On track to go faster than a speeding bullet
Patrick Sawer, Karen Farrington
Rozina Sabur
PEERING through a windscreen no wider than a letterbox, RAF Wing Commander Andy Green puts his foot down and goes from zero to 210mph over 1.7 miles, in less time than it takes the average person to walk 10 yards.
Eight seconds later it’s all over, the first test run carried out by Bloodhound SSC in front of the public successfully completed. Within a few minutes the 14.65yd (13.4m) long supersonic car sets off again down the runway at Newquay Airport in Cornwall, flames shooting out of its engine as it once more reaches 200mph.
Yesterday’s display – witnessed by more than 3,500 spectators – was certainly impressive, but it will hopefully be surpassed when the supersonic car makes its attempt to smash the 1,000mph barrier in South Africa in 2019. The test runs were the first significant step on the long road to the dried-out Hakskeen Pan lake bed in Northern Cape, where Wg Cdr Green will attempt to smash his own world land speed record of 763mph, set in 1997. For an hour and a half Newquay Airport was closed to air traffic while the tests took place. As Bloodhound thundered down the runway, cheers rang out – or at least they would have done had they not been drowned out by the 180 decibel roar of its engine.
Afterwards, Wg Cdr Green hailed the day a success. “This is the longest ride we have done and the highest speeds we have done,” he said. “It was hotter and harder work than I was expecting. But the car itself just behaved brilliantly. A five-ton car doing zero to 200mph in eight seconds and then slowing down. That is unparalleled.”
Bloodhound will weigh 7.5 tons once fitted with a rocket motor and fully loaded with fuel. For yesterday’s test, it ran without the rocket motor and weighed five tons.
The low slung cylindrical vehicle is powered by a Rolls-royce EJ200 jet engine, capable of producing more than 135,000 horsepower – more than six times the combined power of all the Formula 1 cars in a Grand Prix.
Specially designed suspension helped Wg Cdr Green deal with the bumps in the runway but he said finding tyres resilient enough to withstand the speed had been a challenge.
“We’ve been through a huge evolution of finding something that’s tough enough that would do the job,” he told CNN. “This car goes faster than a speeding bullet, so anything that hits this is like being shot at from a gun.”
Wg Cdr Green joked that one thing Bloodhound does not need is wing mirrors. After all, nothing is likely to overtake it.
The mastermind behind it is 85-yearold Ron Ayers. He designed the Thrust SSC, in which Wg Cdr Green set his 1997 record. Mr Ayers hopes Bloodhound will inspire youngsters.
“We firmly believe the technology we’re creating is of value to the country,” he said. “We are doing it for educational reasons because children love studying fast cars and it keeps them interested in engineering.”