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I wonder how much a Patreon / Kickstarter campaign could generate? There are computer game campaigns that pulled in more, and bloody hell that would be something to brag about: "I helped fund the 1000mph Land Speed Record attempt!".

Maybe a hybrid campaign. Some of those cars in Forza might *seem* fast, but not compared to Bloodhound.

... might get interested, if you were to put a little ramp at the end of the track; and tell him Bloodhound had to first break the record, jump off using the ramp, and then finally land on its tail. :-)

He has better, faster, and far more advanced technology to play with. This kind of records are a relic of the 1960s.

I get a bit of that sort if feeling... There's a whiff of engineering to meet arbitrary criteria (as opposed to engineering for the sake of reaching orbit or rapid reuse, or cost savings etc)... the sheer speed is the easy bit (any number of fighter jets can do it), the hard bit is doing so in a vehicle that has to be touching the ground. Touching the ground (in which case could a jet fighter lower a wheeled cart onto the ground for a mile?) or do the rules explicitly state the vehicle must start on the ground?

In the past, one land speed record was denied because the vehicle only had three wheels, making it a motorcycle in the eyes of one Motorsport organisation. Yeah, arbitrary.

That said, were Elon Musk to buy it it'd be a way of making an entrance to the Burning Man festival, which he is known to attend (as least the terrain is vaguely suitable, unlike say Glastonbury... Might need to fit tractor tyres... Not for grip but to give it greater clearance). And he did buy the submarine Lotus Esprit from that James Bond movie (though he hasn't yet converted it to work as the movie depicted it, which he said he was considering)

No, not arbitrary because in many country vehicles with three wheels can be registered as motorcycles and not cars - to exploit some less strict rules and lower costs. You need or needed four wheels to be classified as a "car".

It looks sensible motorsport organizations took the same approach.

Now these things don't resemble a car at all, nor they can have tires, and the whole thing is quite absurd. Just look at AC75 boats, they too prefer to avoid much contact with water to achieve higher speeds....

Still a car able to travel into water or into air could still be more useful, funny to use and far more interesting from an engineering point of view than an horizontal rocket... but sure, Burning Man would be the right place for such kind of exhibition.

They did a very enlightening roadshow in the lead up to SSC back in the 90s, part of what they covered was that it does have toe be a "car", and not something that briefly "lands" to cover the mile in each direction necessary to qualify as a speed record. Equally, the worst thing that could happen in this device is for it to become airborne. The tail had an adjustable rear wheel/sled that could lift the tail up by an inch or two - in a failure mode, this happened with the express aim of keeping the car on the ground, and hopefully prevent RUD.

Secondly, your proposal to have a fighter jet land to do this is probably significantly flawed as the wheels on a fighter jet are not designed to be used at 800mph - they would swiftly disintegrate. They had to make SSC wheels out of funky materials, with specific designs, to ensure they didn't fly apart at the rotational speeds required to support a vehicle travelling at that speed.

> your proposal to have a fighter jet land to do this is probably significantly flawed

It wasn't a proposal, just an illustration. I didn't mean the jet fighter's wheels but a custom-built wheeled cart that the jet lowers to the ground as it is flying 20' above the ground.

a custom-built wheeled cart that the jet lowers to the ground as it is flying 20' above the ground

I respectfully suggest that this would be worse.

Can we just say that, as a general principle, a supersonic aircraft in ground effect would not be a safe vehicle in which to ride?

What’s the Vehicle Excise Duty on it? This could be a deal breaker for me. And can I get it as an EV?

As an EV? Well you could retrofit an ion drive, but you'd need a helluva long course in order to accelerate to 800mph at such low thrust. (Joking aside, the air resistance would quickly outweigh the ion drive's thrust. Do the rules state that the land speed record must be held on Earth? The thinner atmosphere of Mars might give you an edge)

You might be SOL - Bloodhound is expected to release around 400kg of CO2 from 180kg of fuel. The speed runs are on an area 12 miles long, so assume that burn is for both directions and it makes 400kg/24miles, which is about 10kg/km, which (if I read the table correctly) puts it firmly into the 255+g/km bracket, at ~£500/year

Given the length of time the project has been running then it might even qualify for the "vintage car exemption".

The Bloodhound project started around the time my older son had started secondary school - and as they were having a design base in here in Bristol and wanting to link with schools over STEM support I was looking forward to his school getting involved ... however that never happened. Anyway, since they started the project my son had 6 years at school, 4 yearts an University doing Engineering, 1 year at Tesco while applying for jobs and is now 18 months into a 2 year graduate trainee program at an aerospace company - so maybe he didn't need Bloodhound to inspire him after all!

Getting the MOT might be a bit of a challenge...

Perhaps that should be scrapped and £8M diverted to this as it would generated better PR?

£120 million will disappear down the plughole before the budget goes up He may want to top the amount spent on the Millennium Dome - I stopped paying attention around the £800 million mark.

Anyway, lets start by writing off another £43 million for a start - Cost of the Garden Bridge to nowhere championed by Boris when he was Mayor of London

I don't get it. To the average billionaire or international corporation with an alignment of brand character, the amount of money to complete this would be trivial, and the marketing opportunity staggeringly enormous. Record breaking machines, and pictures of their iconic liveries and partner's logos go down in history forever, take F1 for example.

Sure, there's a risk of catastrophic failure and the resulting 2 mile long meat crayon, but hey, you know, life is for living and everything...

Nobody cares for this kind of records anymore - that's why they don't find money. Even F1 has issues and that's why it's trying to find new fans in other countries. It's not surprising now you see some Russia billionaires' sons getting a car seat... they simply need the money and sell them.

Even if the go 1000mph it would become a tiny piece of news on sites crowded by gossip news that would attract far more people.

It's not surprising now you see some Russia billionaires' sons getting a car seat...

I think you'll find that Lawrence is Canadian

[1]Nikita Mazepin will be driving for Haas this year.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Mazepin

As is Nicholas Latifi. Lando Norris is British. Sergio Perez has had substantial backing from Carlos Slim (also Mexican) for basically his whole career.

I doubt the Schumacher family is short of a bob or two either.

To say that drivers are only now paying for a seat is to rather sell the history of F1 short. Chapman and Brabham sold whole cars to privateers back in the Sixties. The heyday is usually reckoned as Pedro Diniz in the 90s. At least today's pay-drivers have to show some ability.

the marketing opportunity staggeringly enormous.

[1]'1,000 mph' means nothing for 95% of the World

[1] https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/18300.jpeg

Woohoo!

So glad to see we have munged things together so much we needed a category all of our own, "Mixed"

It's the sort of thing Branson used to do when he was younger - remember his blue riband record attempt?

Oh yes, the spine crushing speedboat that was built to beat a 30yr old record set by a floating five star hotel. Well done for the fastest* surface crossing, it was quite an achievement getting a small boat across the Atlantic that fast.

I thoroughly approve of mad 'because I can' engineering but if you can't play deck quoits while sipping champers it's not really blue riband :)

*a couple of other boats upped the average speed then everyone lost interest after a few years.

I think a Kickstarter would do well - I'd certainly go for the Level 2 contribution of having my picture on a USB stick in the vehicle as it set the record.

I wonder if Jim Ratcliffe & Ineos have been contacted.

Is it road legal ?

Just wondering for getting it to the Transport Museum (the London one or Glasgow one, or any of the others)

I think you'd need to add lights and mirrors. And maybe trade plates.

Doesn't it also require a reverse gear? Or does the EJ200 come fitted with thrust reversers?

Don't need lights to be road legal

ROAD VEHICLES LIGHTING REGULATIONS 1989

4. Exemptions - General

3) Nothing in these Regulations shall require any lamp or reflector to be fitted between sunrise and sunset to :-

(a) a vehicle not fitted with any front or rear position lamp,

(4) Without prejudice to regulation 16, for the purposes of these Regulations a lamp shall not be treated as being a lamp if it is :-

(a) so painted over or masked that it is not capable of being immediately used or readily put to use; or

(b) an electric lamp which is not provided with any system of wiring by means of which that lamp is, or can readily be, connected with a source of electricity.

You'll want to avoid any routes with sharp turns by the look of it

James Dyson, Richard Branson, and James (Jim) Ratcliffe to step up to the plate. Let's start a campaign

Good luck with any of those duffers. You'd have a bout as much chance as getting money back from [1]the PPE cronies - who, probably do have a few £million spare.

[1] https://youtu.be/UgfA59U01Vs

Are any of them based in the "British Isles" for tax or residence purposes?

it amazes me that anyone would give a penny to such a pointless project let alone the millions that have already been wasted on it

You could say that about pretty much everything.

It's only half an episode of Game of Thrones...

Sad to see such scorning and whining comments here and elsewhere about "the point" of such endeavours. I wonder what the budget is for Celebrity Love Island? Better this than that.

But such comments also betray ignorance of the project itself. As any fule knows, Bloodhound started off as the heart of a strong STEM education/outreach programme. They went into schools and pushed STEM - every industry needs a tent-pole project and Bloodhound was conceived as a leading bit of automotive engineering.

1000mph is of course arbitrary, but also achievable - Thrust SSC went for "supersonic", which is also perfectly arbitrary and the next obvious step from there was 1000mph, since SSC involved going 1200km/h and 2000km/h doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Also, 2000kmh = 1200mph which is quite a bit more and pushes your aspirational engineering into not-sure-we-can-actually-do-this territory.

It's not really accurate to call this a vanity project either. The much-vaunted wheels in particular are a very tricky bit of engineering. Developing wheels which can not only hold together under their own centrifugal force, but also stand up to the abrasion of running over salt pan at those speeds is no small feat and has applications in fields like rail or indeed high-speed flywheels - energy storage being an increasingly hot topic.

The biggest criticism might well be not of the project itself but whether Land Speed Records should be restricted to wheel-driven vehicles rather than jet cars where the wheels serve to technically connect it to the ground.

Is Bloodhound the most cost-efficient way of conducting flywheel or aerodynamic research? Of course not.

Is it a decent mix of aspirational engineering, cutting-edge manufacturing and STEM education outreach with a bit of "cool factor"?

Yup.

>1,200mph ... not-sure-we-can-actually-do-this territory<

At the moment that's true, but this is technically off-road driving.

By using rails many of the wheel issues will go away and this can probably be done now, of course this would then be the worlds fastest train...

Not sure why the article is talking about 1000mph, that target/claim was dropped long ago and pretty sure you'll find no mention of it on their website.