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Bloodhound's rocket-powered test run delayed to 2019
Hopes that the Bloodhound supersonic car project was making progress in its land speed record bid have been dampened yet again. Due to a lack of funding, trials that may have paved the way for the 1,000mph record have been pushed back to May next year, although the date of the overall record attempt taking place in South Africa -- late 2019 -- still stands.
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.
The Big Picture: Inside the cockpit of the '1,000 mph office'
Above is the view Andy Green will have when he attempts to break the world land-speed record in the British Bloodhound supersonic car. The numbers on the dials refer to a legend that can be found here. Among the many controls are a Rolex speedometer (54) and a 3D-printed steering wheel (68). Green's attempt is still some way off, with an attempt to break the current record (763mph, also held by Green) planned for August 2015. If successful, the plan is to attempt to break the 1,000 mph barrier a year later. [Image credit: Stefan Marjoram]
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.
North American Eagle project pumps out WiFi, takes aim at land speed records
Most folks would be content if their jet-powered vehicle did nothing but break land speed records, but not so with the team behind the North American Eagle project. They've gone and also stuffed some WiFi equipment inside the nose of the vehicle, which they hope will be able to transmit data back to an experimental mesh WiFi network set up around the dry lake bed while the vehicle is in the process of breaking the sound barrier. That hasn't happened just yet, but the vehicle itself has already topped speeds of 400 miles per hour -- which is only half of what the team eventually hopes to reach.
Lightning Motorcycles risks neck for an extra 10 MPH on the Flying Banana
Weeks after breaking the electric motorcycle land speed record, Lightning Motorcycles decided it wasn't satisfied with 206.079 MPH. Shunning a well-deserved vacation, its Flying Banana MK. II bike hit a verified speed of 215.960 MPH. The company is taking orders for the $38,888 eco-widowmaker and assures you it'll be cheap to run -- the record breaking trip in the video below used a mere 18 cents of electricity.
Lightning Motorcycles electric bike blazes past 2010 record, joins 200 MPH Club
Bonneville, home to the world's fastest lawnmower record, has just added another notch to its land speed belt -- this time for electric motorcycles. When last we left Utah's salt flats, Mission One had claimed top honors for its all-electric bike, but that title has once again been usurped by rival Lightning. Averaging a speed of 206.079 mph, the team's Flying Banana Mk. II blazed past its 2010 record of 176.044 mph to claim the speed hog glory. The chopper's rider, Paul Thede, now gets to join the likes of 65 other inductees in Bonneville's exclusive 200 MPH Club. His award for such a hallowed distinction? Why, he got to wear the club's red hat for a whole 24 hours.
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.
Bloodhound SuperSonic Car gets a full-scale model ahead of land speed record attempt
If you've been busy wondering what a 1,000mph car might look like, here is your answer. A full-sized model of the Bloodhound SSC has been hammered together and is currently on show at the Farnborough International Air Show. We reckon the reason it's there is because the real deal Bloodhound will be built by aeronatics companies and its supersonic speed will justify describing its movement as "flying." Three of the men responsible for the project, including driver Andy Green, were involved in the current land speed record holder, the Thrust SSC, which acheved 763mph back in 1997. With better aerodynamics allied to a Falcon hybrid rocket and Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine, it's believed that the Bloodhound will go all the way past the magical 1,000 marker, but there's still at least a year before a shakedown run can be enacted. If everything goes well, however, they might be able to squeeze their attempt at the world land speed record in before the 2012 robocalypse. Fingers crossed.
Wind-powered vehicle hits 126MPH, nabs world record
Sorry Mr. Schumacher, but your ten year record just got obliterated (okay, "beat soundly") by a Briton. On the dry, dusty plains of Ivanpah Lake in Nevada, Sir Richard Jenkins managed to perfectly harness winds of 30MPH in his futuristic Ecotricity Greenbird in order to hit a ridiculously quick 126.1MPH. In all honestly, we can't even fathom how you hit that speed with just 30MPH of wind, but clearly we're not up to speed when it comes to physics and engineering. At any rate, the milestone is pretty important for Ecotricity, which is trying to make wind power the go-to alternative energy source within the next score. Now, if only we could figure out a cheap and easy way to generate wind on demand, we'd really be onto something.[Via BBC]
Sofa sets new land speed record for furniture
Besting his own "world's fastest office" in both comfort and speed, this souped-up sofa from furniture-modder Edd China laid claim to the top spot in the Fastest Furniture category in the Guinness Book of World Records over the weekend, reaching a top speed of 92 miles per hour. Sofa-driver Marek Turowski (who won his place in the driver's seat in an eBay auction) described the record-setting run as "terrifying," adding that "you feel every bump... worse, you feel like you might take off." What's more, the sofa is supposedly street-legal, and will apparently soon be motoring around the streets of West London to help attract potential sofa-buyers to Sofa.com (which, sadly, only seems to sell stationary sofas). Of course, no one breaks sofa speed records without taking a camera along, the results of which you can see by hitting up the video after the break.
