Holloman High Speed Test Track
Time for a break from the World’s Largest trivia, lets take a look at the World’s Fastest … the location of the land speed record1 is the Holloman High Speed Test Track in New Mexico.
South End:
North End:
The track stretches for almost 16km across the desert – you have to zoom out a long way to see the whole thing!
It is used by the Holloman Air Force Base to test new vehicle, munitions and missile technologies by propelling rocket-powered sleds at ever-increasing velocities. The current speed record, set in 2008, is 10,604km/hour – that’s Mach 9 or about 3km per second!
From a standing start, the sled with multiple-stage rockets travelled 6km of the track in just six seconds! The track was enclosed in a helium-filled tent to reduce drag, but this YouTube video gives a pretty good idea of how awesome it must have been to witness!
There’s not much to see along the track on the Google Maps view, other than a slight image overlap problem, but Live Maps does show some kind of vehicle on one part of the track.
It’s worth reading the before and after of the record attempt, and some of these pictures of previous tests are fascinating.
Thanks to Ryan C.
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Specifically, the land speed record for railed vehicles – rocket sled category, which is several times faster than any other land-based vehicles. ↩
I’m having trouble confirming, but it looks like the January 2008 attempt at the land speed record fell short, at least according to this site:
http://elementsofpower.blogspot.com/2008/02/rocket-sled-land-speed-record.html
Well that’s disappointing. I spent forever researching this one. Everything I read indicated that attempt was the new record … but at the same time I had the feeling that something was a little odd because it wasn’t mentioned on the HHSTT web page.
Still, it does hold the record from 2003, and I do find the video the best part of all this!