The next contender for the world’s fastest car is currently being assembled in Bristol. A team of top engineers behind the Bloodhound supersonic car hope to smash through both the sound barrier and the land speed record with their pencil-shaped wheelie beast.
The current land speed record was set way back in 1997 by a British team also led by Richard Noble, who built the Thrust SSC. It reached speeds of over 768mph to become the first car to ever break the sound car and become ‘supersonic’. It was powered by two Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engines.
But the Bloodhound is set to race past that record with speeds of up to 1,000mph. Noble's team of just 34 people, which is currently working in the former Maritime Heritage Centre on Bristol harbour, will use a jet engine – specifically a prototyope Eurojet EJ200 – to propel the car to 300mph. After that a second engine will pick up the speed, a special hybrid rocket designed by Daniel Jubb, which will blast the Bloodhound up to the 1,000mph barrier.
In total the Bloodhound will have as much power as approximately 180 Formula 1 cars. If the world record attempt goes according to plan, the team will have broken the land speed record by around 33%, which is the highest ever margin. The record attempt is set to take place in 2016, but before that it will be tested on a 12 mile runway in South Africa in 2014.
Hold onto your hats!
1 comments:
It's kinda difficult for me to imagine how fast 1,000 mph is, but the thought of driving this 'rocket' seems insane.
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