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A comment on The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph. Parent comment

Re:The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph by sharkweek on Friday September 18, 2015 @05:10PM (#10242077)
Maybe the road surface? I'm assuming an actual highway has some friction that could be sacrificed perhaps? Not sure what the cutoff is there before too little traction becomes problematic?

Just spitballing here, I have no idea how most of this stuff works.

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Re:The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph by malandrew on Friday September 18, 2015 @08:38PM (#10242836)
Related to road surface, are properties of the tires used. The goal is to optimize for rolling resistance. On a long brevet, different tires can shave hours off your time.

Since their requirements for durability are much lower (i.e. they don't need to get days or months of use), they could optimize for tires that are just durable enough for the event and have minimal rolling resistance.

Suspension losses are another area where power is lost. I'm curious if it is possible to perform these tests in a velodrome where gains from better tires suspension would be minimal.

Also check out motor-paced records, where the current record is 166.9mph by Fred Rompelberg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_records#History_of_mot...

http://mammajammaride.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Fred.jp... http://fredrompelberg.com/upload/images/site/Wereldrecord_fi...

This is worth a read on the surface of the Bonneville salt flats: http://saltflats.com/traction.html

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