World Fastest Train
France is known for many things, but one of its better-kept secrets is that it is a world leader in rail transport technology. (Railfans know this, but most of the general public does not.) The flagship of French rail technology is the TGV or Train à Grande Vitesse ("High-Speed Train"), the world's fastest train. TGVs regularly run at 300 km/h in normal service on some lines. And even this high speed is well below the TGV's limits: the TGV holds the world's record for speed on rails of 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph), or roughly half the speed of sound.
World Fastest Plane
The X-43A is the first aircraft to reach hypersonic speeds using an air-breathing engine.
NASA's experimental space plane, the X-43A, set a new speed record for aircraft on November 16, 2004. In the unmanned test flight, the plane reached Mach 10 -- 10 times the speed of sound, or about 6,600 miles (10,600 kilometers) per hour. This flight broke the previous speed record of Mach 7, set in March 2004 by the X-43A in a previous test flight.
World Fastest Boat
The World Water Speed record, like the air speed record, is decades old. Australian Ken Warby set the record in 1978 when he averaged 317.60 mph in a 27-foot jet-powered hydroplane called "Spirit of Australia." The official speed test, which consists of two back-to-back runs over a one-kilometer straight-away, took place on Blowering Dam in New South Wales, Australia. And where did Warby design and build this hydraulic masterpiece? Underneath a tree in the back yard of a house he was renting in suburban Sydney. "There was a canvas sheet I used to throw over it when it rained," he told the press.
World Fastest Car
Thrust SSC (Super Sonic Car) is a British designed and built jet-propelled car developed by Richard Noble, Glynne Bowsher, Ron Ayers and Jeremy Bliss, [1] which holds the world land speed record, set on October 15, 1997, when it achieved a speed of 1,228 km/h (763 mph) and became the first land vehicle to officially break the
sound barrier
, not considering the earlier but unproven claim of the Budweiser Rocket.
The car was driven by Wing Commander Andy Green in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada USA. It was powered by two afterburning Rolls-Royce Spey engines as used in British F-4 Phantom II jet fighters. It is 16.5 m (54 ft) long, 3.7 m (12 ft) wide and weighs 10.5 tons (10.7 t). The twin engines developed a thrust of 223 kN (50,000 lbf) and burned around 4 Imperial gallons per second (18.2 l/S or 4.8 US gallons/S). Transformed into the usual terms for car mileages based on its maximum speed, the fuel consumption was about 5,500 l/100 km or 0.04 mpg U.S.