Yesterday saw the historic launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket with the non-traditional payload of a Tesla Roadster. At the beginning of the week the fastest cars are:

The fastest road car – Hennessey Venom GT with a top speed of 270+mph (434 kph).

The land speed record is currently just over 760 mph (1223 kph) by ThrustSSC.

Should note that this does not include cars that may have been dropped from planes reaching terminal velocity (order of ~100 mph / 160 kph) or those that have travelled on planes (~600 mph / 965 kph).

To put object into space and escape the gravity of Earth it must first overcome the escape velocity from the surface. Essentially this occurs when an objects kinetic energy becomes equal to the gravitational potential energy. For Earth this approximates to about 11.2 km/s. (40,300 kph). However, since a rocket…

Today I visited Siren radio to talk my current interests and work as part of #itsoundslikespace produced by 2nd year media prod students. We talked a range of things from the Cassini spacecraft to what astrophysics students at Lincoln can get the opportunity to be involved with. It was great to meet with the students and be part of their show.