Page 65 - MotorTrend (March 2020)
P. 65
Work started on Bloodhound in 2008. The
car has been designed to reach 1,000 mph,
well above the current land speed record.
“We couldn’t run over the same piece
of ground twice because the car breaks up
the baked mud surface,” Warhurst says.
“We needed multiple tracks so we could
build speed slowly and safely—going up
in 50-mph steps, comparing real-world
results with theoretical data.”
Bloodhound would run at Hakskeen
Pan in “desert spec” for the very first
time, the wheels with rubber tires used
for the 200-mph test runs in Cornwall Andy Green makes a check
of Bloodhound’s parachute
replaced by solid forged aluminum wheels
after a 350-mph test run.
number for the media to digest. Green— measuring 35.4 inches in diameter,
still a serving RAF officer, the current weighing 198 pounds each, and designed
land speed record holder, and the man to spin at up to 10,200 rpm without
nominated to drive Bloodhound from the being torn apart by centrifugal force.
project’s inception—would drive. The wheels have a V-shaped profile that
Bloodhound arrived at Hakskeen Pan digs 0.6 inch into the dried mud when
in the third week of October. As part of Bloodhound is stationary but is designed
Noble’s original program, 317 members to make them plane across the surface at
of the local Mier community, funded speed like a speedboat on water. At 500
by the Northern Cape government, had mph, with just the tiniest fraction of metal
during previous years moved a stag- in contact with the ground, the giant discs
gering 18,200 tons of rock—mostly small act more like rudders than wheels.
stones and pebbles that could be lethally The first task: Firing up the Rolls-Royce
damaging to a car traveling faster than EJ200 jet engine, whose 20,000 pounds
the speed of sound—from 8.5 square of thrust—equivalent to 54,000 horse-
miles of the lake surface, enough to mark power—is usually applied to powering the
out 25 separate 10-mile-long tracks with Eurofighter Typhoon, Europe’s front-line
large safety areas on both sides. jet fighter. The engine had been in storage
MARCH 2020 MOTORTREND.COM 65
