The BLOODHOUND project has a life and purpose of its own – a statement which, since you are reading this, you almost certainly understand. Equally, you also understand progress and pure human drive, and the connection thereof. And you understand the high points and low points which inevitably attend any iconic endeavour. And especially those branches of endeavour which come spiced with a quite obvious dollop of danger. You understand that.

But it seems there is another race of people on the planet who simply don’t see it.

Those who say…. Why? What’s the point? What’s the use of a car that does 1,000 mph? Why don’t you put the effort into a car that does 1000 miles per gallon?

These people are – oh, what? Cynics? Killjoys? Tree-huggers? Grey people who have no imagination whatsoever beyond suffering a boring life leading to an equally boring retirement? People to whom ‘endeavour’ means being awake enough – just – to catch the 8.36 to Paddington five days a week, except when they miss it?

Well, yes, probably. Probably most of them. But not all. Some highly placed intellectuals also ask the question. And it has to be said it is a valid question. Why? What is the point of BLOODHOUND? You and I might sneer at the questioners…

Except for one thing. Just one thing.

It is still the single question most often asked about the project as a whole. I see this by association – by far and away the question I’m most frequently asked is just exactly that: Why?

So all right – let’s look it in the face. Why BLOODHOUND? Why do it? Why go for 1,000 mph on land?

 

If you have to ask the question…

Historically, pioneers and record-breakers have tended to give such questions short shrift. The mountaineer George Mallory was asked a little while before his death on Mt Everest in 1924 why he wanted to climb the highest mountain in the world. He reputedly (although it may be untrue) came out with one of the most famous one-liners in history:

“Because it’s there…”

Richard Noble was almost equally succinct – and about equally as informative – when he gained the Land Speed Record in 1983 in Thrust2. When asked why he did it he made a deeply intellectual statement.

“For Britain, and for the hell of it!”

And Andy Green probably sums up all record-breakers’ reaction to the why when he says (and I paraphrase slightly): “If you have to ask the question then you won’t understand the answer”.

Heck, I’ve even been there myself in a sort of wandering-around-the-foothills kind of way. I’d work hard on creating some kind of new super-gyrational aerobatic manoeuvre and someone would always pop up out of the woodwork and say, “Why? Why are you beating your brains out, assuming you have any? The crowd won’t know the difference…”

To which my answer has always been, oh yes, they bl….er, jolly well will. They might not know the name of the manoeuvre – heck, half the time I wouldn’t have gotten around to naming it myself, and I’d just invented it – and they would certainly have no idea whatsoever of the massive but precise control inputs required to, say, persuade an aeroplane abruptly affronted by a ball of chaotic airflow all over it to tumble end-over-end on the spot. But they would know the difference. It was always an article of faith to me that the crowd would recognise endeavour and pushing out boundaries and know the difference. I kinda feel that for 25 years the crowds paid me to fly because of that difference….

Which possibly marks me down as an outstanding expert in self-delusion, and anyway gets us not much forwarder in answering the question.

Or maybe perhaps it does, just a bit. I’ll come back to it.

Of course Land Speed Record aspirants are not the only visionaries who have to suffer the folded arms and the blank stare of critics who simply don’t get it. Pioneers in all walks of life have all suffered the same experience probably since the beginning of time.

To Bill Gates, some 30 years ago: “What’s the use of this Internet thing?”

Gates didn’t invent the Internet, but the answer is obvious.

To Christiaan Barnard, the first heart-transplant surgeon in 1967: “What’s the use of an incredibly expensive procedure which prolongs a patient’s life for 28 days?”

Nowadays heart-transplant patients are living 25 years or more, the cost has gone down considerably, and the knock-on effects throughout transplant surgery have saved many, many more lives.

To Frank Whittle, during WW11: “We have to ask whether this so-called ‘jet’ engine has any future”.

Well, ain’t that a lesson to us all. No future in the jet engine, huh…?

To RJ Mitchell, designer of the Supermarine S6B which in 1931 won the Schneider Trophy: “Is it valid that so much resource should have gone into a tiny series of racing aeroplanes?”

The S6B led to the Spitfire, which played a large part in saving the free world in WW11…

To the Wright Brothers. To Brunel. To Beethoven. In fact all the way back to Ug the caveman who invented the first wheel and showed it to his good mate Ugug, who said, “Hey, it’s kinda heavy, Ug. Whatya gonna do with it – eat it?” (Thus probably unwittingly inventing the pizza).

 

Pioneers don’t understand…

No. Sadly, the chasm between innovators and cynics sometimes seems too vast to bridge. Pioneers don’t understand how anybody could fail to see the point – and cynics figure it’s nothing but an adventure for the pioneers and decry it on a wholly short-term cost-benefit basis. (Sometimes described as plain old-fashioned jealousy). Bridge the gap? You might as well try grasping smoke.

And adventure? Well, of course it’s an adventure. So what? Pretty well all progress throughout the course of mankind has always been led by ‘adventurers’, if you want to put it like that.

Which, if you really seriously don’t see it, still won’t, for you, answer the WHY question for BLOODHOUND. Why spend £6.8 million on a car you can’t drive to the shops? (Although easing BLOODHOUND  into a Tesco’s car park does conjure up a slightly fascinating image).

Okay, so let’s approach it from the other way round. Let’s for the moment – purely for the sake of argument – say yeah, yeah, okay, the Land Speed Record’s an adventure if that’s what you want to call it, Mr Cynic. But now let’s look at the benefits…

To do so we have to begin by looking at some unpleasant facts. Great Britain, our green and pleasant land which spawned so much innovation over the last century, is now running out of technicians, engineers and scientists. We aren’t maybe running out of technicians, engineers and scientists – we are running out of technicians, engineers and scientists.  More scientists retire every year than the system produces new ones to replace them. Okay, you obviously don’t replace a scientist with a lifetime’s experience with a brand-new graduate – but the point is that that the gene pool is drying up and getting muddy round the edges. And this at a time when we need more scientists, not less, for the simple reason that as life gets more complicated there are more specialities to be covered. One august professional body has calculated that Britain is going to be shy of nearly 600,000 engineers over the next decade...

And why are we running out of scientists and engineers? Well, in part at least because our education system has in recent years not kept up with the real world. Has not kept up with promoting STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths – particularly in primary and secondary schools. (For more, see A Vital BET Paying Off). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – this is NOT the fault of Britain’s schoolteachers, but a systemic failure to get our priorities right. STEM subjects are not the easiest to qualify in – so why bother when you can go get a degree in beauty care, media, golf course design, or politics? The fact that Britain has more beauticians, journalists, and politicians than a body-national can possibly need has become sort of trodden under. If you get two politicians to every one engineer you might as well stick a Colt .45 (American made) in your national gob and tell yourself it’s a water-pistol when you pull the trigger.

 

Making a difference

So, Mr Cynic, BLOODHOUND is making a difference to this. The BLOODHOUND education programme is open to all schools, with the objective of adding cool to engineering by creating a here-and-now challenge they can follow and work on. Designing a new motorway surface – fascinating if you have the bent for it. Producing a 1,000 mph car – cool. In essence, simple as that. To a youngster or anyone else – cool. You could maybe do something similar with the design of a new spaceship or jet fighter or Formula 1 car – except that Britain don’t have no new spaceships, and jet fighters and F1 car designs tend to be surrounded by extensive security patrols, dogs with big teeth, and enough electronic defences to maybe fry your Blackberry at 100 paces. Cool? Possibly. Available? No. Whereas BLOODHOUND technology – the most extraordinary on the planet – is open and freely available…

So far, some 3,500 primary, secondary and higher education schools have taken advantage of the BLOODHOUND programme.

That’s some 13 per cent of Britain’s educational emporia. Inside 18 months.

Leery about that, are you, Mr Cynic? Still asking WHY?

At the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol, applications for engineering degree courses have shot up 58% since their involvement with BLOODHOUND. Swansea University – home of the BLOODHOUND Computational Fluid Dynamics research – has seen a similar rise.

This is akin to the Apollo Effect – the rise in popularity of science and engineering courses in America during the time of the Apollo space shots. Someone in NASA, an outfit not exactly famed for lyricism, once said: “The rising tide of technology raises all boats along with it”. Grammatically a bit suspect, but nonetheless true.

And BLOODHOUND has hardly started yet. Just wait until the car’s actually running…

£6.8 million? Mr Cynic, that’s a bargain. In fact it’s not just a bargain, it’s a steal, since the build-costs are NOT coming out of the public purse in any way, shape or form, but from commercial sponsors in one way or another. It has to be said that finding fiscal sponsors in the present business climate is like creeping into a zoo cage and pulling teeth out of a particularly irascible tiger – but it’s happening. Slower than the team would like it to be, but it’s happening. (And nobody even mentions that any one of several banker’s bonuses would fund the entire BLOODHOUND project without even noticing the dent).

Still doubtful, Mr Cynic?

Well, let’s look at the other kind of sponsors – the Product Sponsors. Sponsors who by and large don’t so much contribute cash, but expertise and… well, product.

In many cases – from vast companies to relatively small – they don’t expect miracles of publicity right now. They won’t turn their noses up at the odd spot of coverage – such as blazing headlines all over the world – if and when BLOODHOUND hits 1,000 mph. But their current agenda is rather different. They are using BLOODHOUND both to learn new things and inspire their own people.

Example. Lockheed Martin UK are heavily involved in the design of 10,000 rpm solid wheels which may end up being made from something rather surprising. Will they ever need that technology elsewhere? Well, maybe, maybe not. But if they do, or anything remotely like it, they’ll be ‘way ahead of the game. Banking research is like banking money, only better.

AND…

Sponsors like this – and there are more than you would ever think – can give the project to their bright young guns and say ‘Go to it. Think outside the box. It’s a 1,000 mph car. No secrecy. Just solve it”.

Sound silly?

Not silly. These young guns often work in defence industries where for the first decade they may be given no clue as to the end-result of a mechanism they have been tasked to design. Okay, since they’re far from stupid they’ll probably have worked it out for themselves in five days – but they still can’t talk about it, discuss it with their peers around the world, or whisper it to their girlfriends. (Well, that’s what it says here in their contracts).

Kinda hard position to arrive at, that, if you’re 23 and been slaving all your young life to get where you are.

BLOODHOUND involvement says No Secrets (or, well, not many). So these Product Sponsors can point the young guns and say go  - and they’re off. They can see the objective. They can talk about it. They can communicate.

£6.8 million, Mr. Cynic. Which you don’t have to fund.

For a substantial contribution to a new generation of British engineers, Mr Cynic.

For advances in composite construction, Mr Cynic.

For advances in metallurgy, Mr Cynic.

For advances in low-level aerodynamics, Mr Cynic.

For advances in high-vibration telemetry, Mr Cynic.

For advances in low-level jet and rocket operation, Mr Cynic.

£6.8 million? This is peanuts for the benefits and results. I’m sure it don’t feel like peanuts to Richard Noble and the team who are having to magic-up £200,000 a month to keep going now and will have to double that when the car-build starts – but for the technological learning-curve? This is PEANUTS. Great Britain plc is getting one of the bargains of the century.

You still don’t see it, Mr Cynic? Frankly, I do not believe you. You cannot have a valid reason for not understanding this.

I would like to be the best writer in the world on this subject, but of course I am not or anywhere near. Dr John Davis, Senior Control Systems Engineer of BLOODHOUND, reminds me of the words of John F Kennedy at the start of the space-race.

“We choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills…..”

Damn, I wish I’d said that. I wish I’d even thought it when I was inventing those new aerobatic manoeuvres. What gets mankind just that little bit more ahead?

Well, something the scale of BLOODHOUND gets it a lot more ahead.

£6.8 million? Well, Mr Cynic, can you seriously tell me it ain’t worth a whole lot more than that?