Bloodhound gang hits 1,010kph, retreats to lab to work on smashing the land speed record

Bloodhound LSR hit 628mph (1,010kph) in high-speed testing over the weekend, as fast as its current rocket will propel it. The car left the start line in "max dry" mode – with no visible flames. At 50mph (80kph), driver Andy Green "put his foot down", pushing the jet engine into reheat or afterburner mode. Maximum speed was …

[Paul Herber]

"The speed achieved would allow you to travel from London to Edinburgh in 39 minutes."

HS3 here we come.

[stiine]

Only after you wait the 45 hours for a fleet of bulldozers to create a straight and level road...

[Tom 7]

Years.

[Rich 11]

For 44 of those hours the bulldozers are going to be kept very busy filling in the Don Valley from a depth of just over a half a mile.

[simonlb]

But would you really want to go to Edinburgh?

[Tom 7]

Bloody lovely place - only the potholes in London would stop me trying this.

[jake]

"But would you really want to go to Edinburgh?"

Sure. But not quite that fast. For one thing, I'd probably like to stop in Yorkshire for a couple days on the way North.

Beer. Why do you think I want to stop in Yorkshire?

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Why do you think I want to stop in Yorkshire?

You have a fetish for whippets and missing vowels?

[CrazyOldCatMan]

would you really want to go to Edinburgh

Yes. Great place with a few really, really good whisky shops.

[getHandle]

Faster than flying!

Mind you, many forms of transport are faster than flying on Fly mayBe-operated routes and their legendary "delayed due to crew sickness" excuses...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Speed record for a rocket powered train is 6400 mph so London to Edinburgh in 5mins

Of course this was unmanned so might have some union difficulties

And you might not be able to stop before Aberdeen.

But the idea of building effectively a hypersonic railgun pointed at Edinburgh and London might appeal to both parliaments

[Anonymous Coward]

"And you might not be able to stop before Aberdeen."

Such a pessimistic view.

Imagine the delight of people travelling from London to Doncaster who, due to coasting/braking, end up in Edinburgh.

Or anywhere else to be fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

[Joke alert icon]

But why would you ever want to?

Oh, you said London *to* Edinburgh, that way makes sense, and is quite a pleasant destination...

[JimM]

Put that engine in a plane and you could make the journey in under twenty minutes for real!

[werdsmith]

"The speed achieved would allow you to travel from London to Edinburgh in 39 minutes."

And you would still get tailgated by someone driving an Audi.

[John Robson]

Current rocket...

Is still in the lab - it's currently a jet...

[STOP_FORTH]

Minor nitpick

'Ang on a mo'. The air is just dawdling around, it's only supersonic relative to the vehicle.

[ISYS]

Re: Minor nitpick

Sort of - Some of the air that is 'dawdling around' is accelerated (to just over 130mph) and it is this that is supersonic relative to the vehicle.

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: Minor nitpick

All speed is relative.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Minor nitpick

"All speed is relative."

You've not met some of my relatives! Speed is measured in donuts per minute.

[Floydian Slip]

"as fast as its current rocket will propel it." Nope, no rocket installed - just the EJ200 and next year it'll have a single rocket fitted to go for the LSR and 800mph and the following year (funds & design permitting) they plan on going for the big 1k

I thought you were fans of the program, may be you are but you need fact checking before hitting the "publish" button. If you need a Bloodhound correspondent I'm not a member of the team but am a huge Richard Noble, Andy Green Thrust and Bloodhound fan and will be happy to contribute for some form of financial compensation

[Steve Davies 3]

re: financial compensation

Perhaps El Reg should become a sponsor as recompence for getting it so wrong.

[Andy The Hat]

I'll happily do it for no financial compensation - just pay to get me out there and however many pizzas are required for the stay! For a 'press' pass it'd be more than worth it.

At present I'd really like to see a lot more publicity over this. The damn thing has already gone over 600mph - *if* that had been officially double recorded it would have been the 5th fastest in history - that's already something to crow about and they haven't finished building it yet!

Simply marvellous!

[John Brown (no body)]

"Simply marvellous!"

It is!!!

But it's interesting how the latest milestone is 1000kph and the target milestone is 1000mph

Maybe other values of 1000 could be gleaned from the El Reg units page to get other intermediate targets?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

2.7M furlongs/fortnight

[anothercynic]

Indeedie... I have to agree here. There's no rocket in there (yet). This is just air breathing jet. Now if Reaction Engines were to get involved, it could get even more interesting, but then again, they've been busy with their own tests of the SABRE engine concept pre-cooler and building stuff for F1 companies. :-)

[JDX]

Apart from slight drifting to the right caused by crosswinds, the car handled well.

At 600mph that rather downplays things I'd imagine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have shit myself at 250mph never mind 615mph, WC Green is one brave individual.

[Rich 11]

250mph? I get the runs when my bicycle starts wobbling downhill.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Watched Guy Martin on the tellybox last night on Channel 4. This time going for the tractor speed record - but driving for JCB by the looks of it, so a lot more resources than his usual stunts.

But they showed a clip of that insane bicycle one he did last year, where he's slipstreaming behind a truck at 120 mph on a pushbike. Phew what a looney!

The one I really liked was the racing tractor they let him drive at a tractor pull event (Snoopy IV). 2 Rolls Royce Griffon engines combined for a mere 8,000 horsepower! It's a very silly sport - that I highly approve of...

[W T Riker]

The downhill gravity racer was the best when he got a tank slapper (it was filled with water ballast). He crashed and rolled at about 85mph.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Saw an interview with him, a while after he'd come off his motorbike in a race - and slid through a gravel trap. He had his helmet with him - and the abrasion of the gravel had removed most of the resin from it (I'm assuming it was carbon fibre) - and all that he had left was this sort of semi-rigid softish cloth-like thing that wouldn't protect you from being smacked with a wet salmon.

[PerlyKing]

I heartily agree!

Only replying to use one of my favourite icons, which feels particularly appropriate in this case :-D Particularly in light of one of the JCB guys giving permission to max out the engine for the last runs, saying something along the lines of "we've never run it like this, even on the dyno"!

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: I heartily agree!

I didn't get that. Why not do a run on the old settings first - then ramp everything up to 11 once you've got a time in the bag?

Or had they actually done that run, and just pretended not to, in order to create artificial drama for television?

[SImon Hobson]

Re: I heartily agree!

Stuff like that on telly is never as it appears. Reality would be too dull.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: I heartily agree!

Reality isn't too dull. It's just the arrogant tossers who make TV - that have no respect for thier own audiences and assume that only they have an attention span of more than 30 seconds.

Admittedly people watching leave your brain at the door entertainment shows are somewhat like that - as they're probably only half conentrating with phones or conversations being another option. But people watching hour long documentaries about engineering are probably concentrating a little harder - even though this is a sort of hybrid documentary where they've brought in Guy Martin to make it all a bit more fluffy - and do his whole Northern schtick - which partly disguises the fact that he's a mechanical geek with an under-developed sense of self-preservation.

[JDX]

Re: I heartily agree!

Surely it's really entertainment like Top Gear or Mythbusters... dressed around science/facts but only as an angle to make a good show.

A small minority might like a 10 minute single-take scene where they grease a steering rod but a prime-time TV slot needs to attract the mass market in the same way that Planet Earth is weaved to tell stories and cut to the money shots.

[thondwe]

JCB

JCB hold "fastest diesel - 350mph - driven - of course by - Andy Green

[Ugotta B. Kiddingme]

sponsorship opportunity?

Perhaps El Reg can sponsor the SPB to work with/for the Bloodhound LSR team and repurpose the LOHAN vehicle into a supersonically ground-launched experiment.

[LoPath]

Re: sponsorship opportunity?

I would think that the Bloodhound Gang would enjoy a romp with LOHAN. Unn-tiss unn-tiss unn-tiss, baby!

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

"Mono-propellant rocket"

So they've ditched their hybrid rocket's fuel grain and are just using the hydrogen peroxide on its own?

[Nunyabiznes]

Jessie Combs

After Jessie's accident it is good to hear that people are still pushing the limits.

Luck to the team, and fair winds to Andy.

[Matthew "The Worst Writer on the Internet" Saroff]

You Missed a Decimal Place

9 kN is the equivalent of about 2,000 lbf, and 1/10 of the max thrust of the EJ2000.

You mean 90kN.

[DanceMan]

"drifting to the right"

It's a gov't project?

[earl grey]

and more of these

at the end of the day. well done, all.

[Naich]

Think smarter

Wouldn't it be easier to get a jet aircraft that can do 1000 MPH, put wheels on the top and fly it upside-down?

[phuzz]

Re: Think smarter

Only if you were ok with this happening:

"Analysis of the final run found airflow underneath the car went supersonic and removed the paint from an area three metres behind the front wheels."

And that's on a vehicle which has been extensively designed to go that fast, and that low. As a massive over-simplification, jets can go fast, or they can go low, but they're not really designed for going fast this low.

[werdsmith]

Re: Think smarter

North American Eagle land speed car is a modified F104 Starfighter.

Unfortunately in 15 years that car hasn't reached 500MPH, and recently killed its driver Jessi after hitting a bump on the ground collapsed the front wheel.