Like all records, the Bloodhound land-speed record attempt is all about numbers: 1 600 km/h, R515-million, seven tons, 60 people, 135 000 hp, and the year 2016.

Yes, the timeframe for the actual 1 600 km/h run will now be 2016, and no longer 2015.

Bloodhound programme director Richard Noble says the supersonic car (SSC) will only start its test runs – some of which may already break the current 1 227.9 km/h land-speed record – at South Africa’s Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape, in the third quarter of 2015, with the big 1 600 km/h run slated for 2016.

South Africa has the biggest and firmest dried-out lake bed in the world in Hakskeen Pan – and it is pretty flat too. To put it in numbers, the total variation in elevation over the 2 km strip is a mere 61 mm.

“We are delayed, yes,” Noble tells Engineering News. “It’s becoming a huge programme. We are a tiny organisation, with 60 people working on this, and we are doing what is essentially an enormous aerospace programme.”

Following doubts over whether the car would be ready in 2014 for the start of testing, Noble and his team decided to rather extend the R515-million programme by one year.

It is not simply a question of putting the car on its wheels and gunning for the 1 000-mile-an-hour mark immediately – which will be a 30% improvement on the current record or, to put it in context, faster than the bullet from a .357 Magnum.

Breaking the land-speed record takes months of testing and fine-tuning, a process Noble should be familiar with, as he managed the programme that set up the current record, broken by Royal Air Force wing commander Andy Green in the Thrust SSC in 1997.

Green is also set to pilot the Bloodhound in 2015 and 2016.

The Bloodhound is a jet- and rocket- powered car with a slender body, around 14 m in length, with two front wheels situated within the body and two rear wheels mounted externally within wheel fairings.

It weighs more than 7 t and the engines produce more than 135 000 hp, which is more than six times the power of all the Formula 1 cars on the starting grid put together.

The Bloodhound is a mix of car and aircraft technology, with the front half a carbon-fibre monocoque, similar to a racing car, and the back half a metallic framework with panels like an aircraft.

It is named after Bloodhound aero- dynamics chief Ron Ayers’ first missile, the Bristol Bloodhound 2, a surface-to-air missile that would accelerate from standstill to Mach 1 in 2.5 seconds – another impressive number.

55 Years
The Bloodhound is being assembled at the Bloodhound Technical Centre, in Avonmouth, Bristol, in the UK. The first metal for the manufacturing of components was cut back in 2011.
“It took 55 engineer years of research to get to the detailed design of the car,” says Noble.

“Having moved into our new facility in Bristol, the build is progressing well. The next few months will see the lower structure and monocoque completed and the upper structure being built on the assembly fixture,” adds Bloodhound chief engineer Mark Chapman.
“The car has been designed so that the assembly is modular, and while the main structure is coming together, the suspension and rocket modules can also be worked on.”

Chapman says the biggest challenge in building the car is timing.
“We don’t have the luxury of completing the whole car design before parts are issued for manufacture, so, from now till the car rolls out in 2015, there is a challenge to balance the release of data for the long-lead manu- facturing parts, and to keep the build team supplied with all the parts they need just in time to meet the plan.”
There are around 160 companies supplying parts to the Bloodhound project.

The first low-speed runs of the Bloodhound will be on a runway in the UK towards the end of the second quarter of 2015.

These runs will be limited to around 350 km/h and “are principally to perform a shakedown of the vehicle systems”, says Chapman.

Following the UK test runs, the car and its immediate support equipment will be shipped by air to Upington, in the Northern Cape.

The remainder of the technical camp will have already been shipped by sea, and will be set up on Hakskeen Pan, awaiting the arrival of the car.
“There will be a series of low-speed runs, with speed increasing progressively during the third quarter of 2015 to achieve a new land-speed record upwards of 1 300 km/h,” says Chapman.

“We will then spend the summer months analysing the data and updating the car to return in 2016 to take the record to 1 600 km/h.”
Two Wheel Tests at 60 km/h
Before the car – any car – there was the wheel, and this is also true for the Bloodhound. The wheels on the supersonic car will be unlike anything seen before, as they have to hold up at 1 600 km/h.

To date, there have been two wheel-testing sessions at Hakskeen Pan.

The first was conducted in October last year with the sharp V-shaped profile, as originally planned. However, says Chapman, this showed significant damage as it broke through the surface layer and ran on the hard subsurface.

The team returned after the pan had flooded again to redo the tests in June this year, but with two very different wheel profiles – one almost flat, and the other still V-shaped, but with a large blend radius, rather than being sharp.

Both wheels performed well, but the V-wheel was more progressive, and performed better in the lateral grip trials. Neither wheel broke through the surface or exhibited any damage, notes Chapman.

“The wheel we will be using for the first season will be a rounded V- profile, with a slightly narrower overall width than we tested.”

Two types of wheel tests were conducted this year. Firstly, the wheels were attached to a trailer carrying three containers filled with water to ballast the trailer, giving a range of wheel loadings up to the full equivalent vehicle weight.

The trailer was towed in a straight line at 60 km/h at a range of increasing wheel loads, with the width of the wheel tracks measured to assess their performance.

The second series of tests involved towing the trailer in a constant-radius circle at increasing speed until the limit of lateral grip was reached.
“These were done to assess the contribution the wheels would give to the lateral stability of the car,” explains Chapman.

He says there will be no more wheel tests in the immediate future.

“We have committed to the wheel width and profile for the first season’s running in South Africa. The wheel and blank forgings have been designed in such a way that there is some scope to modify the wheel for the second season’s running, and as we get more real data from running the car up to around 1 350 km/h in year one.”

With Hakskeen Pan now cleared of all stones for the record attempt, and the wheels tested, all that remains is to continuously assess surface conditions at the 2015 race track.
“We have a remote weather station on the pan and are gathering data on temperature, humidity, wind speed and rainfall. This gives us a very good basis of historic data when it comes to planning the timing of the campaign,” says Chapman.

“The surface condition at the pan is stunning and a huge credit to the team that have been clearing the 6 000 t of surface stones by hand,” he adds.

However, Chapman also notes that the section of causeway that ran across the centre could do with another year’s cycle of levelling and flooding.

“By the time we need the full length of the course for the 1 600 km/h runs, it will be outstanding.”

300-Plus Schools
The Bloodhound project wants to break the land-speed record, but it also wants to stimulate interest in science, engineering, technology and mathematics in the UK and in South Africa.

To date, there are around 5 400 UK schools, colleges and universities following the project as it unfolds. None of the project data is protected by copyright or intellectual property rights.

Noble believes the UK has pursued the financial sector to the detriment of developing engineering and manufacturing skills.

In South Africa, there more than 300 schools tapped into the project’s information feed.

“These are mostly public schools. We hope they use the project to become inspired about science and mathematics,” says Noble.

“We want to grow this number, but we are dependent on the South African government to achieve this. Bloodhound is an inspiration device; it is there, available, but it must be used.”

The participating schools are instrumental in the choice of kit Green will don for the land-speed record attempt.

Green’s helmet is conventional, but will also include a low-profile breathing mask. The colour scheme for the helmet has been selected from a schools competition in the UK and South Africa, and Green will alternate between the two winning designs.

The South African winner is 17-year-old Dirk Coetzee from Adamantia High School, in Kimberley, and the UK winner is 11-year-old Sam James from Winterbourne Earls School.

Green’s suit will be a conventional looking race suit produced by Alpinestars; however, it will also include a layer of specialist material from Lamination Technology to make it flameproof, rather than flame retardant, as is normally the case for racing drivers.

It is not only pupils gaining from the Bloodhound project, but also teachers.

Anne Maclean has been involved in teaching maths to youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds since 1974. Since 2002, she has been based in Kimberley, where she started the nonprofit Maths & Science Leadership Academy (MSLA) in 2006.

At the beginning of 2013, Bloodhound South African education director Dave Rowley named the MSLA the first Bloodhound SSC Education Centre in South Africa.

Thanks to the Bloodhound project, the MSLA has now received a Promethean interactive whiteboard, which has “done wonders” for the quality of maths and science lessons given to 250 high school learners from poor areas in Kimberley, says Maclean.

Rowley and Bloodhound education project coordinator Wendy Maxwell provide enrichment sessions for the learners on Fridays, while also running a robotics club.

In addition to this, Rowley has started a science, technology, engineering and maths leadership group.

Christopher Maxwell, 26, is not a teacher, but he is equally enthusiastic about the project. He is a local Bloodhound ambassador – and there are quite a few.

He says his current employment at an education technology company is the direct result of his involvement with the Bloodhound project.

During the final year of his BSc mathe- matics and physics degree, he volunteered to assist with a Bloodhound exhibit after meeting Rowley, and now regularly presents workshops for learners and educators to inspire them to enter the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

“I am currently working with a school in Cape Town to build a model rocket car to challenge the world land-speed record for a model rocket car.”

As for the Northern Cape’s preparation for the land-speed record attempt, the provincial government and its tourism authority want to make sure visitors have a memorable and enjoyable stay, says Bloodhound SSC project spokesperson in South Africa Marina Joubert.

“They plan to make the most of this opportunity – over several months during 2015 and 2016 – by providing a varied menu of entertainment experiences and events, and creating opportunities for local artists and entrepreneurs to sell Bloodhound memor-abilia and other arts and crafts. Some locals are already selling toy-sized Bloodhound cars made of wood or wire.”

Joubert says it is difficult to predict how many people will attend the test runs and record attempts, and where they will come from.

“We expect the numbers will add up to several thousand. Millions of people around the globe will also follow these events in real time, online.”

It may, however, be difficult to host thousands of people in the sparsely populated Northern Cape.

“In addition to using the existing accom- modation, we will work closely with the Northern Cape Tourism Authority to secure additional options for visitors, for example, camping, caravan sites and home-stays, similar to what is currently being done for Kalahari Speedweek, but at a much larger scale,” says Joubert. “We will use the facilities at Upington Airport to bring the Bloodhound to South Africa, and we expect many international visitors to use this airport.”
MTN, the local telecommunications partner, has started building masts at Hakskeen Pan that will support the real-time, online, global sharing of data.
Joubert expects the 2015 and 2016 events to benefit the local economy of the Northern Cape “directly and substantially”.

“Thanks to Bloodhound, Hakskeen Pan will be famous for decades to come. The global media exposure will create widespread awareness of the beauty of the Northern Cape and the hospitality of its people. We expect that the project will have a long-lasting legacy that will lure many people to this remote part of South Africa for many years after the dust from the ultimate land-speed record has settled.”