What’s the fastest you’ve ever driven? This is just between us, so 90 miles per hour? 100? Whatever it is, I think it’s safe to assume you’ve never come anywhere close to 477.59 mph achieved by Jessi Combs in her recent attempt to become the fastest woman on Earth.
Think about that. 477.59 mph. That is almost 8 miles per minute. Combs traveled more than the length of two football fields in a second. While that speed is her own new personal best, she ultimately fell short of breaking the women’s land speed record of 512 mph.
The vehicle Combs used for the attempt is the North American Eagle. It’s not a car. It is literally a fighter jet with its wings clipped—a 1950’s F-104 Starfighter, to be precise—modified for this purpose. It can generate 42,500 horsepower. That’s more than 42 times the horsepower of the Bugatti Veyron—the fastest production car ever built.
Microsoft played a role in the effort as well. Built around Windows 10 IoT Core, the Pegasus Mission research scientists were able to develop a small cockpit sensor that sent telemetry data and received messages in real-time. The team created mobile apps with Xamarin, and a custom telemetry system that captured nearly 60,000 measurements per second and uploaded the data to Microsoft Azure for analysis using Cortana Intelligence.
“By taking these challenging situations and using different concepts in technology, we are able to do things that have never been done before,” explains Matt Long, a Microsoft software engineer who created the broadcast system with Mark Nichols, a cloud solution architect at Microsoft. “Customers can then use their own imaginations to come up with new things to compete with in the marketplace.”
A blog post from Microsoft about the event says, “Combs’ latest run brought the Eagle team one step closer to its ultimate goal of breaking the sound barrier and running the fastest car in history. Eagle owner Ed Shadle and his volunteer crew have been working to drive the Eagle at 800 miles per hour, ever since he and friend Keith Zanghi salvaged an old Lockheed fighter jet in 1998. The current “absolute” land speed record is 763 miles per hour, set by a British team in 1997.”
Unfortunately, during the attempt the vehicle drifted slightly off course and Combs had to abort. As you can imagine, there isn’t a lot of steering you can do when blazing across the desert at nearly 500 mph. A couple malfunctioning systems allowed Combs to come dangerously close to the edge of the track, but thankfully she was aware of the situation, stayed calm, and ended the run safely.
I had a chance to speak with Combs after the attempt. She said she did make an attempt to correct her course. The North American Eagle only allows for steering a degree and a half in either direction, but the systems were not working.
She told me that she feels very comfortable in that cockpit and she doesn’t get nervous until after the run is over. While she is driving, she is hyper-focused. The way she described it to me is that it’s so fast it’s slow, so loud it’s silent, and so bumpy it’s smooth. The thrill doesn’t set in until the car comes to a complete stop.
According to Combs, her family and friends are supportive and there is a level of confidence that this is just where she belongs and what she’s meant to do—although she also shared that her mother wasn’t really happy with that last run.
This is not the end, though. Now they will go back to the drawing board. Combs explained that there are both seasonal and environmental conditions that limit the window of opportunity. For this attempt they had to plan around the mating season of indigenous birds so that a land-based rocket zipping across the terrain wouldn’t upset the wildlife.
However, that isn’t the only issue. Combs says there are four or five big things the team needs to work on over the next year—one of which is trying to find a larger lake bed for the attempt.
From Microsoft’s perspective, this is another testament to the power of Microsoft Azure and Microsoft’s IoT platform. Earlier this year, Microsoft also teamed up with the Indianapolis 500 to provide real-time telemetry data to fans during the race. It’s also part of Microsoft’s larger effort to push the bounds of sports with technology one sport at a time—football, golf, and now racing.
Back to that original question. I will give you my answer: 118 mph. That is the fastest I have ever driven. I don’t advocate or recommend you try it. I was 17 and driving from Chicago back to Detroit. It was the only time in my life I ever used a radar detector. I was “racing” a Mustang down the highway, and I looked over in the median and saw the state police car. Then I saw his lights go on. Then the radar detector went off—after I was already busted and had already passed the cop. I pulled off at the next exit, and I was already out of my car getting gas by the time the police car caught up. He told me he clocked me at 118 mph, but he wrote me a ticket for only 80 mph because otherwise he’d have to arrest me for reckless driving and I was an out-of-state minor.
One last note. I am baffled by the fact that the North American Eagle is not part of team Red Bull. Jessi Combs and the effort to break the women’s land speed record seems like exactly the sort of thing Red Bull should sponsor. The car’s paint job is already Red Bull colors. I definitely think Red Bull needs to get in touch with Combs and get on board to sponsor the next attempt.
