1,000mph land speed record project now in doubt due to funding woe

Enlarge (credit: Stefan Marjoram)

There’s sad news from the UK this morning, and it doesn’t even involve Brexit. (Actually, it does, sort of.) Bloodhound SSC, the land speed record car that’s been designed to break the 1,000mph limit, has entered administration (a process similar to bankruptcy in the US). This isn’t the final outcome for the project, but Bloodhound SSC does need to raise about $33 million (£25 million) in order to see things through to completion. And as if fate were not cruel enough, the announcement comes 21 years and a day after the last successful land speed record attempt, one that involved many of the same people.

Setting a new land speed record is no easy task. First, you have to build a wheeled vehicle capable of the speed required. In this case it’s a single-seat machine, powered by a one-two combo of jet engine (a Rolls-Royce EJ200) and rocket (a hybrid solid fuel/liquid oxidizer design from Nammo).

But even once you have your vehicle working, you need somewhere suitable to run it. A successful land speed record requires timed runs over a one-mile distance, run in both directions within one hour, so even a really long runway is only good if you want to test the first 20 percent of the speed range.