Chasing the sound barrier on wheels at 1,000 mph
In short: To break the world land speed record, a vehicle must survive the violent physics of supersonic travel. The Bloodhound LSR is a British jet-powered car designed to exceed 763 mph, creating a literal shockwave as it tears across the South African desert.
The Bloodhound LSR project began in 2008 with a goal to surpass the current land speed record of 763 mph (1,228 km/h). To achieve this, the arrow-shaped vehicle utilizes a Rolls-Royce Eurojet EJ200 jet engine to provide roughly half the necessary thrust, reaching speeds of 650 mph. For the final push toward the record, a custom monopropellant rocket from the Norwegian company Nammo provides the remaining power. The engineering is so precise that the car's wheels must resist centrifugal forces of up to 50,000 g at the rim, supported by tapered roller bearings with a safety factor of 5,000%. The project has faced significant hurdles, including a 2018 bankruptcy that left a £25 million funding gap. It was rescued by entrepreneur Ian Warhurst, who renamed the project Bloodhound LSR and moved operations to Gloucestershire. While the original target was 1,000 mph, the current primary goal is 800 mph (1,300 km/h), with the higher speed remaining a secondary objective depending on investment. The vehicle is currently housed at the Coventry Transport Museum while the team seeks a new driver and funding, estimated to be between £8 million and £12 million. Testing takes place at the Hakskeen Pan in South Africa, a site where the local community manually cleared 16,500 tonnes of stones to create a 12-mile-long track. The car is designed to accelerate from 0 to 800 mph in just 38 seconds, subjecting the driver to forces of 2.5 g during acceleration and up to 3 g during deceleration. This feat of engineering represents a transition from the era of the ThrustSSC, which first broke the sound barrier on land in 1997, to a new era of net-zero carbon land speed records.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Bloodhound LSR
- Also: Wikidata — Bloodhound LSR · CC0
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