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same track- but that was Brooklands in 1922 when the record was 133mph. After that the two racing cultures went in different directions. The Brooklands people found that they had a massive problem with upgrading the vastly expensive banked track to cope with higher speeds. It was the start of the culture which has to legislate continually to keep circuit car speeds under control and avoid constant track redevelopment. The Land Speed Record people simply moved away from Brooklands and started operating on beaches and then they found the Bonneville Salt Flats. Consequently since this was about achieving the Worlds fastest car, legislation was an anathema so even today the World Land Speed Record car legislation is minimal: four wheels or more with two steering and two opposite direction passes over a measured mile within 60 minutes. And that's about it! |
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was real sea change potential if we could borrow a Cray and try Computational Fluid Dinamics(CFD), backing up Ron Ayers CFD work with live rocket modeltesting at Mach 1.2. The test data showed an extraordinary variation of just 4% between the two totally unproven test methods and great stability for the design.
Glynne Bowsher's ThrustSSC wheels had to run 8,500 rpm and 34,000 radial G. And the only way the car platform would work was with rear steering because we couldn't include conventional steering within the tight bodywork whilst maintaining commitment to tightly controlled cross-sectional area. A quick check will convince you that there is no technology for rear wheel steering so we had better invent that one as well
The powerplants were Roll-Royce Speys 1960's afterburning turbofans engines which generated substantially increasing thrust with speed increase and which were proven to tolerate the dusty desert environment. Thanks to the Salt 2 treaty the RAF Phantoms |
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This of course means innovation on a broad front and the whole incredibly tough challenge can only result in a brutal binary conclusion: a Land Speed record team which doesn't own a Land Speed Record is either still trying or has become a historical non-entity. There is no recognition for second place.
John Piper, highly experienced F1 designer was forced to innovate when he changed culture to design the JCB DieselMax.
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were scrapped and the engines had minimal commercial value.Two engines gave us the cross-sectional area defined by the fuselage cross-sectional area less the intake stream area. Applying the same simple rule to ThrustSSC we end up with a cross-sectional area looking like a set of spectacles, annular rims with the car fuselage occupying the nasal area. The unit engine thrust per unit cross-sectional area is twice that of the single engine layout - hence the tremendous advantage, safetyof surplus |
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'There are no regulations to guide you. There aren't any markers anywhere. The only markers really are the laws of physics. That's what makes it so exciting'. Dieselmax went on to raise the FIA record by 48%, whilst increasing the JCB 444 backhoe engines to the highest specific diesel output - 150bhp/litre with 1500NM of torque . Ron Ayers’ innovative aerodynamics reduced the under car drag (usually 60% of gross) by a whopping 60% -thus changing the entire face of land speed record racing in one hit. Intensely creative? No this is the norm. In record breaking we expect these standards of achievement. If you don't believe me then make the trip to Bonneville and watch Rick Yacoucci's Nebulous Theroem 11 achieve 360mph on just 1520cc, or Tom Burkland achieve 417mph in his family built Burkland Racer. And by the way, the bike record has just fallen to Rocky Robinson at 355mph on just 1.1 litres. Repetition at Bonneville ?
So this is what we understood when we learned in 1992 that both Craig Breedlove and the McLaren Maverick team were hell bent on spending the dollars to create the World’s first supersonic car . Both Maverick and the Spirit of America were conventional cars both teams going for repetition. Our penniless team of three realised that there |
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power and an extraordinary perfomance.
Of course the soggy British establishment, used to hierarchical companies and traditional and predictable sponsorship returns from Grand Prix racing were somewhat perplexed by the Thrust SSC project with its supersonic ambitions and the 54ft, 9,500hp/tonne vehicle.Looking back on it they were never going to support it with real money the ambition and the ratios were too extreme for Board comfort, though Castrol and BTR Group were the superb exceptions. Many small companies did however and over 230 supplied components which in most cases could be supplied without reference in the Board minutes.
No money? Well we can soon sort that: Change the company into a flat company to increase productivity and reduce cash burn-(the entire design team would be just six people) and then use the internet and our Mach 1 Supporters Club for funding. The 800 page website ran 3.5 million pages per day (twice the size of the White House) and the Supporters Club funded 20% of the spend through merchandise sales. Special mention must go to the late great King Hussein who let us use his fuel and his desert in Jordan for development and to the Heavylift airline who provided the essential transportation of 100 tonnes of equipment needed to support and operate the car, twice to Jordan and to the US. |
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