I can't believe that they found a road that was uncongested enough to get up to that speed.


It wouldn't take that much room.

We're talking very high performance equipment here, with weight to power ratios aproaching 3:1 or better (that is, perhaps 180 HP and less than 600 lbs). The acceleration you can get under those circumstances, combined with the (relatively) minuscule frontal area is staggering. 60 MPH in under 3 seconds seconds, 100 MPH in under 5, and the rate of acceleration doesn't drop off with speed nearly as quickly as would an automobile's, because the aerodynamic drag as a function of horsepower is so much more favorable.

A little math, here...

Assume that the bike will average about 1/3 G acceleration -- say on average 11 ft/sec^2. It will do much better than that on initial launch (possibly exceeding one G), quite a bit less than that as top speed is approached.

V^2 = 2AD, so D = V^2/2A.

V = 205 MPH, near enough to 300 ft/sec as not to matter. (300.667 for the perfectionists among us.

So, D = (300x300)/(2x11), or 4090 feet -- about 3/4 of a mile.

That isn't all that much road...

tanstaafl.