Project Bloodhound

Project Bloodhound answers the question of what to do when you reckon a land speed record of 763mph isn’t quite enough. Brought to you by the team responsible for Thrust SCC, the car that broke the sound barrier back in 1997, Project Bloodhound is aiming to take Andy Green beyond 1000mph.

To achieve Mach 1.4, the Bloodhound will employ a mix of rocket and jet power. The jet, pinched from a Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft, nestles just above a rocket, providing a combined thrust of 135,000bhp – that’s the equivalent of 180 Formula One engines.

>> CLICK HERE TO SEE A VIDEO OF THE BLOODHOUND ROCKET CAR RACING A FIGHTER JET

During a run, the car will burn 1.7 tonnes of fuel. The rocket alone guzzles over a tonne of Hydrogen Peroxide and its fuel pump is driven by a 750bhp V12 from a Superleague Formula racing car. If it does its job, Green will enter the flying mile after 43sec of the run and at 1030mph.

A combination of an air brake, parachutes and carbon fibre wheel brakes will stop the car. The team will then have an hour to turn it around and complete a run in the opposite direction to break the record.

Green is now 47 and admits the decision to drive was not easy. “I always said I’d need a good team and a good reason to do it again. If we’d been talking about doing 780mph then I’d have said no, but 1000mph feels like a good reason.”

Ron Ayers, the 77 years old aerodynamics genius behind Thrust SSC, is leading the design process. “I’ve been retired about four times but it doesn’t seem to make any difference,” he says. Ayers must ensure the car is slippery enough to break the record, while remaining stable and grounded. “The biggest problem is the shock waves acting on the car when you’ve broken the sound barrier,” he explains. “The forces on the car are constantly changing.”

The man leading the project is Richard Noble, the former land speed record breaker who also led the Thrust team. Noble’s great vision for Bloodhound was to use the project to inspire a new generation of engineers through an in-school education programme. Over 10% of schools in England and Wales have already signed-up to follow the project.

“We’re not a secretive Formula One team,” he explains. “We can share with everyone exactly what we’re doing. Young people were inspired by great engineering feats of the past, such as Concorde. We want them to be inspired by this today.”

The team will now spend the next eighteen months building and testing the car before they decamp to the Hakskeen Pan in South Africa’s Northern Cape to prepare for the record run.