Made of titanium, carbon fiber and, like superman, is intended to go quicker than a speeding bullet, the Bloodhound Supersonic car (SSC) has been meticulously assembled and tested over the better piece of six years.
In 2016, the UK-based engineers plan to take the 42-foot (8.9m) vehicle to Hakskeen Pan, a dry lake bed in South Africa, for a chance to break the existing world record of speeding land vehicles.
Commander Andy Green, former fighter jet pilot with the Royal Air Force (RAF) Wing said designing a car that can hold together at these blistering speeds has been a triumph of the engineer's art.
"No rubber," he told CNN from The Bloodhound Project headquarters in Bristol, UK. "Beyond about 450mph it's really, really hard to keep a tire on - they just get flung off. So we have solid aluminum.
"We've been through a huge evolution of finding something that's tough enough that would do the job. Basically this car goes faster than a speeding bullet, so anything that hits this is like being shot at from a gun."
The from jet pro, who has flown battle missions over Iraq, Bosnia and Afghanistan, can make a claim for being the only man to have broken the sound barrier up the air and on land. In 1997, he hit 763 mph or Mach 1 in the vehicle ThrustSSC to turn into the first man to break the sound barrier on land.
The Bloodhound Project takes the area rate record above and beyond in an auto that is part stream warrior, part Formula 1 racer and part space rocket.
"A thousand miles an hour at ground level is faster than any jet fighter has ever traveled in history, so there are going to be some major challenges," Green said
Other than three engines conveying 135,000 horsepower, the Bloodhound is furnished with rocket boosters to produce the force important to get it to 1,000 mph.
"(The jet engines) on their own will take us to 600mph or thereabouts, but to get a land speed record, at about 350 miles an hour we turn on a rocket engine to take us all the way through to a 1000mph," said lead designer Mark Chapman. "The rocket is the key -- that's the difference between 750 mph and 1,000 mph."
The Bloodhound team searched the globe to discover a desert that could suit a vehicle which, at 1,000 mph, is prone to run out of the in a matter of seconds. The necessities were a superbly level scene, no less than 12 miles in length and two miles wide.
They in the end chose Hakskeen Pan, in Northern Cape, South Africa where Bloodhound SSC will cover a mile in 3.6 seconds - equal to 4.5 football pitches laid end to end every second.
While the aim of the project is to crack the magic 1,000 mph mark (the closest yet has been an American F104 jet fighter which flew just above ground level at 988mph), Green said the ultimately the record attempt is about instilling a sense of engineering progress in future generations.
"This about developing technology. This is about finding out new things. This is about exploring," he said. "And the story of engineering exploration is about the failures and the challenges, not just about the successes."
Report By - MrLylkyd
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