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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.
OSU Buckeye Bullet 2 sets new battery-powered speed record
Ohio State's Buckeye Bullet 2 has just set a new battery-powered vehicle record after hitting a speed of 291 mph averaged over two separate runs done back-to-back in opposite directions. Yes, it's technically slower than the two-way land speed record of 300.992 mph the original Bullet set back in 2009, but that car was powered by hydrogen fuel cells. This year's model instead was developed in partnership with boutique Monaco-based electric car manufacturer Venturi and replaced the fuel cells with lithium-ion batteries from A123 Systems. It's also apparently a testing prototype for a new car that's coming in 2011. Will that car hit these kind of world record speeds? Probably not, but we're not letting that dash our newly formed geek fantasy of seeing it drag against a Tesla.
