The Quest to Push a Human-Powered Bike to 90 MPH

If Todd Reichert cannot regain control of his ultrafast bike, he will be cast at 75 mph into the unforgiving rock and scrub that lies beside the highway in the Nevada desert.

Reichert is familiar with extreme situations: the 32-year-old aerospace engineer and athlete was co-designer and pilot of the first human-powered ornithoptera craft that flies by flapping its wingsto soar continuously, and the first ever human-powered helicopter to become airborne. These remarkable feats have earned him hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money and the backing of Google. But todays attempt to break the world speed record for a human-powered vehicle is going seriously awry.

Reichert wouldnt be the first man to perish in this dust-blown corner of northwest Nevadas rough sierras. At an elevation of more than 4,500 feet, the valleys burn beneath treeless peaks. In the 19th century, California Trail pioneers succumbed to thirst and disease here, or were shot by Native Americans. One such bloody skirmish gave a name to the range and the small town that sits beneath it on Interstate 80: Battle Mountain.

Aerovelo engineer Todd Reichert. Chris Crisman/WIRED UKUntil now, though, no one has contrived to perish in a fibreglass egg. Its Saturday, September 13, the last day of the World Human Powered Speed Challenge (WHPSC), and the egg in question is the ultra-lightweight speed bike Eta. Before he got in, Reichert, the joint leader of Canadian team AeroVelo, described Eta as very, very fastit could be the fastest man-powered vehicle on Earth. The claim is based on experience: AeroVelo first competed at Battle Mountain in 2011 where the team set a new college record of 116.9 kph (72.63 mph). The following year they entered Bluenose, a bike that reached 125 kph (77.67 mph).

A few seconds ago, this ingenious machine was hurtling along a dead straight section of Highway 305, but now it is swerving violently from right to left across the Tarmac.Named after the Greek letter symbolising the efficiency of power supply, Eta uses only four gears to transfer the energy produced by a human pedaling two 26-inch wheels fitted with handmade tubular tires. The vehicles ovular appearance results from its two-part fairinga structure fitted in order to increase streamliningthat has been designed using computational fluid dynamics to have 100 times less drag than modern cars.

The other 11 entrants in the challenge include near-professionals such as the Netherlands Human Power Team, a joint effort by Amsterdam and Delft Universities, and the amateur but manically enthusiastic Tetiva team from Russia. The young Dutch team hold the current record of 133.8 kph (83.13 mph) set at Battle Mountain in 2013 by Sebastian Bowier in Delft VeloX 3.

Where else, Reichert says on the eve of the teams 1,677-mile drive from Ontario to Nevada, will you see 19-year-olds making history?

But AeroVelo has a wider brief than world records. Established in 2010 by Toronto University graduates Reichert, 32, and Cameron Robertson, 27, the teamfrom the engineering and aerospace departmentwants to demonstrate the potential of human-powered vehicles in a world facing grave energy, transport and climate crises. Over the past few years, Robertson, who is the calmer and more professorial of the two, and Reichert, a fizzing cocktail of dash and intellectual curiosity, have established a production cycle: in winter, with the help of aerospace department PhD Victor Ragusila, they work on the design and planning of a project; in summer they take on a group of engineering and aerospace students and set them the task of building the project from scratch.

Many of the 2014 teamTrefor Evans, Sherry Shi, Calvin Moes, Marc Jutras, Thomas Ulph, Peter Wen and Alex Selwahave worked on previous AeroVelo projects. Although Reichert will do most of the runs, Evans and Moes too will pilotEta; Reicherts energies must be rationed if he is going to surpass 133.8 kph. Privately the team are aiming for 140 kph (86.99 mph) and think that it may be possible to reach 145 kph (90 mph). Reaching that speed would smash a record usually broken in tiny incrementsin 2013 Bowier broke the previous one by less than a second.

Reichert and Robertson met playing rugby for Toronto Universitys engineering department and first worked together in 2006, when Reichert and the universitys Human-Powered Vehicle Design Team attempted to build the first successful ornithopter. Four years of development and several crashes brought them to their final prototype, Snowbird. Made from carbon fibre, balsa wood and foam, it was essentially one very long wing (105 feeta Boeing 737 has a 112-foot wingspan) attached to a pod in which Reichert operates a customizedrowing-machine mechanism. On August 2, 2010, at Torontos Great Lakes Gliding Club, Snowbird flew for 9.3 seconds, at a height of 9 feetfor a distance of 475 feeta feat recognised by the Fdration Aronautique Internationale as the first man-powered ornithopter flight.

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The Quest to Push a Human-Powered Bike to 90 MPH