The UK-driven project to set a new land- speed record in the Bloodhound supersonic car (SSC) has raised R220-million to date, says Royal Air Force Wing Commander Andy Green.

Green also holds the current land speed record, at 1 227 km/h, set in 1997 by the Thrust SSC.

“We need in excess of R100-million still,” he notes. “It depends on the number of test runs we have to do.”

Green says the Bloodhound project is also still looking for that elusive big South African sponsor to open its wallet.

The Bloodhound is set to do its record-breaking runs – there has to be two before it counts – on Hakskeenpan, in the Northern Cape, the flattest spot Green and the team could find on earth.

The Northern Cape municipality of Mier is supporting the record attempt. Hakskeenpan is situated about 280 km from Upington. The municipal area of Mier includes the communities of Rietfontein, Philandersbron, Loubos, Klein Mier, Groot Mier, Welkom, Askham and Noenieput. (Green says he can already say goeie môre (Afrikaans for ‘good morning’) and baie dankie (‘thank you’) .)

A team of 300 locals has cleared 6 000 t of stones in the 20-million square metre area required to break the record.

Green expects to do around 30 test runs over the 2014 and 2015 dry seasons. The fighter pilot is keen to “have the wheels on the car by December” and to come to Hakskeenpan dur- ing Easter 2014 – six months later than originally expected. The budget is R100m-plus bigger than estimated last year.

Green expects the first runs to ultimately reach 1 300 km/h, which will already be a new land-speed record.

“It will also prove the technology of the car.”

The final record run, in what Green calls a “brisk ride”, is expected to happen in 2015, when the car will be pushed to 1 600 km/h, effectively covering 20 km in around two minutes, or one kilometre in 2.2 seconds. (Stopping is just as breathtaking, with Green likening it to stopping on the highway from 100 km/h to zero in one second.)

“You can black out if you are not trained for it.”

To achieve its expected speed, the Bloodhound will make use of a rocket, a jet from a fighter aircraft and the engine of a Formula 1 racing car.

Telecommunications firm MTN is investing R30-million in new technology and infrastructure to ensure the remote part of the Northern Cape where the record attempt will take place will have super-fast Internet, which means the record attempt can be broadcast live.

Breaking the land-speed record is not a one-horse race, though, as there are four other teams, spread across the globe, all working to build the world’s fastest car.

The challenge in building the Bloodhound is that it has to be around 40% faster than the Thrust, notes Green.

The rules governing the land-speed record demand that the vehicle must have four wheels, remain on the ground, make two runs in opposite directions and have a driver inside.

Shape does not matter.

The long, thin Bloodhound looks very different from its low, broad predecessor, the Thrust.

Green says experts told the Thrust team in 1997 that the car had to be “wide and low” to reach supersonic speed, otherwise the vehicle would be destroyed.

“So we built the safest, lowest, widest car we could.”

However, notes Green, these experts followed their intuition rather than research – it was, after all, new territory to go this fast. Current research, 16 years later, through the advancement of computers, shows that “you can go faster with a thinner car”.

No doubt he will love to prove this come this time next year.