Bloodhound SSC: Breaking the sound barrier and on to 1,000mph -- on four wheels

-7:40. That's [unk]. -Man's record-breaking history is happening every 15, 20 years. It's now once a generation and it's historic and it's extreme. And it's about man versus an extreme test. And that's what choice people live. -It's also in the nature of humans to explore and achieve. We all-- we all do that naturally whether you, hundred of years ago, you're an explorer underworld or climbing mountains. Everyone wants to set the bar higher and-- and in that respect we don't differ from anyone else. -Speed is a, is fascinating. If they've lived to see these automobiles we've invented, you know. If you'd looked back at the history of the, the land speed record, I think the first vehicle that got the land speed record wherein it is something ridiculous, like 36 miles an hour. Or something like that you know. -They were [unk] two teams projects. We're still 50-50s whether that is thing gonna kill you or it's a thing you wanna put in your gravestone and-- and when you die in your old, old age. But you know, it's not almost-- it is a once in a lifetime of choosing. -Bloodhound SCC is a land speed record attempt. An engineering adventure to get a man safely through the flying mile and back again in a thousand miles an hour, to inspire the next generation of engineers, scientists, technologists to get interested in science and the world around them. And that's our reason for being. -No one has ever been that before a thousand miles an hour so far from do-- document record that everyone's to be involved in it. -A thousand miles an hour is a quite big no one's [unk] numbers [unk]. Just crack a thousand miles an hour is quite a big motivation. -Well, this is its cutting edge as you can get at the moment in motorsport. Formula One can be an exciting environment indeed. It has become more exciting. At the end of the day you're going in circles at 200 miles per hour. Where's its really real drill fast guys. We're going in a straight line at a thousand miles per hour. -So, the project has been going for around six or seven years. I've been in the project for six years. With the car is attempting to break the world land speed record but that's not our main goal. Our main goal is inspiring kids to-- to enjoy science, to get to read, keyed up about [unk] take some technology subjects. And the thing that really grabs our attention is the land speed record car. -We've totally open source project. We're making everything available in the internet 'cause we wanna show the kids the science, the engineering behind what we've done in its entirety. There's only a very few things that are actually secret scrolls on Bloodhound, some of the engineering internals because they're protected by the defense secrecy. But generally on the car we share everything. We share all the maths, so you can keep count of, as far as just having a quick scan of the website. If you wanna go down to three, four page on equations that-- that the at the heart of their computation fluid dynamics, you can. So, it's there and it's open so that competitors can see everything that we're doing. But we-- we, we share information. You know, it's a very friendly environment. Everyone is reaching for everyone else. -My background on aerospace. I've worked on a lot of defense projects. So, I should be able to go home and talk about what I'm doing. Asked to do stuff [unk] in to my kids' schools. So my kids go, wow, it's cool. It's dad, you know, he's talking about, you know. I've got a-- a four-year-old, three to seven- year-old. And to see their faces light up. And you do school of seven [unk], it's a different schools in there, as-- as a project. It's a fantastic thing to go and see the difference of how that makes. -So, there's masteries on the program. And again in this stage you wanna know but then there's gonna be people using materials to do that PHDs. And our target audience is actually kids who haven't decided what they wanna do, what they wanna be. And they might be haven't considered life as engineer or scientist or technologist. When they look at Bloodhound, it makes them think, can I do that? And the answer is, yes you could. -We the grownups have made a hell of a mess of this planet both economically and environmentally. And quite frankly, it's gonna take another generation to sort out the mess. And I think for me that the key legacy is the education. 'Cause at the end of the day, the-- the kids are being educated. No. I mean, some of them are gonna pick my care form in the end. So, you know, we want them educated as best as possible. -The [unk] with the-- the rule books are so small. It's like, it's not like F1 so you can do pretty much anything goes. And we've got a jet and a rocket. So, we got a Eurofighter-type fuel engine and we've got a hybrid rocket. And those give us around about hundred and, 133 thousand brake horse power equivalent. We need to pump the fuel for the rocket. So, the rocket is a hybrid so we have a solid fuel grain and then we use an oxidiser which is high-test peroxide. So, it's really strong bleach. And you basically pump that bleach across a catalyst pack that breaks on the steel and oxygen. It's the same stuff that-- that rockets drunk as they run on some sport so the-- and the guys of vanishing point they use a peroxide-like rocket. So, we use that to light our main rocket fuel. However, we need quite a lot of peroxide. We get through around about 850 liters in 17 seconds. We pump that at 12 hundred psi. So, again it's 350 kilos a second that's filling your car with every second at 12 hundred psi. Now, to do that we need about 650 horsepower. So that race car engine withdraws that pump, so any use for that race car engine is to turn on that little pump. It now unloads to 60 tons of rubbish and it goes to the bridge of Freon. And they go, you know, half or it's not 60 tons as it [unk] noted. It's little bit tricky and also a hundred within that 15 seconds. The Veyron does that in seven and a half, seven forty nine that sort of time. So, we get to-- we get to a 115 seconds. Then go from a hundred to a thousand in 25 seconds. At that point, the Veyron doesn't go quite that far speed [unk] for a Thrust car. We accelerate very, very slowly but when we got to sort of two, 300 miles an hour, 350 miles an hour we turn, provoke it on the jet engine. At that point we got 20 tons of Thrust. So, far that point and they pull back, the car will go vertically straight up. We got enough fuel to run about 15 seconds of running both engines. Journey is 15 seconds you had to accelerate it through the sound barriers 17,000 feet, it would carry on to 25,000 and half thousand feet straight up. [unk], was of [unk]. One of his earlier projects was the Bloodhound and the aircraft itself. There's a service to a missile called Bloodhound we used in the 70's [unk] is still around. it's a very, very quick supersonic high altitude. They've come to cold wars, supposed to be taken out with big with Russian bombers. So, it's called, as a code name we just called a Bloodhound. When we came to launch the project in 2008, Rich was very keen that it wasn't called Thrust. Basically, because a special-- the team that he trusts as seeing himself with trust too. He didn't want this to be, to dilute that. Thrust is just to see was a land speed record cars. Primarily goes to break the sound barrier. I was primarily got listed in this [unk] project. -Thrust as just you see was a stepping stone to this car. It's part of the same family. And we wouldn't design or approach this car the way we have without understanding Thrust SSC. We have a number of the same team more enough for that car's success but wouldn't exist. The approach that we're taking differently is to target its very significance again. But, without that significance leap, without getting to a 1,000 miles an hour as our target, we wouldn't get the attention of a global audience. We wouldn't get the attention kids in the U. K. Now, it's got to be extreme. I mean, their lives are full of high definition fakery which only gives them some high definition reality. The one thing that we have is a distinctive answer is the way of building this car with data in our hands from the last cars that ran. And the only car, this one is supersonically. -We-- we got two stages in 2009 [unk]. Why are the cars, why is the car taking so long? -Power and the speed and-- and things that I know. The drags are coming out with the square of speed. The power is going up, power [unk] because of the key of speed. So, low [unk] we're finally going. So, 250 miles an hour falls and thrust to see. The-- the amount of drags that this car is phenomenal. As to the, as to extra power we need is [unk]. We call [unk], through the air. -It's been a long road to get to this stage. All we have basically, all of [unk] cons we need in place. And as a supply chain it's-- it's about as complicated as it gets. The car is way across between a fast-fighter jet, Formula One car, a spaceship, a boat. And the reality for us is every time we've got to an area of detail for the car, we've unpeeled it, unpeeled the onion, if you like. Each onion has been like a mile wide and had its own moon, you know. There's no-- there's no easy part of this car. But when you think it's free to fly mile faster than a high-velocity rifle round, and the levels of energy is just extreme. So, the way I will, you know, a 50,000 radial jet. So, a bag of sugar in the rim at full speed is the same as to glaze a glory. So, there's a huge-- these are the hardest working vehicle wheels in human history. -We don't retire on it. Time tends to fly off wheels that are around about 450,000 miles an hour. But we went through huge design study. We tried to work how-- how to do that because these are gonna send off a 1,000 rest per minute. If you hit a stone, your wheel is-- is like something to shoot you at it. We've got a fantastic team in South Africa preparing the desert. And the quality of services are absolutely outstanding. We worked out what was the biggest thing we would hit and not be worried about. And it's about marble. So, literally we picked up every stone of the desert that's about the size of a marble or bigger. So, that is over 6,000 tons of pebbles and rocks of being removed for [unk]sking pan. That area is very, very deprived. It's-- it's-- there has been almost no investment in that area of Africa, the size of Germany, Northern Cape Province. That didn't get a world cup stadium during the South Africa World Cup. They say this is their world cup so this is already-- there's an event called, Kalahari Speed Week, which is running on the edge through the bit of the desert we're using. They kind of say that this will become the [unk] of the summit industry. A thousand miles an hour will set the speed record. There's no plane has ever flown out this speed of an altitude. And [unk] with fastest human in anything. Will that be spaceship, a car, jetfighter at that altitude that would no [unk] has been faster. It will go-- who else could use instead of Andy? But the car is designed around Andy. This one's got express as Andy drove 12 supersonic. He is also a fast jet pilot. He's very much involved in driving that car. It's got [unk] foot pedal, brake pedals, steering wheel. It's-- it's A-car. If you will go, you can just put a robot in there and will have an automatic control in there. How much is Andy actually doing. You need that man in the loop because we don't know what it's gonna do. We got a prediction but having a guy of his calibrance who has an experience sitting in that car, he can wreck far quicker than a computer can and take away extra information in. The-- the thrusting such a note will break the 93 has been pretty much an evolution that I agree with people. For us to be really nice to see another team come and get a record and break those code can beat and get it back. But as somebody came out in 2016, 2017 with a 12000 an hour car work, fantastic. -There wasn't a run of Thrust SSC with something they didn't expect didn't happen. Every run had some kind of anomalous event. Something they didn't quite expect to foresee, you know. So, we know that's gonna happen and we-- we're looking forward to the challenges coming. And yes, it's been a roller coaster up to now but it's-- it's been incredibly rewarding. And you know there is no more difficult engineering challenge happening anywhere on the planet. And if somebody's doing something hard of the extent maybe we go work on that off we finish this. -For having done Bloodhound, you know, you can, you could go and board a spacecraft that would be easier than doing this. But we've all learned so much together and we're learning all the time. And-- and it challenges us on a daily basis and that's we can't ask more than that to be challenged and be reward by learning all the time. -[unk]