The current land speed record (LSR) for an earth-bound motor vehicle is 763 mph, which was set by Andy Green behind the wheel of the Thrust SSC back in 1997. That car was designed by Richard Noble, among others, and he and his driver are teaming up again to build a new supersonic car (SSC) to shatter the old record on its way to a new LSR of 1,000 mph. The new car is called the Bloodhound Project, a curious name since "speed" doesn't readily come to mind when thinking about that particular breed of canine, but whatever. The new Bloodhound SSC will be powered by three engines: a hybrid rocket, Eurojet EJ200 jet engine and 800bhp V12 engine, the latter of which will pull the vehicle around at low speeds and act as a starter motor - the world's most powerful starter motor - for the jet engine. The car's design is also completely different from that of the Thrust SSC, which Green and Noble used to set the current LSR. That car had two outboard jet engines, but in order to reach speeds of Mach 1.4 on the ground, the Bloodhound SSC will use a narrower fuselage that's been aerodynamically optimized to safely travel at speeds approaching 1,000 mph. Since this is an engineering exercise, the Brit-based Bloodhound team will gear up to their ultimate goal by scheduling successive runs to reach 800 mph in 2009, 900 mph in 2010 and finally 1,000 mph in 2011.
[Source: BloodhoundSSC.com]
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