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
The end of the year is getting closer and work continues flat-out to finish the chassis design, before manufacture starts in the New Year.
August is normally a really quiet month, where nothing happens because everyone is on holiday. So why are we still so busy, with several commercial deals being discussed last month? I don’t know, but it’s a nice problem to have – we must be doing something right.
July has been a fantastically busy month for us, with major public shows every weekend. The whole team is exhausted, but still buzzing – it is incredibly stimulating to meet thousands of people who are genuinely excited about the world’s first 1000 mph Car.
There’s so much going on at the moment that I don’t know where to begin. Four months ago we were still wrestling with a 5-tonne Car that developed 10 tonnes of lift at 1000 mph (which, from point of view as the driver, is really not a good thing). Solving this problem for a Car travelling at o
The highlight of the past month has been the design conference at the BLOODHOUND Technical Centre in Bristol. The rate of progress in the last few weeks has been dizzying:
We’ve been talking about the move from ‘research programme’ to ‘build phase’ for the last few months. Having proved that we can build the world’s first 1000 mph Car, it’s time to get on with it. For reasons I can’t really explain, the change has happened quite suddenly and noticeably. In military terms, we’re now on a ‘war footing’ – the preparation is largely over and it’s time for action!
Fantastic news – we’ve finally found ‘The Solution’! Three years ago, we set out to prove that we could build a Car that would do 1000 mph. After 18 months of research in secret, we knew that it could be done, so we launched Project BLOODHOUND on a slightly incredulous world. Since then, we’ve fixed the final configuration of the Car (the jet-over-rocket layout) and found the ideal track in South Africa. We’ve also convinced a lot of those incredulous people (and dozens of new sponsor companies, including some giants like Intel and Lockheed Martin) that we really are going to do this.
Project BLOODHOUND is making some real progress, which is an exciting feeling. We’re close to finishing off the final shaping at the back end of the Car and, after a lot of research and debate, we’ve also settled on the lateral stability requirement for the Car. It needs to resist a 0.8 G late
I’ve just seen the latest figures for participation in the BLOODHOUND education programme – over 3,300 schools, over 200 Further Education colleges and 35 Universities.
After months of waiting, lots of great things have come together all at once. The final design of the Car, the move into our new HQ, the confirmation of our run location and the new animation video – which is fantastic!
Hurray – it works! After several months of problems (this is what ‘Engineering Adventure’ actually means when you’re developing new technology), we finally achieved our first firing of the full-size hybrid rocket. It was worth the wait – everything worked perfectly.
