Bloodhound LSR driver Andy Green
Although the high-speed testing of the Bloodhound Land Speed Record (LSR) car has been a resounding success, the “real work” would begin only now, the team said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Bloodhound team is currently raising the necessary capital to move into the final phase of its programme of attempting a new world land speed record in 12 to 18 months’ time.
Now that high-speed tests at Hakskeenpan, in South Africa’s Northern Cape, have been completed, the Bloodhound LSR car is being shipped back to the UK where it will be reassembled into 'desert spec' configuration. The team expects the car to arrive early in January, and it will then be reassembled at SGS Berkeley Green University Technical College, in Gloucestershire.
To set a new world land speed record, the Bloodhound LSR team needs to fit a rocket on the car.
Norwegian aerospace expert Nammo is developing a monopropellant rocket as part of a European Space Agency research and development programme, which will be the perfect fit for the Bloodhound LSR car, slotting easily into the vacant tunnel beneath the EJ200 jet engine.
The new rocket will use concentrated hydrogen peroxide which, when passed through a catalyst, decomposes into water and oxygen, while generating the thrust needed to blast Bloodhound LSR into the record books.
In its latest run, at a 16-km-long track at Hakskeenpan, the car reached a maximum speed of 1 010 km/h; however, the team’s focus was not on reaching a certain speed, but rather on testing the car in the desert conditions.
At the formal land speed record attempt, the Bloodhound will use three power plants: the current Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet from a Eurofighter Typhoon, a cluster of Nammo hybrid rockets, and a 550 bhp supercharged Jaguar V8 engine that drives the rocket oxidiser pump.
Between them they will generate 135 000 thrust horsepower, equivalent to 180 Formula 1 cars.
The current world land speed record is 1 227.9 km/h, set by another UK team called Thrust SSC, which was led by Richard Noble, in a car driven by current Bloodhound LSR driver Andy Green.
The Bloodhound LSR team aims to set the world land speed record at 1 600 km/h – fast enough to outsprint a bullet.