The previous business behind Project Bloodhound went into administration in late 2018, citing a £25 million funding shortfall,
Entrepreneur Ian Warhurst bought the car to keep the project alive. Warhurst has now left the project, and Stuart Edmondson is the new CEO.
THE BLOODHOUND land speed record attempt is ‘very much still a live project,’ according to outgoing CEO Ian Warhurst in a statement on the team’s website.
Giving fans renewed hope is that the Bloodhound team’s contract with the Royal Air Force – to use low-bypass turbofan EJ200 engines from the Eurofighter Typhoon has been restored.
Bloodhound last ran in November 2019, reaching 628 mph on the Hakskeenpan in South Africa’s the Kalahari Desert. The project aims to become the first wheeled vehicle to reach 1,000 mph and beat the current record for a steerable car of 763 mph, set in 1997.
Bloodhound’s driver is the man who set that record, former Royal Air Force fighter pilot Andy Green.
Thrust SSC Is So Fast It Creates Sonic Booms, and it still holds the land speed record 24 years later.
Thrust achieved the land speed record back in October of 1997 in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. It was hitting 763.035 mph or Mach 1.020 for a stretch of 1 mile. A car breaking the sound barrier was unthinkable before, the feat astounding people at the time.
Thrust, powered by two Rolls-Royce Spey 202 jet engines delivering a thrust of 50,000 lb. When a vehicle travels at such high speeds and covers 25 mph per second, it dances on the ground, so keeping it going in the right direction becomes extremely difficult, slowing the vehicle down from 700 mph.
Before 600 mph, the airflow under the vehicle starts to go supersonic, then airflow goes supersonic over the top of the car, changing things further, requiring Andy to steer to the right at 90 degrees to keep the thing moving straight.
The sonic boom produced collateral damage. Approximately 10 miles away in the town of Gerlach, vibrations knocked sprinkler covers were off.
Interestingly, Andy Green did the record run almost 50 years after Chuck Yeager performed the first supersonic flight on October 14, 1947.
Inspired by Jules Verne; Every success to that ‘magnificent man in his flying machine.’