Project Director Richard Noble writes regular diary entries exclusively for these pages.
Looking back at 2014, we could see financial trouble coming in mid summer. There were two deals on the table and if both failed we would have to stop. But now, 2015 is the year we go to the desert to run BLOODHOUND SSC to 800mph and hopefully a new World Record.
Life for everyone in Bloodhound has become something of a blur. Ask anyone what they were doing two days ago and they’ll have difficulty – the pace is relentless, as one day merges into the next. At my end it’s a blur of invoices, contracts, a few shocks, many new people starting, a few people moving on.
Towards the end of last month I asked Andy what he thought of the Bloodhound engineering since he has been able to attend most of the engineering meetings right from the very start of the project: ‘It's very very good, it’s a very fine car and it’s going to achieve its objectives.’
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I was thinking about President Obama this morning and the awesome responsibility he holds. It seems that we are both flogging though the Christmas break to try and try and improve our organisations.
If we get it wrong then Bloodhound is in for one Hell of a fight for survival – if the President gets it wrong we are all in for a global recession! So no pressure there! Christmas is actually a good time for us to revisit the planning: it’s also a chance to escape the vortex and get the clear thinking done ...
With each month the hurdles get much much higher but this is a great team and we can take it ...
I started writing this last month and I am going to leave the first paragraphs in as they give a good flavour of the pace of the project at that time :
Welcome back to the Noble Monthly Report! The last one was in December 2011 and I daren’t call these quarterly reports or else you would only get them annually! Andy Green manages a monthly report on the BBC website which sends our web stats soaring, but here I have a real problem – Bloodhoun
Late again! Very late again! Apologies! I last updated in August and Nick Chapman has just sent me a third email prod.
Well, we have made it through August and the last months have been enormously productive as the whole Bloodhound programme matures and comes togethe
Apologies are due yet again! My last update was December and I must try and do a lot better than this! The project has picked up a fantastic pace now and because the team is so small when compared with the project scale, the personal workload is massive.
Late again – but it's the end of the year and we are going strong! The sheer intensity of the project which is now increasing at a massive pace tends to mean that we are dealing with detail on a minute by minute basis and it takes a break like Christmas to give us a chance to look back to see wh
Thank God August is behind us! For us August is a dead month – key contacts are on holiday and we lose half the team for their breaks. That’s uncharitable, but the reality is that everyone needs the break –it's getting very tough now as the project advances into the build and delivery phase.
