Monday, December 17, 2012

Busy, busy, busy . . .


I'm hard at work on a writing project at the moment, which has cut into my blogging time today.  I'll put up some posts early tomorrow morning.  In the meantime, to keep you happy, here's a human catapult stunt that leaves me shaking my head.  I wonder what the G-forces were upon launch?








Peter

6 comments:

Stuart Garfath said...

This is brilliant!.
So many applications.
F'rinstance.
Imagine if you only lived two or three blocks away from work, one shot, and Presto!, you're at the front door in ten seconds flat!.
I've even got a name for the whole thing, it's....

'G-Force Travel Inc.
Our slogan. "You buy, you fly".

Judy said...

Wonder how much 'Here, hold my beer and watch this.' was going on?

Mike Miles said...

It would get you to work, wake you up, and blow dry your hair all at the same time!

Anonymous said...

Hmm. . . . Roughly about .5 seconds of launch acceleration by my stopwatch. About 4.5 seconds from launch to visible drogue chute deployment. Assuming he deployed at apogee. . . .

4 seconds deceleration to cancel .5 seconds acceleration. . . Assume some aerodynamic drag, add 1 g to the base acceleration figure to account for actual, you know, gravity.

Probably around 8-10g for about half a second. Close enough with the accuracy of data I have (which is not good, just me timing on my phone and guessing when he hit the top of the arc based on when I can see the drogue on a low-res image).

Could be off by 3g either way. Anybody got a better way to get the times from the video? Anybody want to check my math? It's been along time since I did this stuff for real.

FormerFlyer

Anonymous said...

And my guess is apogee was about was about 250-300ft AGL, if my other math was anywhere close.

ForemrFlyer

Anonymous said...

Any calculations - or guesses - about maximum altitude achieved?

-Don