🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1ikjl2INNl6o@ub.d.umn.edu>, cpatters@ub.d.umn.edu (Granma) writes:
> In article <1993Jan6.122446.4754@titan.ksc.nasa.gov> hollis@titan.ksc.nasa.gov writes:
> Question:  Some years ago, a popular car magazine (Car & Driver?)
> did a "road test" on the RSS.  (ok, it might not have been the
> RSS, but from reading this, my civilian mind figured the RSS might
> just be the "thaang" in question! :-)  The article was really very
> funny.  If anyone out there in net land knows the name of the 
> magazine and the date, please email me.

Time to re-post an article I wrote in May 1990 when this subject came
up on sci.space.  (I post rather than e-mail because I think this is of
general interest, don't you?)
=============================
There's been some discussion of the Shuttle/Saturn crawlers, but I
haven't seen anybody mention the definitive source of information.

Kids, you want to go find a copy of *Road & Track*, I'm pretty sure
it's the April 1985 issue, page 192.  (If I messed up, look at other
issues that year.)  Every once in a while, as a sort of April Fool's
thing, *R&T* would run a deadpan road test of some exotic vehicle like
the Goodyear Blimp or the Gresley A3 Pacific Locomotive.  Well, in
1985 Ted West, Engineering Editor, reported on "The KSC 554,756
Hardtop: Longer, Lower and Weirder for 1985." 

If you have any interest in the crawlers, you *must* read this.  West
has lots of tongue-in-cheek fun with it, but I've never seen more
technical information on the vehicles.  There's lots in the article,
and even more figures in long tables accompanying it, in the manner of
auto-magazine tech evaluations.   Some quotes to get you galvanized
and headed down to the library:

"If you're looking for traditional, massive American *horsepower*, the
KSC 554,756 is yer kinda car.  Its raucous 554,756 cc are packaged in
no less than six different containers.  And 350,342 of them are
enclosed in a pair of 2750-bhp 16-cylinder Alco diesels.  An
additional 180,070 cc come wrapped in two 1075-bhp 8-cylinder White
diesels.  Finally, 24,344 cc reside in a pair of very pedestrian
6-cylinder Cummins truck diesels.   There is also a paltry 7.5-bhp
Onan compressor-drive-- but the less said about that little wimp the
better."

"...Speaking of steering, we found the KSC's just a trifle, dare we
say it, heavy.  However, directional stability was exemplary, we felt
no buffeting whatever in stron sidewinds and thought nothing whatever
of hands-off steering for long periods while running flat out.  More
top marks."

"There was a great *Cluuunk!* and not quite a *lunge*.  We said we'd
bet our left shoe the thing would be geared too tall, but, to our
great surprise, the 554,756 got off the line smartly and was up to
cruising speed in just under no time, leaving our left shoe behind at
a steady, smooth 1.0 mph. The 554,756 is said to be capable of a brisk
2.0 mph flat-out-- `and maybe more'-- but we were told that, somewhat
like the *Queen Mary's*, the 554,756's true top speed is known only to
God and a certain electrical engineer (`poor soul') living in
seclusion for the past 20 years in a small auto court outside Marion,
Ohio."

                      ______meson   Bill Higgins
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