Every month, driver Andy Green writes his diary page bringing the project up to date from his perspective, and looking forward to what is planned next on the way to breaking the World Land Speed Record
Happy New Year to everyone. I don’t know what you’re planning in the next 12 months, but for BLOODHOUND, 2015 is the year that we start running the world’s fastest Car!
2014 has been the most remarkable year yet for BLOODHOUND.
Great news this month, with the announcement of Jaguar as a main partner in our World Land Speed Record attempt. Jaguar has been involved in the Land Speed Record for over 30 years, supporting Thrust 2 in the 1980s and then helping Thrust SSC to the set the current supersonic record in 1997.
'The design is pretty much done, now we’ve just got to assemble it'. Mark Chapman was sounding confident at our recent 1K Club open day.
The assembly of the world’s first 1000 mph Car continues at the BLOODHOUND Technical Centre near Bristol. It started over a year ago, with the build of the lower chassis, seen in timelapse in this video.
With just about a year to go until we are planning to run BLOODHOUND, a lot of things are coming together and it’s feeling more ‘real’ every month. After more than 7 years of work, our 3-engined Car, weighing 7.8 tonnes fully fuelled, is coming together as planned.
We got a chance to show off all our progress this month to one of our long-term supporters. HRH Prince Philip has been a keen follower of the Land Speed Record since the Thrust SSC days, so it was a great pleasure to welcome him to the BLOODHOUND Technical Centre to see our latest efforts. He lived up to his reputation for being great fun as well as very quick on technical details
It was great to see the cockpit finished and unveiled in public this month. This is my ‘1000 mph office’, which I first started to design over 6 years ago. It’s been exciting to see it come together, but as the design of the Car became more detailed, I’ve had to change some of the requirements as we went along. I’m thrilled and – I can now finally admit – slightly relieved that it does all fit in the space available.
It was just over 3 years ago that Rolex became BLOODHOUND’s official timing partner. Their support has been invaluable in helping us to build the world’s first 1000 mph Car. Rolex has also designed and made 2 key instruments for BLOODHOUND’s cockpit, and this month we unveiled them in public for the first time.
‘Data is key to pushing the boundaries – work out what you need and build it in from the start’. That was the advice we got from former NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong when he visited the BLOODHOUND Technical Centre back in 2010. This was very much our plan, but it was great to hear it confirmed by the first man to walk on the Moon. The reality seemed a long way off at the time, but suddenly it’s here and we’re building the sensors into BLOODHOUND SSC.
The build programme for our 1000 mph Car marches on. BLOODHOUND SSC is the kit car from hell, with around 3500 bespoke components, plus fasteners (including 15,000+ rivets in the rear chassis alone). Of course, that doesn’t stop me greeting the team with a helpful ‘Hi guys – have you finished it yet?’ each time I go down there.
Earlier this month I was speaking to a British Airways audience at their annual flight safety day. My aim was to tell them how we set the first-ever supersonic record back in 1997, with Thrust SSC, and to talk about how we planned to get to 1000 mph with BLOODHOUND, safely. It was also a useful chance for us to show our homework to a group of industry safety specialists – in this case 200 commercial pilots and aircraft engineers. If there is something that we haven’t thought of yet, they will find it! From my point of view, this is one of the great strengths of Project BLOODHOUND. The more expert advice we have, the more confident we can be that we’re going in the right direction.
