Untitled Document

Volume 1, No. 10. June 15, 2001

It's a roller coaster!
Six Flags Marine World in Vallejo, California, announces the arrival of V2: Vertical Velocity, June 8, 2001. Measurements: 150 feet high (45 meters), 630 feet length of track (191 meters), 70 mph (112 kph). Delivered by Intamin.

Yet another Six Flags coaster, yet another NASA astronaut, this time focusing on the launch of the suspended linear induction ride rather than its flight forth and back on the upright U-shaped track. NASA Astronaut Yvonne Cagle, a flight surgeon preparing for a Space Shuttle trip to the Space Station, did the duties on V2, which reaches 70 mph in 3.7 seconds from launch. That is considerably faster than the Shuttle, which takes a full five seconds to reach 55 mph, a fact pointed out by the park's public relations manager, Jeff Jouett. "Of course, the Shuttle is going 250 mph ten seconds later, but for the first five seconds, it's V2 by a nose," he said.

Cagle was the guest of honor for the Friday "maiden voyage" taken by local media members and coaster enthusiasts. Though the evening before the ride performed flawlessly for employee previews, a software glitch shut V2 down Friday morning. Six Flags Marine World technicians worked by phone and laptop with Intamin's engineers back in Switzerland, and at one point the manufacturer was hooked up to V2 by modem and running its own diagnostics. As the media event began at 10:30, "There was no vertical, and no velocity," Jouett said.

The park offered ERT on the woodie Roar and served lunch while the engineers rebuilt the computerized ride sequences on V2, and when the first test train ran at 12:30, so did the press and enthusiasts, abandoning their lunches for a sprint to the station. Cagle, at the other end of the park meeting Marine World's new tiger cubs with her mother and daughter, jogged back to the ride, taking high-fives all along the queue line on her way to a front-seat launch. "It was breathtaking," she said after the voyage. "Absolutely, totally awesome. The velocities and accelerations come to what you're experiencing when the solid rocket boosters ignite." And on the Shuttle she won't get a front-row view.

Back to THE LOOP