Record-Breaking Roller Coaster Will Travel More than 155 Miles per Hour
martyb writes:
This is not expected to be ready for another couple years, but a new theme park is under development which promises numerous new attractions and rides. Rides? Yes, rides. Lots of rides! Top of list is the "Falcon's Flight". No, not a SpaceX Falcon-9, a new roller coaster. When completed, it promises to be the fastest, tallest, and longest in the world!
Record-breaking roller coaster will travel more than 155 miles per hour:
(CNN) - A roller coaster now under development in the Middle East is set to smash existing records for speed, height and track length.
Called "Falcon's Flight," the ride will be the main attraction of Six Flags Qiddiya, due to open in Saudi Arabia outside of capital Riyadh in 2023.
According to a press release issued by the Qiddiya Investment Company, which has partnered with US-headquartered Six Flags to build the park, the coaster will travel across four kilometers (about 2.5 miles) of track.
Riders will experience the thrill of diving over a vertical cliff into a 160-meter-deep valley (525 feet) thanks to the use of magnetic motor acceleration (LSM technology), and "achieve unprecedented speeds of 250-plus km/h" -- about 155 miles per hour.
"The Falcon's Flight will also be the world's tallest free-standing coaster structure, featuring a parabolic airtime hill allowing a weightlessness airtime experience," says the release.
It will take up to 20 passengers on a three-minute long ride that and[sic] offers panoramic views of Six Flags Qiddiya. If the video rendering produced by Qiddiya is an accurate depiction of what guests will experience, this one's only for true thrill seekers.
Looking closely at the rendering of a ride on Falcon's Flight, I noticed numerous changes in the orientation of the ride's track. Sure, there stretches that are purely horizontal (parallel to the ground), but others where you are riding on what appears to be the outside of a huge basketball. Especially when the track is cantilevered out over a huge cliff! (You can catch a glimpse of it above you at 0m53s-0m55s into the video. There's a much better look at it from 1m1s-1m3s.)
More info about the park and rides can be found at https://content.sixflags.com/qiddiya/qiddiya-plan/ and https://qiddiya.com/en.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.