Back in 1997, a British project called Thrust SSC broke the land speed record by shooting through the desert at 793 mph. Now, the Brits are looking at breaking the land speed record again. This time, they're looking at hitting the 1000 mph mark. This British project, known as Bloodhound SSC, is a combination of a jet fighter,an F1 car, a rocket, and a boat.
Trying to make this project possible has been much harder than expected. The car isn't even going to be ready to test out in the desert until around 2015. Besides the 15 tons of drag resistance to overcome, any kind of obstacle, even a tiny pebble, could spell disaster for the car. At the moment, around 6,000 tons of rocks have to be romoved to make the surface as smooth as possible.The engine that powers this car is something that you'd find on a rocket rather than in a car. It has a 600-horsepwer racing engine in order to turn a pump that then sends 1200 psi of peroxide to the rocket engine. This will then create 20 tons of thrust to get the car past all the drag resistance. It's predicted that it will take 15 seconds to get to 100 mph, and more surprisingly, just 10 more seconds to get to 1000 mph.
Jet pilot Andy Green, who piloted the last record breaking car, will also be piloting this rocket powered car. We'll have to wait till next year to see if this amazing record takes place. Chances are this would only be to show that it's possible to reach 1000 mph. Everyone else will just have to settle for cars that can only go around 250 mph.
