The history of British motorsport is well stocked with underdog stories, most famously those of the “garagista” upstarts who conquered Formula 1 in the 1960s and ’70s before remaking the sport in their own image. But the attempt of a small group of engineers based in Bristol to break the world land speed record—and take it to 1000 mph—is perhaps an even greater example of cheery optimism in the face of long odds.
It has been more than five years since we first told you about the Bloodhound project, and more than nine years since it began. That the team’s jet- and rocket-propelled car was meant to have achieved its 1000-mph goal in 2014 shows how far things have slipped. But last week Bloodhound ran under its own power for the first time, driven by Andy Green, 55, current holder of the land speed record at 763 mph. RAF fighter pilot Green set that mark in ThrustSSC on the Black Rock Desert in Nevada in October 1997.
Twenty years later, the 200 mph that Bloodhound and Green achieved on a borrowed runway at Newquay, in the westernmost English county of Cornwall, is a scant percentage of what the team hopes to accomplish when it moves testing to South Africa. But it did give proof that the project possesses both life and undimmed ambition.
Still long and wedgy, the car has evolved steadily from preproduction renderings to reality, with a profusion of sponsors’ logos supplementing its blue and orange color scheme. (The Union flag on the tailfin also incorporates the names of more than 30,000 individual donors.) The basic concept remains unchanged, with a combination of jet and rocket power necessary for the more ambitious record attempts. Bloodhound will use both a Rolls-Royce EJ200 Turbofan borrowed from a Eurofighter Typhoon combat aircraft and rocket motors built by Norwegian company Nammo.
The rockets will burn high-test peroxide for the first record attempt—a goal set at a mere 800 mph—before the team switches to a brawnier hybrid rocket that will require the back end of the car to be redesigned for the attempts at a four-figure speed. The rocket side of the powertrain is still under development, and the runs at Newquay were exclusively under jet power and also on aircraft tires rather than the solid metal wheels the car will employ when it reaches the desert of the Northern Cape in South Africa.
It feels rude and un-British to turn the conversation to money, but funding has been the limiting factor in much of Bloodhound’s slipped schedule, with delays responsible for the departure of several of the earlier sponsors, including Jaguar. Back in 2014, we reported that the entire project was expected to cost around $28 million, but Ewen Honeyman, Bloodhound’s marketing director, said that getting to this point has cost $40 million at current exchange rates, and a similar amount will be needed to get to the 1000-mph target.
“That’s a lot of money, obviously,” he said at the test, “but compared to a Formula 1 budget, it’s modest. You could not run a team at the back of the grid for that.”
Mark Chapman, Bloodhound’s chief engineer, also reckons the publicity raised by getting the car moving will also help to raise funds more quickly. “There’s been a huge amount of interest from around the globe. We’re only running to 200 mph, 220 mph tops on the runway, but people really want to see what this car can do when we get it to the desert.”
Proof of Concept
Newquay, located on Cornwall’s north coast, is known as a low-price party town favored by students and also as one of the few spots in Blighty to offer surfable waves. The Newquay Cornwall Airport—a former Royal Air Force base, used by the U.S. Army Air Forces at the end of World War II—allowed its runway to be shut down for a couple of hours to allow Bloodhound to make a series of proving runs.
An impressive crowd made the long trek to see the car run, many of them the same individuals who have contributed to get their names on the tailfin. Early-morning fog raised concern—Green needed to be able to see through the tiny cockpit windscreen—but it cleared well before the allotted hour.
The test runs were slightly anticlimactic, certainly for anyone who has ever seen a jet-powered drag racer run. Bloodhound powered itself along the airfield’s long taxiways with the characteristic whine of an idling jet engine. On reaching the runway, it paused briefly before Green did what seemed to be a full-power launch, with cones of fire spitting from the jet engine’s afterburner. But the car had barely started moving before the engine sound dropped and it passed out of sight. The limiting factor here was stopping: It was on tires that are nearly 40 years old, the same as those fitted to the English Electric Lightning, a jet fighter the RAF retired from service in 1988. These same tires were used by the Thrust2 and ThrustSSC record cars in test runs on sealed surfaces, and although they can handle both speed and load, their braking performance is limited.
After another trip down the runway, the car returned to the staging area to be shut down and inspected. This wasn’t the first time it has moved under its own power—there was a trial run the week before the official event—but the 22 minutes that Green spent with the cockpit canopy closed is the longest time he has spent inside the car. He handled the public debriefing in his usual laconic style; Green is the man who barely seemed to break a sweat while simultaneously breaking the sound barrier and applying corrective steering lock in ThrustSSC. He admits that the jet engine’s response delay meant that even shutting off power at 130 mph saw the car continue to accelerate to 200 mph, and that he also wants some form of defogger for the windscreen.
Chapman admitted the acceleration came as something of a surprise, the car being run without its rocket engine, peroxide fuel, or the Jaguar V-8 that is currently the choice of powerplant for the rocket’s oxidizer pump. “The rate of acceleration surprised us all,” he said. “This is a five-ton car, and in Africa, when ready to do a record run, it will be an eight-ton car. It’s a lot more sprightly off the line.
“The thing we learned most is about the engine. We’ve got an intake for the jet engine that’s been designed to optimize at 800 mph, Mach 1.1, but we’ve shown that it works at far lower speeds. We’ve been able to apply full power pretty much from stationary. That’s better than we expected.”
The Jaguar V-8 is not guaranteed to be part of the final configuration. Chapman said his team is considering switching to an electric system for the oxidizer pump, which will need to deliver hundreds of gallons of peroxide fuel to the rocket engine.
“When we looked at this for the first time back in 2009, the battery technology wasn’t there. We’d have needed a half-ton or three-quarter-ton battery. Now we’re looking at what’s out there; it may well be that a few liters of [gasoline] and an automobile engine is still the best way to do it. But [this is] a great opportunity to show what an electric system could deliver—we need 600 horsepower for 25 seconds.”
By happy coincidence, Polestar—a subsidiary of Bloodhound’s current automotive partner Geely—has just announced a 600-horse electric powertrain for its forthcoming sports car. Chapman confirmed that discussions over its suitability have started.
A Steely-Eyed Focus on South Africa
Unsurprisingly, given the temporal slippage that has already occurred, Bloodhound’s senior team was unwilling to commit to a fixed schedule for the remainder of the project. Presuming funds are found, the first plan is to go to South Africa next year for jet-powered runs, up to around 600 mph, on the carefully prepared surface of the Hakskeen Pan in the Northern Cape. Development of the rocket engines will continue in parallel, with the ambition being that the first trip to Africa will unlock enough additional sponsorship cash to allow for a return in early 2019 to attempt to take the land speed record. If you’re a billionaire looking to help make history, this could be a good time to get involved.
“We’re going to need a bit of help,” said Honeyman, “but we’re very confident that we’ll get there in the end.”
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