It’s not a NASA rocket, but it could be: The Bloodhound jet/rocket car
Known as the Bloodhound, the car and the UK group developing it this week settled on a design for the car with a major change to its combustion system. The Bloodhound is propelled by three engines a Eurofighter Typhoon jet engine, a hybrid rocket and a third engine that just pumps fuel to the other two. The combination should produce somewhere in excess of 135,000 horsepower, the Bloodhound group states.
Layer 8 Extra: Seven advanced car technologies the government wants now
The decision this week involved the internal structure of aerospace aluminum-clad car ‘s engine. When a car has as much power as this one will have it tends to want to literally fly. Not a good thing in a car gong so fast. So the group is going with what’s known as a “Jet over Rocket” configuration which will put the jet engine on top of the rocket inside the Bloodhound. The JoR “works extremely well with the thrust forces from the jet and the rocket balancing either side of the centre of gravity, creating less downward force on the front wheels when the rocket is fired,” the group stated.
From the Bloodhound Group’s Web site: “One of the main advantages of this option is that the car doesn’t create as much unwanted lift at the back end in the supersonic speed range. It does give other advantages too – the sudden firing of the rocket engine affects wheel loading much less, the layout of the components is simpler, even though many of them, such as the fuel tanks, will need to be redesigned…”
According to an article in the TimesOnline.com today, rather than relying on the traditional drawing board and wind-tunnel testing, almost every aspect of the $25 million Bloodhound project will have been simulated using an array of powerful supercomputers, right down to the thickness of the car’s paint. At 1,000MPH an extra layer on one side of the car would be enough to alter its direction and could send it into a tailspin, the article noted.
As it is the car and driver will be subject to enormous forces. According to the Bloodhound group: Assuming a total track length of 10 miles, the driver will accelerate at an average of more than 1.5g, then traverse the measured mile in less than 3.6 seconds before averaging more than 1.5 g during deceleration. He must then repeat the procedure in the reverse direction within one hour. The peak accelerations and decelerations could well exceed 3g.
The current land speed record holder is another British designed car known as the ThrustSSC, a twin turbofan-powered car which achieved 763 miles per hour in 1997.
The Bloodhound time trial is set for 2011 in the Northern Cape of South Africa.
Layer 8 in a box
Check out these other hot stories:
Internet routing blasts into space
IBM smartphone software translates 11 languages
FCC: Internet program for deaf cheated out of millions of dollars
Atlantis astronauts: Final spacewalk, preparing for Earth trip
Atlantis astronauts get rude awakening
FAA: Unmanned and commercial aircraft don’t mix — yet
NASA, Microsoft want you to be a Martian
FBI warns of spear phishing attacks on lawyers, PR firms
The six greatest threats to US network security
Tracking the world’s great unsolved math mysteries
Astronaut’s Cookbook dishes on cosmic cuisine
