Just over a decade after driver Andy Green and project leader Richard Noble achieved the first - and so far only - supersonic World Land Speed Record with Thrust SSC, plans have been revealed for a new car which is designed to go more than 30% faster still.
It's called Bloodhound SSC, and the eventual aim is for it to set a new LSR of 1000mph. This is a four-year project, and the idea is to reach 800mph next year, 900mph in 2010 and four figures in 2011, possibly (but not yet definitely) at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, USA.
Bloodhound SSC is technically very unusual in that it has three engines. The actual motive force comes from a jet/rocket hybrid, the Falcon rocket for its massive power and lack of aerodynamic drag and the Eurojet EJ200 for controllability. There will also be an 800bhp V12 piston engine which - however impressive it might be on its own in a race car - is in this case an ancillary unit, used for starting the jet, delivering hydraulic power and pumping fuel to the rocket.
The project is sponsored by oil company STP (no stranger to record-breaking itself, having supported record breaker Art Arfons and his Green Monster cars in the 1960s) and also has its own education programme. Full details of this, and of the project as a whole, can be found at
www.bloodhoundssc.com.
