>and flow over 10,000
gallons per minute at low pressures if
the situation called for it. When the
pressure was ramped up to to 350psi,
it could move 8,800 GPM.
That sounds counterintuitive . What about higher pressure will slow water down?
The price of the system was huge. It's a theme that as we move to better and more efficient systems they become more boring. Most of the magic of driving is lost in electric vehicles, biplanes, and the propellor planes of ww2 capture the imagination in a way jets don't. The monstrously complicated cabins of old 747s are fascinating in a way that modern far more capable planes are not. Back then you had 2 pilots and a guy whose main job was stopping the plane from falling out of the sky! Now it's a bunch of very clever computers under the cockpit that does all of that.
It's worth noting that steam engine which was the driving element in the Industrial Revolution and maybe the most important invention in history was originally developed to pump water from mines. Some of these distant ancestors of modern engines are on display in London. James Watt might have predicted a pump like this, but he probably never guessed it would be pulled by anything but a team of horses!
Compare that to Sam Altmans wild prediction that agi will capture "the light cone of all future profits in the entire universe", maybe true, but it will never be as interesting as a steam engine, where the collective ingenuity of a century of engineers and metallugrists is on display in all it's glory.