Status: Strange, but real
The JATO (jet-assisted take-off) car is one of the most famous urban legends of all time. (Man attaches JATO unit to the top of his Chevy Impala, fires it up on a deserted Arizona highway, and launches himself into a nearby cliff at 300 mph.) But the
San Francisco Chronicle reports about a man, Ron Patrick, who has built a real-life JATO car. It's a silver Volkswagen with a huge jet engine sticking out the back. It's very cool. I want one. Patrick gave this description of turning on the jet engine while driving:
"You drive the car up to about 90 miles an hour and you spool up the jet, then hit it W.O.T. (wide-open throttle)," he said, fondly recalling one of his rides. "It's one of the finest feelings you can have in your life. In the rear view mirror, all you see is light and hear the thunder of the jet. It's like you're going down the largest hill you've ever been on." He said that a jet-boosted run will "pin the speedometer and that's at 140." He thinks that when it hits 160 mph -- he hasn't seen that ... yet -- the car will start lifting off the ground, but "the fun is not necessarily how fast you want to go. The fun is the sound of the thing. Just starting it up, it's like a (Boeing) 747 landing in your front yard."
Comments
Putting a JATO bottle on anything would be a very dangerous proposition, but jet engines can be seen at drag strips on a fairly regular basis.
One Wild ride...lolol
He's likely to kill not only himself, but everybody else in the neighborhood.
You could claim it on your tax return like that stuffed Jackalope you mentioned, that would confuse your accountant...
I was wondering, too, where it is that he's using this thing. It certainly wouldn't be legal on any public road without permission from whomever is in charge of that sort of thing, so if he's just going out and doing this he'd better be careful that nobody from the Arizona Highway Patrol reads about his car.
The car is simply a Jet powered car. If the car was driven by a gearbox from the turbine, it would be a gas turbine driven car.
It is also a hideously inefficient way of propelling a car.
As for taking off, the lack of control surfaces, combined with a lack of symetry in weight distribution combine to put the center of lift and the center of gravity so far appart that if the car did lift off, it would probably flip over, cartwheel, and give anyone inside a dramatic death.
Yes there are; instead of using a rocket, they use a jet engine. The idea is hardly ever used, though. A rocket is relatively cheap and easy to make, and so it can be dropped from the aircraft when it isn't needed any more.
A jet engine, though, is a lot more expensive and difficult to manufacture, and is also not used up in one take-off. So with JATO, you have the option of either having the aircraft jettison a perfectly good and expensive piece of equipment, or else keep the jet engine attached (even though it isn't used for the rest of the flight, and so just adds extra drag and mass and uses up more of the other engines' fuel).
So usually, RATO units are used rather than JATO; although sometimes for some odd reason the rocket ones are called JATO.
You might want to watch the Discovery Channel program "Mythbusters" as they "busted" the JATO/RATO myth a while back by attempting to construct a chevy like the one in the urban legend. It did work, but it required a LOT more preparation and modification of the car than implied by the legend. The sheer power of thrust would rip a stock car apart. And I had a VW just like that one. A JATO in the back would rip it apart.
What he's got in that car, if it's real, is a turbojet engire, like on a fighter plane. It's not a rocket, it's a regular jet engine.
Oh dear, where can I put my face?
To someone who hasn't got a clue what you're talking about, though, it sounds...intriguing...I shall have to Google it immediately
T.
http://www.gatwick-aviation-museum.co.uk/shack/shack.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Shackleton
JATO turbojet (not rocket) unit:
http://www.aviationshoppe.com/catalog/armstrong-siddeley-viper-turbojet-p-41.html
http://www.aoxj32.dsl.pipex.com/NewFiles/ASData.html (the sixth one down, Viper)
Definition of "rocket" (from answers.com):
rocket -- any vehicle propelled by ejection of the gases produced by combustion of self-contained propellants. Rockets are used in fireworks, as military weapons, and in scientific applications such as space exploration.
Definition of "turbojet":
turbojet -- A jet engine having a turbine-driven compressor and developing thrust from the exhaust of hot gases.
Definition of "jet engine":
An engine that obtains the oxygen needed from the atmosphere, used especially to propel aircraft and distinguished from rocket engines having self-contained fuel-oxidizer systems.
So a turbojet is not a rocket. So the Armstrong-Siddeley engine is not a rocket. So the Arvo Shackleton uses JATO with jets, not rockets. Which makes it true JATO, and not RATO.
http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/10679/ for the Mk.II and http://shell.deru.com/~sgn1/AW11/mod/turbine.htm for the Mk.I.
There are some nifty videos on Google Video of the Mk.II doing some high-speed runs:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=jet+mr2