NO.120
Thrust SSC Global Engineering Landmark
Status – the same as for the Space Shuttle,
Lunar Module and Saturn V launchrocket. 400,000 people a year still come to
see the car in its museum in Coventry: it
was a fitting end to the project and we all
swore we would never ever do it again.
Of course, having been beaten in the
supersonic race, the Americans were
quickly challenging: we could either reply
immediately or let it pass. We decided to
raise the bar so high that the Americans
would have difficulty responding: the
team’s chosen target was 1,000mph/Mach
1.4, an unprecedented 31% increase on the
existing record. The car was named
Bloodhound SSC after our aerodynamicist
Ron Ayers’ 1960s SAM missile. It would
cover the measured mile in 3.6 seconds,
some 200mph faster than the Eurofighter
in the thick air at 3,000ft altitude.
So the new project would have to
have a parallel educational element,
designed to inspire primary and secondary
schoolchildren. This would also offset
BBC television’s obsession with the arts,
and the consequential dismal lack of
science and engineering programming
that was skewing the ambitions of a whole
generation.
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Bloodhound education has been a
considerable success, providing inspiration
to more than 6,000 UK schools: they all
seem to be building rocket cars now, and
the fastest school car goes at 535mph.
Once children have been given the
opportunity and technology, there appears
to be a huge consequential development
in their power. In fact, we have every
reason to get worried – the school cars
could get to 1000mph before we do! Just
ask your children if they know about
Bloodhound. In the University of the
West of England they had to close
admissions to their 2015 Engineering
course early because of unprecedented
demand, which they put down in part to
inspiration from Bloodhound: they now
need to fund new buildings and capacity.
We totally underestimated the
Bloodhound research design and build
process – it was to take over 160 manyears. To achieve this with a small team,
our company had to grow 50% every year
and 100% this year. All of this is
extremely difficult if you are dependent
on sponsorship funding at £1m a month,
but in September we displayed the
completed car at Canary Wharf, and in
two days 7,700 people came to get their
3
first glimpse of Bloodhound SSC.
Back in 2008 the project experienced
a life-changing moment when the RollsRoyce board decided to support the
programme and the MoD lent us three
early-development engines. But we still
had a power problem – designer Ron Ayers
had specified a hybrid rocket as the booster
to be fired when the car reached 350mph.
Rocket-engine development died in
Britain in the 1970s and so we were on our
own with the development of our own
motor. We ran development units in the
US Mojave desert but quickly realised we
were out of our depth. However, by 2014
we were working with the Norwegians and
their Nammo hybrid rocket is a
masterpiece: a mature design, 98.5%
efficient and with a very clean exhaust.
Low-earth orbit launches are going to be
considerably cheaper.
Of course, there were plenty of
nagging doubts, finance was a constant
worry and we needed somewhere to run
this incredible car. Our first choice was the
Black Rock Desert in Nevada where we
had run Thrust 2 and Thrust SSC, but in
recent years the rains had failed and the
activities of the annual Burning Man