Posted: 10/8/2013 7:07:15 AM EDT
It is badass. That is all.
(This second video gets right to the action if that's what you're looking for.)
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I've seen rocket sled track tests live...awesome feeling!
One I remember was a warhead test at the Eglin AFB track. BLU-113 inert round on the track. Propelling it down the track were 18 rocket motors (6 Genie Rockets and 12 Zunis). It was awesome! BLU-113 vs reinforced concrete = hot knife through butter. Even better was seeing the round bouncing and tumbling through the trees. What was not fun was having to hike through those same trees to find the round so we could dig the fuze out to get the recorded telemetry to compare to what was observed. |
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Quoted:
I've seen rocket sled track tests live...awesome feeling! One I remember was a warhead test at the Eglin AFB track. BLU-113 inert round on the track. Propelling it down the track were 18 rocket motors (6 Genie Rockets and 12 Zunis). It was awesome! BLU-113 vs reinforced concrete = hot knife through butter. Even better was seeing the round bouncing and tumbling through the trees. What was not fun was having to hike through those same trees to find the round so we could dig the fuze out to get the recorded telemetry to compare to what was observed. Sweet. I'd love to do something like that one day. |
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I was at Holloman the day they were doing a sled run for some ridiculous velocity testing. To reduce the aero drag on the sled, they had put a plastic sleeve along the track, evacuated all the air and then inflated it with helium. They had the sled inside that sleeve and it was unbelievably overpowered. Something like an MX missile booster segment behind the sled instead of multiple smaller rocket motors.
We were locate at the main base at Holloman and when they fired that sucker off the sonic boom was louder than any I'd ever heard, including those caused by the Shuttle coming back to Edwards. I'm pretty certain that was the first hypersonic sled run they had ever managed to perform, but given the measured they had to use to do it I don't know if they ever did any more runs like that. |