Bloodhound - The 1,000 mph car

Faster than a bullet?

Only in Jeremy Clarkson's wildest dreams could a car travel faster than a bullet, but a UK team believes that will be able to smash their own land speed record with a car capable of reaching 1,000 mph - The Bloodhound.

Using a jet engine from the Eurofighter Typhoon positioned about the 'prototype hybrid rocket', it is hoped that the Bloodhound will be able to break the land speed record when it makes its attempt at Hakskeen Pan in South Africa's Northern Cape Province in 2011.

Record breaker

The team previously broke the world land speed record in 1997 by achieving a speed of 763mph (1,228km/h) in Thrust SSC. Thrust SSC driver Wing Commander Andy Green will also behind the wheel of The Bloodhound. Based in Bristol, many of the original Thrust design and engineering staff are involved in the Bloodhound project, including Richard Noble, land speed record holder in 1983 with Thrust 2.

Today was a landmark in the project as the design of the Bloodhound has now been finalised, after going through 10 design evolutions. Construction will now begin at a site in Bristol Docklands, next door to the SS Great Britain ship, called the ''Dog House''.

Bloodhound will be the largest hybrid rocket ever designed in the UK, weighting 400kg and measuring 14ft in length. The EJ200 jet engine will produce 212kN (47,500lb) of thrust - about the same as 180 F1 cars.

Speaking to the BBC, chief designer John Piper reveals that the original plan was to position a small (200kg) rocket above a heavier (1,000kg) EJ200 Eurofighter Typhoon engine. However, as the design of the Bloodhound progressed, it became clear that additional thrust was going to be needed to overcome the aerodynamic drag. A larger rocket would have introduced instabilities into the design, so the problem was solved by simply flipping the position of the two engines.

"We have switched the architecture of the rocket and the jet engine and the reason for that was we were seeing some quite high lift loads at the rear end of the car," Piper said.

"The change, though, has had some beneficial side-effects. We can now get a good chassis structure across the top which means we can now have a really good mounting for a single fin, whereas before with the rocket on top it was right in the way of where the fin would go.

"That meant we were going to have to have two fins, one on each side; and they were occupying the space where ideally we'd like to put in parachute cans."

As it is a private venture, the Bloodhound team have had to raise £10 million worth of funds to fund the record attempt. They have also 'borrowed' two EJ200 engines off the Ministry of Defence as well as receiving sponsorship from aerospace giant Lockheed Martin which has helped in designing Bloodhound's aluminium wheels; and Intel which has assisted the modelling work by making available one of the largest computer clusters in the country.

Images from the Bloodhound SSC website

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