water-powered rocket trike
YouTube: François Gissy

Water-Powered Rocket Trike Goes From 0-60 MPH in Half a Second


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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1eQw4ycgQM

You might think that having an all-wheel-drive Tesla or a Nissan GT-R that does 60 MPH in the two-second range is big-time stuff. I mean, it is pretty cool and all, but it seems pretty small potatoes when you compare it to what a man named Francois Gissy could do.

The same Frenchman who strapped a rocket to the back of a pedal bike wowed us again back in September 2017, but this time with a water-powered rocket tricycle at the Circuit Paul Ricard located at Le Castellet in France.

This bad boy is powered by a carbon fiber water tank that's pressurized to 6,000 psi. When the 35 gallons of water is released all at once, the trike can do 0-62 MPH in just over a half-second. That's five times quicker than the $2.5 million Bugatti Chiron. No doubt, it's at least five times as scary, too.

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"Many of us had the opportunity to launch small rockets made from soda bottles filled with water and compressed air," Gissy writes in the video's description. "Using this very simple principle and with some rainwater, I have reached 261 km/h (162.2 mph) on a homemade trike, while accelerating from 0 to 100 km/h (62.15 mph) in 0.551 second (the average acceleration during the first 852 milliseconds, which was the elapsed time needed to cover the first 60 feet (18.288 meters), was 50.3868 meters per second squared or 5.138 g)."

Sadly, Gissy passed away on May 5, 2018, after crashing the same rocket trike during a test run. This tragically shows that these sorts of machines that push the limits when it comes to horsepower and top-speed capabilities are extremely dangerous, even for the professionals. If the stunts these seeming superheroes pull off look impossible, that's because sometimes, they actually are.

This post was originally published on July 3, 2019.

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