by Richard Phillips - Bloodhound Ambassador:
I have another "BLOODHOUND SSC/Apollo Moonwalker" story for you and I hope that you find it interesting.
Recently, I was fortunate enough to spend two days in the company of Dr. Edgar Mitchell. He was the Lunar Module Pilot on the Apollo 14 Mission; he was the 6th man to walk on the Moon (one of only 12 men to do so) and as such he is a truly remarkable individual. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Mitchell
Dr. Mitchell was invited to West Yorkshire by Ken Willoughby to give a number of talks on his Apollo Mission. The talks were arranged for a number of schools and groups in the Pontefract area. The audiences included both school children and there was an evening event on a Friday attended by over five hundred adults. At this Friday evening event I was fortunate enough to be invited to give a talk on BLOODHOUND SSC. My talk took place immediately before Dr. Mitchell took to the stage. Whilst our talks were on very different subjects, there were many similarities insomuch that both subject matters push the boundaries of man's abilities and; BLOODHOUND SSC's mission is "To confront and overcome the impossible using science, technology, engineering and mathematics" - and of course the incredibly successful and brave Apollo Missions shared the exact same goal as BLOODHOUND SSC.
There are only nine Moonwalkers left walking the Earth today. So far I have been fortunate enough to introduce two of them to the amazing BLOODHOUND SSC project, without doubt BLOODHOUND SSC is currently the world's most inspirational and exciting engineering project. I intend to introduce the project to the other seven Moonwalkers - wish me luck!
For me, one of the highlights of the two days that I spent in the company of Dr. Mitchell was on the Friday afternoon when I was fortunate enough to give him a lift in my car from the school where he had been talking back to his hotel. As I drove along the 50 miles per hour (MPH) restricted A Road (at 49 MPH), we discussed speed. I stated that Andy Green was going to travel approximately 951 MPH faster than we were travelling. Dr. Mitchell then reminded me that he had once travelled at 24,951 MPH faster!
