Bloodhound Project Goal - 1,000 mph

Andy Green, a wing commander in the British Royal Air Force, will attempt to set a new Land Speed Record this summer at the Bonneville Salt Flats. He will make his attempt in the Bloodhound SSC and do it at over 1,000 mph. No-one has ever driven at 1,000 mph before, so the Bloodhound SSC team will have to solve problems from scratch using science, mathematics, and all the available engineering technology to meet their goal. Richard Noble is the project director for the Bloodhound SSC and is responsible for much of the car’s design.

1000 mph, that’s 1466.7 ft per second. However you measure it, these are impressive figures, particularly when attached to a four-wheeled vehicle travelling on the surface of the earth.

So, how are they going to do this? The rules for designing a car to attempt the Land Speed record are very simple – it must have at least four wheels and steer with at least two of them. Beyond this, designers are free to do whatever they like with the design and build. This differs enormously to the likes of NASCAR, Indy Cars, or Formula One, where the rules exist to ultimately slow the cars down and to see how teams overcome these challenges. This makes designing Bloodhound SSC both enormously exciting and extremely challenging.

The Bloodhound SSC is a unique vehicle. It will be powered by two separate power plants: a Eurojet EJ200 jet engine from a Typhoon fighter plane and a Falcon rocket engine from a Falcon rocket. A third power source is an 800 HP V12 racing engine that drives the hydraulic for the jet engine and pumps hydrogen peroxide to the rocket engine.

The aerodynamics was honed using one of the UK’s most powerful computers. The 35.4 inch (90 cm) wheels were the subject of a special research project in their own right, while driver Andy Green’s seat is inclined at 45 degrees, as a compromise between fitting Andy in and helping him to cope with the huge acceleration and deceleration loads. The key issue in the dynamic behavior of Bloodhound SSC is the directional stability over its entire operating speed range from 0 to 1,000 mph. The vehicle must also be able to steer and turn like a conventional wheeled vehicle, but its prime objective is extremely high speed, running straight.