BloodhoundSupersonicCar
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Bloodhound supersonic car project shuts down
Efforts to save the Bloodhound supersonic car project from bankruptcy haven't panned out. The team is shutting down after it was unsuccessful in securing the roughly £25 million (about $32 million) it needed from "potential and credible investors." As a result, the company is now planning to return third-party gear and sell off assets, including the car -- if you happen to have £250,000 ($318,000) sitting around, you could own a piece of automotive history. Don't expect to break records, though. Driver Andy Green warns that you'd need "a few million" to have Bloodhound SSC live up to its full potential.
A video tour of the 1,000MPH Bloodhound supersonic car
It's been almost seven years since the Bloodhound project was first announced at London's Science Museum. The team's mission is a simple one: to build a car that can thrash the 763MPH (1228KMH) land speed record set by the Thrust SSC in October 1997. The supersonic vehicle is designed to eclipse 1,000MPH (1609KMH) and after numerous delays, it's almost ready to hit the racetrack. Needless to say, it's an absolute monster.
Bloodhound SuperSonic Car test-fires its engines, roasts the lab wall (video)
The land-speed record has been in British hands since 1983, but it's never been the motherland's habit to rest on its laurels. Yesterday, in a bomb-proof shelter in Cornwall, the team behind the Bloodhound SSC test-fired its rocket system for the first time, producing a staggering 14,000 pounds of thrust thanks to its liquid peroxide and solid synthetic rubber hybrid engine. Pumping that mix through the V8 of a Formula One car, the team hopes to reach a top seed of 1,050 mph (Mach 1.4), well beyond the 763 mph achieved by ThrustSSD back in 1997. After the break, we've got a short clip of the firing as it happened, which, frankly, makes the Batmobile's flaming jet engine look a little bit mediocre by comparison.
Bloodhound SuperSonic Car begins construction: 1,000mph on Intel Atom processors (video)
We saw the mockup back in July and, soon, we'll be seeing the real thing. Construction of the Bloodhound SSC is underway, with a planned top speed of over 1,000mph courtesy of a jet engine borrowed from a Typhoon jet fighter sitting in the back -- and a trio of Intel Atom processors in the cockpit that will run a number of onboard diagnostics and telemetry systems. Sure, they won't be adding to the overall thrust of the thing but neither will they be putting much of a drain on the electrical system. If all goes according to plan the car will be completed by the end of this year and will start speed runs by the beginning of 2012. Maybe by then Intel will have something a little quicker to slap in there.
