Today Canary Wharf in East London will be the new home of the Bloodhound SSC.
RAF fighter pilot Andy Green, who is the current world land speed record holder at 763 mph, will be attempting to break this record in Hakskeen Pan, Northern Cape in South Africa in 2017.
This area is 3 miles wide and 12 miles long, and has been cleared of all rocks so that Andy Green can attempt to push the Bloodhound SSC to it’s limit of 1,000 mph.
This beast of a machine has the following specifications:
- Power of 180 Formula 1 vehicles.
- Designed to reach 1,000mph.
- At 1,000mph the Bloodhound SSC covers one mile in 3.6 seconds.
- Has three power systems: a 550bhp supercharged Jaguar V8 engine, a Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet from an RAF Eurofighter Typhoon, and a cluster of Nammo hybrid rockets.
- Accelerates from zero to 1,000mph in 55 seconds.
- To enabling stability of the Bloodhound at supersonic speeds it has a 2 meter high tail fin (6.5ft).
- Is the worlds most powerful land vehicle, boasting a 13.5 meters (44 ft) streamliner, which uses jet and rocket motors to produce 135,000 thrust horsepower.
- For the team to monitor how the Bloodhound SSC is performing, the team has included 500 sensors, and twelve cameras, including two in the cockpit.
- To enhance safety it includes seven fire extinguishers and three separate breaking systems
- To reach 1,000mph, the vehicle will need to produce about 21 tonnes of thrust (210kN).
- The deceleration will be at 3G, which has been compared to travelling from 60mph (97km/h) to standstill in one second. *
- The EJ200 jet engine fitted to the car consumes 64,000 litres of air per second, and this would suck all the air from an average sized house in 3 seconds. *
The picture above is a view of the digital dashboard (plus manual back up) inside the cockpit.
After 8 years of research, the Bloodhound SSC team is not only attempting to break a world record, but has also influenced a generation of children and reignited their passion in engineering, with a record number of applicant wishing to study engineering at the universities involved in the Bloodhound SSC project.
The show has seen so much interest that it is unfortunately now fully booked, but if you’d like to see more images, video clips and information on the Bloodhound SSC, visit their Facebook page here.
Main Image Source
All Other Images Sourced from: Bloodhound SSC photographer Stefan Marjoram
