An artist’s rendering of the Bloodhound SSC at speed. Photo courtesy Flock and Siemens.
If all goes as planned, the Bloodhound SSC, driven by RAF fighter pilot Andy Green, will smash the existing land speed record of 763 MPH, ideally hitting 1,000 MPH on the vast, flat expanse of South Africa’s Hakskeen Pan. Before that can happen, however, the team needs to test vehicle systems at more modest speeds, progressing to the next stage only when the Bloodhound proves stable at speed. The first such test will take place much closer to home; on November 17, the Bloodhound SSC will make its world debut with a 200 MPH test run at Newquay Aerohub, in Cornwall, England.
Newquay was built as a civilian facility in the 1930s, but saw action as RAF Trebelzue (and later, RAF St. Mawgan) during the Second World War. In the postwar years, operation was turned over to the United States Air Force, which modernized the facility and increased the length of the primary runway to just over 9,000 feet. That makes it suitable for the initial testing of the Bloodhound, prior to the modifications necessary for high-speed testing.
Photo courtesy Flock and Siemens.
To run the car at the projected top speed of 1,000 MPH requires a course at least 12 miles in length, two miles wide and utterly devoid of surface irregularities. Areas previously used for land speed record attempts, such as Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats and Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, no longer meet that criteria, thanks largely to industrial development or over-use of the land.
Weather plays a factor, too, and an ideal location would allow testing during several seasons, instead of just a solitary dry season. After conducting a global search for a suitable area, the team behind the record attempt chose the Hakskeen Pan, close to Namibia in the northwest corner of South Africa.
Photo courtesy Flock and Siemens.
Getting to 1,000 miles per hour will require serious thrust, and the Bloodhound will utilize a combination of Nammo hybrid rockets and a Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet engine to achieve this. Feeding the rocket motors, which consume 800 liters (211 gallons) of high-test peroxide (HTP) in just 20 seconds, will require the use of a 550-horsepower supercharged Jaguar V-8 as an auxiliary power unit. Once at speed, the Bloodhound will cover a mile in just 3.6 seconds, and if something goes wrong there’s no such thing as too much run-off area.
Though low-speed testing will begin in November, don’t expect a run on the existing land speed record in the immediate future. Once the data from the Newquay test is compiled and interpreted, air brakes and winglets will be added to the Bloodhound before the car is shipped to South Africa in time for initial high-speed testing during the summer of 2016. The team expects that two or three seasons of trials will be necessary before the car is capable of crossing the 1,000 MPH barrier, though it’s quite likely that land speed records will be set several times in the build-up to the ultimate goal.
Andy Green with the full-scale Bloodhound SSC model. Photo courtesy Flock and Siemens.
To learn more about the Bloodhound SSC project, visit BloodhoundSSC.com.
