Nima Shahinian is a man on a mission. 33 years ago, as a child in a small Norwegian town 30 minutes north of Oslo, he dreamed of building the fastest sled in the world. By fast we mean really fast – aiming for 300 km / h (186 mph) and making your driver the fastest person in the world without a motor to power it. 300 km / h is considerably faster than the current ski speed record (and the non-motorized speed record of any kind) of 254.958 km / h. The record-breaking fastest luge to date has only reached 134.36 km / h (83.49 mph), so the “super luge” will go more than twice as fast as that. After working on prototype sleds for over six years, testing them in wind tunnels, Nima is now trying to find the perfect pilot to ride the sled and become the fastest human in history without being propelled by a motor.
ITS> Do you remember when you first started dreaming of building the fastest toboggan in the world?
NS> Well, right next to the door of the house where I grew up there was a 200 meter slope that went straight down. So the dream started as a kid with the desire to build the “best†sled, not just thinking about speed, but more about the general question of how to win a race with my friends. As we got older, year after year throughout my childhood, we got better and better at our sleds.
ITS> So, has there ever been what they call “a blistering moment�
NS> Well, at a time when I was probably eight or nine years old, I remember thinking to myself: how do I make my sled go even faster? So I swapped the original plastic skis that came with the sled for real alpine skis, some old ones we had dragged, and bolted them on, finding the sled started to go crazy. And at this point my brain started to work full blast, how can I make it even faster? How can I improve the stability? … Etc. It was actually around this time that the dream of building the world’s fastest snow sled began. At that time, the dream was pretty basic, but it grew and the more I learned, the more sophisticated the dream became.
So, the start of the dream was like a Big Bang, but the development of the dream is something that has grown and grown and continues to grow.
ITS> OK, how can you become the fastest sled rider in the world and become the fastest human being without a motor?
NS> There are two key criteria: you must have the financial means to buy your pilot seat on the sledge and you must be in very good physical and mental shape.
ITS> Do you have dimensions in mind for your favorite toboggan pilot?
NS> Well, we have an idea of ​​the state of health, weight and height, but we want to see what kind of candidates we get and how we can possibly work with and adapt them to the task, rather than d ‘exclude people from the start. Since the vehicle is suitable for the driver, there is no size and weight requirement as such to become a driver. But, there are some medical requirements. To be able to drive this vehicle one must have good health, no underlying disease that can affect cognitive or physical reactions, the candidate must not have any type of disease that can impair his fine motor skills, the candidate must have good mental health to be able to tolerate both the pressure required during training, but also remain focused during the record attempt. And above all to have a body so well trained that the person can resist certain forces g. With those demands per se, however, you quickly find yourself in a demographic of people of a certain height and weight anyway. Good general health is also important because, as I said, the whole vehicle needs to be tailored to the candidate, so you need to minimize the risk of the person getting sick during the developmental period.
ITS> This seems to be a rather difficult list of criteria, will the pilot receive any help to achieve these goals?
NS> Yes, of course the chosen driver will benefit from a very good follow-up. the person will have a locally employed personal trainer who works with and conducts the right training during the development process. There will also be several sessions with the team on development, follow-up by a doctor, various stays in different centers to work on the mental preparation behind the attempt etc.
ITS> So what about the cost of purchasing your seat?
NS> When it comes to having funding in place, the seat needs to be purchased, as you can now buy a seat on the Amazon Blue Origin or Galactic Virgin spacecraft, or even a Formula 1 car and other types of races, you pay to buy a seat. Of course, buying the seat on the sled doesn’t cost as much as buying a seat in a rocket, and it’s actually a more unique seat with the sled built around you personally, but we’re still talking about about three and five million US dollars.
ITS> So what do you get for the money?
NS> For this sum the driver gets the vehicle suitable for himself and a unique part in the development of the sled, as well as a very unique and historical record, becoming the fastest man in a gravity vehicle , and as durable because such extreme speeds can be obtained. Remember, even though we call it a sled, it’s actually an extreme racing car, kind of a Formula 1 car on skis, it’s an extremely advanced and high-tech project.
ITS> You don’t want to set the world record yourself?
NS> I would love to, but there are two reasons why it can’t be me. The first reason concerns concentration. My dream, my passion, my motivation lies in engineering, design and development. I don’t have the ambition to hold this record myself but to be the one who creates the machine that breaks the existing record and more. For example, I would like the current record holder Guy Martin to become the pilot, because it’s not about beating a person, but about creating an extremely fast machine without a motor of any kind and breaking the record. . It’s too big a project for one person to be able to both pilot and develop the machine at the same time. It is, and always will be, a competition of technology, engineering and design, and a lot of courage on top of that of course.
The second reason is the financial situation. I have already invested incredible amounts of money and time in this project for years now. And for me, it was an exercise in perseverance. Keeping the dream alive for so many years, investing and taking that kind of risk takes a lot, and in order to be able to carry out this project we need new money. What we are doing is selling the opportunity to own this unique record, and at the same time giving us the opportunity to build our dream machine, a win-win for everyone. As for the company behind this, it will not make us rich, we will most likely go bankrupt even when we do, it shows the passion we have for this project.
NS> Finally on this question I just want to add that I would never put another person in this machine if the risk is greater than what I would be willing to take myself. So the day I put someone on the sled and pushed them to extreme speeds, that’s the day I would do it myself if we weren’t dependent on funding and we had time to focus on both piloting and development.
ITS> Any idea where the record will be set?
NS> As for where the record was set, we don’t want to say too much at this point. Indeed, like the driver, we can develop the vehicle exactly according to the slope that we ultimately choose. We know the best location will be a very steep hill, as high as possible above sea level and with good stopping distance. But if we find a hill that doesn’t have all of these, we have to develop something different, we are open to suggestions. So far we have identified Vars in France, where the world speed skiing record was set, as a good possibility, without wanting to rule out anywhere else.
