One of these for the new investor -------------->
Happy Christmas! Bloodhound SSC refuelled by Yorkshire business chap
In news that will bring festive cheer to fans of plucky Brit engineering efforts, the Bloodhound 1,000mph car project has been lobbed a lifeline by Yorkshire-based entrepreneur Ian Warhurst. Warhurst, who sold his Barnsley-based company, Melett, for an undisclosed sum to US outfit Wabtec this time last year, snapped up the …
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Monday 17th December 2018 11:59 GMT Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese
sometimes you just want to see someone strap a bloody great rocket engine to a rolling chassis and find out what happens.
Given Yorkshiremens' reputation for thrift, I now have in mind some Last Of The Summer Wine-esq venture, with three blokes speeding down a hillside in a rocket-propelled bathtub
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Monday 17th December 2018 12:06 GMT Anonymous Custard
It's always reminded me more of this Darwin Award winner, and of course the subsequent televisation courtesy of Mythbusters (at least 3-4 times over).
But yes that image is now nestled in there as well.
Definitely a massive engineering thumbs up though, wonderful news for a Monday morning.
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Monday 17th December 2018 13:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
"[...] sometimes you just want to see someone strap a bloody great rocket engine to a rolling chassis and find out what happens."
As tried in Germany in 1928 - 100 years ago.
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Monday 17th December 2018 21:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
"<cough> 90 years ago."
I would like to claim a mental glitch that omitted the "nearly". Unfortunately I know I made a mental miscalculation - not in arithmetic but in misjudging the current year..
When I was growing up 1984 was a distant future - and post-2000 the realm of Dan Dare space adventures. It's a similar disconnect with reality that I get when I see the price of familiar food or products. There was a time when £1k a year was a salary that meant you were doing very well indeed.
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Monday 17th December 2018 15:20 GMT Milton
The pilot will indeed be courageous and it would be churlish not to feel good for the team who are, after all, trying to do an extremely difficult thing (just one question must be: how the hell do you manage the trans-sonic shockwave while you're still on the ground?!) but I can't see this as being much different from another current venture of basically pointless marketing-oriented stuntery—Branson's Virgin Galactic circus.
Yes, there will be some clever engineering, and some spectacle, and yes some bowels will be loosened (if the folks concerned survive at all) but in truth, much cleverer engineering still is being deployed on other ventures which have a genuinely useful purpose, extending far beyond "Make some headlines".
Virgin
Galac—Can't-Even-Get-To-Orbit is a dangerous stunt designed to get ignorant rich idiots to pay a lot of money for shiny little astronaut badges. I'm not going to qualify as a submarine commander by sinking my canoe for 30 seconds, am I?Not for the first time, it's a bit saddening that so much cash and publicity goes on these fundamentally useless stunts while most people haven't even heard of serious engineering like Reaction Engines, whom I've mentioned before. The leading candidate for single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane operations, right here in Britain, and not a single self-promoting gurning beardie in sight.
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Monday 17th December 2018 22:57 GMT PhilipN
Fuel pumped by a Jaguar V8 engine
My Jag has what I suppose is the same engine. Since I already have the base module I just need to bolt on the jet engine. There's a fixer-upper on eBay :
https://www.ebay.com/itm/ROLLS-ROYCE-G2-BUSINESS-JET-ENGINE-NON-OPERATIONAL-/273336101881?redirect=mobile
Anyone got a garden shed so I can get started?
Explanation for across-the-ponders : example of self-deprecating British irony.
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Monday 17th December 2018 23:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Fuel pumped by a Jaguar V8 engine
> Anyone got a garden shed so I can get started?
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Tuesday 18th December 2018 16:15 GMT hoola
Re: Fuel pumped by a Jaguar V8 engine
Clamp it to the bench in the shed, a bucket of paraffin, a few bits of hose, maybe a funnel and a battery to get it spooled up, job done.
If you were lucky it might running, even better you might burn a hole in the shed.
The best scenario is the bench/engine out of one end of the shed, a hole in the other and a lot of noise.
It would certainly scare the cr@p out of the neighbours but this is what British ingenuity is all about.....
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Tuesday 18th December 2018 16:48 GMT J P
Re: Fuel pumped by a Jaguar V8 engine
The explanation for left-ponders is probably needed, since the wikipedia article about Art Arfons and the GE jet engine used to power the Green Monster LSR cars indicates that they don't really use sheds "He tested it by tying it to trees in his garden, a procedure which drew complaints from his neighbors."
(That said, I once mentioned to a client in the aviation maintenance business that you could at the time get tax allowances for a building if it was used for testing aero engines. He gave me an odd look, walked over to the window and pointed to a plane parked up in glorious isolation at the furthest perimeter fence. "That's where we test the engines" he said, "You'd have to be insane to run one up to test levels indoors". Which I suppose was why the Inland Revenue were prepared to offer the allowances, safe in the knowledge no-one would actually claim them...)
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
