle you might as well just abandon the wheels altogether and have a rocket powered sled. Or just fly around on a rocket dragging a long cable behind you so you can technically call it a land speed record.
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I don't even have a license. Anecdotally, it seems that techies drive less than other people, unless of course they live in someplace like silicon valley. But I'd bet there's less interest in cars and motorcycles among computer geeks than, say, mechanical engineers. Anyone what to chime in with their preferences/opinions?
Odd. In my (similarly anecdotal) experience, there seems to be a disproportionate intersection of Computer Geeks and Motorcyclists (the latter set the union of Riders and Enthusiasts).
Re:And this is on slashdot why? (Score:5, Funny)
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Think of it as "Star Wars/Pod Racer" IRL.
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Re:not a record (Score:5, Interesting)
I found this part particularly inspiring:
"The shape of 'Seven' is based on that of a Coho Salmon. While watching TV Denis noticed the fluid dynamics of the salmon through water. Knowing that water is more dense than air- Denis figured the shape would work very well at Bonneville. Wind Tunnel testing of Seven at the A2WT proved 'Seven' to have the lowest CoD of any streamliner- 0.09. "
There's nothing more beautiful than taking the best designs from nature and applying them to our own.
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There's nothing more beautiful than taking the best designs from nature and applying them to our own
There's nothing more beautiful than thinking "That's silly, water and air are completely different mediums" and then reading it worked great :)
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To quote the Oxford English Dictionary, which isn't always definitive but I think in this case captures the common meaning well enough, a motorcycle is:
The vehicle linked does not at all "resemble a bicycle", at least as commonly defined (enclosed two-wheel vehicles are not usually considered "bicycles").
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A Google image search for 'bicycle speed record' shows otherwise.
The flat land speed bikes in particular.
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And since when have bikes needed to be open to be considered true bikes?
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I've seen fairings for racing motorcycles with leg-shaped cut-outs on the sides due to class restrictions.
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I don't recall any bicycles with full fairings on them. Does that mean supersports aren't motorcycles?
Think of the body as a really really big fairing, that encompasses the rider.
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There's reason enough to apologize and I do think he meant it. Piloting a motorbike at those speeds is a great feat, it's rude to undermine the undertaking and I believe the OP "feels" that. I'm not motorhead at *all*, I hate working on cars, to me it's like all of the bad stuff that gets engineered into computers, lack of standards (metric vs english, everywhere), lack of documentation, someone always trying to upsell something, the use of jargon to displace the customer, etc. But I felt like defending the
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Now there's an interesting question... are you subject to road laws if your vehicle doesn't touch the road?
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are you subject to road laws if your vehicle doesn't touch the road?
Probably not, but you don't really want to explain to the FAA why you were (a) below minimum altitude and (b) above maximum speed (250 kt below 10k feet), (c) in an uncertificated aircraft (d) without a pilot's license. The Feds tend not to have a sense of humor about such things.
(And oh yeah: (e) ??? (f) profit! )
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That wouldn't work: there's no cycle in a rocket motor (except the turbo-pumps in a liquid rocket) It's open circuit.
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Reminds me of a guy who died last year at this time [foxnews.com] on the Bonneville Salt Flats attempting the same thing. Can you imagine flying off a motorcycle at 239 MPH? Insanity.
Flying off, no problem. The road rash when you hit the ground, ouch! The fact that you're being scraped over salt, owie owie owie!