From a distance.
I saw something about that on TV. Leno only rides it on the track because there is a lag in response when you let up on the acclerator. You release the accelerator and it will continue to accelerate for about another four or five seconds. However, is a jet engine like the one on this bike the same thing as a turbine engine? I thought a turbine engine was one with a turbo or supercharger installed. Also, what’s the difference between a rotary engine and a turbine engine?
Leno’s bike has a surplus jet engine like in a plane.
Jet engines have a series of impellers that compress the incoming air, then inject fuel and ignite it right before it exits the engine.
A rotary engine is an internal combustion engine that uses rotor(s) instead of pistons.
Turbochargers and superchargers are methods to compress the incoming air for an internal combustion engine. The intent is to increase the number of available oxygen molecules (per constant volume) so more fuel can be burned on each cycle. Nitrous oxide is another way to make more oxygen available.
Is this the one Leno rides?
http://marineturbine.com/motorsports.asp
286 hp at the rear wheel. Nothing excessive about that.
According to wikipedia, “A turbine is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a fluid flow.” So a turbine engine is the same thing as a rotary engine? So a piston-driven internal combustion engine with a turbo isn’t a turbine engine?
Doesn’t Mazda currently sell a car with a rotary engine?
I don’t think so. I think Leno’s was a one-off custom. I saw it on a History Channel special on the history of motorcycles a year or two ago, so I don’t remember that much about it.
Nah, not excessive at all. 
I like the rear view camera. Like you could take your eyes off what’s in front of you at 227 mph long enough to gaze upon what was rapidly disappearing in your rear-view camera.
I saw a nitrous bike achieve 172mph in the quarter mile. I was standing right next to it when it took off. I ride motorcycles of all types. There’s no way I would get on that thing and crank the throttle…
Not the same thing, a turbine engine (like an aircraft) is a combustion turbine (gas turbine) that operates on a thermodynamic Brayton Cycle. A rotary internal combustion engine (like a mazda) is just another configuration of an internal combustion engine that operates on a thermodynamic Otto Cycle just like any other IC engine.
I can’t imagine, I get nervous at 100 on a street bike, 150+ is nuts.
There is no vehicle in the world that is more weight sensitive than an airplane. Turbines have one of the highest power to weight ratios of any heat engine known. They are not necessarily more efficient than piston engines but their light weight makes a more energy efficient airframe possible.
What good does it do an airplane to have the worlds most efficient engine if that engine is so heavy that the engine itself is the airplane’s entire payload?
Seems like a turbine engine with a CVT would be a natural. The turbine likes to run at a constant speed, so a CVT would allow that to happen while making car speed variable. Not sure it would really be efficient or ecologically sound, but an interesting exercise in engineering.
A few years ago, a friend of mine directed my attention to the Moller Sky Car. I read the information, then laughed and laughed. I consider it to be a ludicrous concept.
I did one of those “Ask an expert” things, and asked why there aren’t any scale models of the Sky Car out there. That seems to be the way the aircraft industry works; you have scale models flying first.
In his reply, he mentioned that they’d only need to make the engines about 100 times as reliable as the proposed Sky Car rotary engines to be sufficiently reliable for an aircraft. I’m not kidding, he said the rotary would need to be 100 times as reliable as it is now.
Did I mention that the proposed Sky Car is supposed to have eight rotary engines?
I know an engineer who worked for Caterpillar and sold the only known set of diesel engines for aircraft propulsion use. They went into the Cross Channel Hovercraft the British ran before the Channel Tunnel was built. The diesels were reliable, frugal, and the carrying capacity of these monsters was so large that a few extra pounds did not matter.
The US Marine Corps uses these machines as well; don’t know what powers them, but because they are military machines and don’t have to show a profit, they’re probably gas turbines.
Ah, right you are. I think perhaps they were planning to have them in LeBarons by the mid-70’s. Been a while since I first heard about them.
IIRC, the German dirigibles also used Diesel engines. I do recall that the engines were built by Maybach–back in the days long before Mercedes bought the name. While we all know the story of the Hindenberg, the engines were not the source of the problem.
You really think that Chrysler planned 10 years ahead of time? I think not. Automotive planning and development is normally of the 3-5 year variety.
Interesting, I didn’t know that Maybach was now owned by Daimler AG, I thought they were still an independent coach maker (you are correct, I just looked it up).
Since we have strayed way off the path with this post, how about this one for air cars?
You know I was just thinking about this. I heard a commercial about trains a day ago. About getting a hundred miles on a gallon or two of fuel. Don’t they have turbines that charge batteries? I mean, trains are electric, they run off of batteries charged by the turbines. Like a big hybrid. How 'bout small turbines in cars that do that?
The vast majority of railroad locomotives are diesel-electrics. A large (V-12 to 16) diesel drives a generator which powers motors on the axles. There were gas-turbine electric and even gas turbine mechanical locomotives but fuel consumption was astronomical. There have been proposals to build locomotives that are a bunch of batteries fed by a constant speed gas-turbine generator but so far none have been built. There are battery locomotives with constant speed diesel generators. The best way to run trains is actually with overhead electric wires.