The fastest vehicle built by man

News constantly appears in the media that tell us about cars specially prepared to break speed records, magnetic trains that are supposed to reach aircraft in terms of performance, and many other mobile devices designed with the latest technology .

However, there is a question that is not entirely clear. What is the fastest vehicle built by humanity? It is a plane? A space ship?

The fastest vehicle in history

Until a few years ago, the fastest vehicle built by man was the Voyager I probe. Launched in 1977 with the objective of investigating the confines of the Solar System, it is currently beyond Pluto and travels at a speed of 17, 145 meters. to the second (61, 722 kilometers per hour) with the objective of crossing the Heliopausa, the last limit on which our star has incidence. For the reader to get an idea, the Voyager I probe is more than eighteen billion kilometers from the Sun.

However, there is another vehicle that managed to break the record. This is the New Horizons probe, launched in 2006 with the primary objective of reaching Pluto and its moon Charon, and the secondary objective of studying the Kuiper Belt, a set of rocky bodies (asteroids and comets) that lie beyond of Pluto.

It reached a maximum speed of 17, 193 kilometers per second, but now moves to 16, 656 kilometers per second, which is not little.

The absence of the resistance caused by the bearing or the atmosphere allow these vehicles to accelerate at astronomical speeds, hundreds of times higher than those reached by commercial aircraft. They are initially propelled with motors and, later, they take advantage of the gravitational assistance of planets like Jupiter to reach similar speeds.

Even traveling at this speed, the New Horizons probe will not reach Pluto until 2015 . The data is chilling. We can get a general idea of ​​how gigantic the Solar System is, just a grain of sand if we compare it with the universe as a whole.