British engineers unveiled plans for the world’s first 1 600km/h car, a muscular streak of gunmetal and orange designed not to break the world land speed record but to shatter it.
Bloodhound SSC, named after the British cold war supersonic air defence missiles, will attempt to beat the existing record by more than 400km/h.
The £12-million car was recently announced by Lord Drayson, the United Kingdom science minister. Working from an aircraft hanger in Bristol, in the west of England, the team’s engineers have been working on the project in secret for the past 18 months.
Calculations suggest the car could reach 1 689km/h, fast enough to outrun a bullet from a .357 Magnum revolver.
The car was proposed by Drayson, a racing car enthusiast, to inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers who are in short supply in the UK. The team plans to build the car within a year, the record attempt is expected in three years.
The project brings together mathematician and fighter pilot Andy Green, who set the current land speed record of 1 227,90km/h with Thrust SSC in 1997, and Richard Noble, who directed that attempt. The car will be the first to combine a Eurofighter Typhoon jet engine with a rocket booster. They will produce 20 000kg of thrust.
Green, a British air force officer, will use an accelerator to power the jet engine to speeds of about 563km/h. At that point he will fire the solid rocket booster. A V12 racing car engine will start pumping more than a ton of hydrogen peroxide into the booster, forcing the car to 1 609km/h in 20 seconds.
“It’s going to be quite uncomfortable. I will sit just under the intake of the jet engine, so it’s going to be acoustically challenging,” he said.
Slowing down will also be a challenge. The car will use airbrakes and two parachutes to stop.
Team members are visiting sites where the record attempt will be made. The current record was set at Black Rock Desert in Nevada, United States. But that has been ruled out as ground conditions have deteriorated.
In the next week or two, Green will visit a site in South Africa.
Other possible venues are the salt flats of the US and Australia.
John Piper, the lead engineer, said the team would build a full-size mock-up over the next month.
The project is being funded by five sponsors, including the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Swansea University, Wales, and the University of the West of England.
It is an enormous engineering challenge. The car will experience pressures of 12 tons a square metre, similar to those experienced by submarines.
The wheels will spin more than five times faster than those on a formula one racing car, generating forces that could rip them to pieces.
Engineers must ensure there are no gaps around the cockpit. If there are, all of the air could be sucked out as the car breaks the sound barrier.
Other teams are also building cars to challenge the land speed record. One, which was led by the late entrepreneur and adventurer Steve Fossett, is thought to be capable of more than 1 287km/h.
Drayson said the team would make all of its information public so that other scientists and engineers can get involved.
“Having the right stuff in the 21st century means being able to understand the world around you. We don’t have enough young people taking science and maths.
“The real deficiency is they don’t understand what careers they could do, what a life for them would mean if they took those subjects. These are difficult subjects and we have to give young people a clear reason to study them,” he said.
The Science Museum in London is holding a week-long exhibition dedicated to Bloodhound. —