The world's fastest supersonic car's lift problem fixed

Mar 22, 2010
Why the world's fastest car will no longer take off Enlarge

Engineers designing the world's fastest car believe they have found a solution to stop the car taking-off.

EPSRC funded research is helping Bloodhound SSC to smash the 1,000 mph barrier.

Previous design iterations had produced dangerous amounts of lift meaning the car would literally take-off.

The latest modelling work indicates these problems have now been fixed allowing the Bloodhound team to push ahead with other design areas.

To claim the world land speed record, Bloodhound will have to better the mark of 763mph (1,228km/h) set by the Thrust SuperSonic in 1997. It will be powered by a combination of a hybrid rocket and a jet engine from a Eurofighter-Typhoon.

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They plan to mount their assault on the record in late 2011, driving across a dried up lakebed known as Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape of South Africa.

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User comments : 6

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jerryd
1 / 5 (2) Mar 22, 2010
Dropping the nose and narrowing the body in front would help a lot.
Temple
5 / 5 (1) Mar 23, 2010
Dropping the nose and narrowing the body in front would help a lot.


Yeah, because you know better about the aerodynamic properties of that vehicle than they do.

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The unasked question is: why are they doing this?

"Smash the 1,000MPH barrier" Oh please. There's no such barrier. Imagine if all the money and energy spent keeping a jet touching the earth while going faster and faster (really that's all it is), were spent on smashing the 1,000MPG 'barrier'.
VOR
4 / 5 (1) Mar 23, 2010
I'd guess that there's little research value. If any of the designs and tech solutions have any, that would be interesting. Too bad the article doesnt go into such detail.
jonnyboy
2.3 / 5 (3) Mar 23, 2010
ATTENTION AGW "researchers"..............This shows how modeling is supposed to be done, first you model and then you PROVE that your model isn't worthless, it's not enough to create a model, you need to prove that it is right.
CarolinaScotsman
not rated yet Mar 28, 2010
Uh..way back in the 1960s, Art Arfons put a wing on his jet powered "Green Monster" world land speed record car to produce down force and keep it from going airborn. So what's so difficult about doing that?
Skeptic_Heretic
not rated yet Mar 28, 2010
I'd guess that there's little research value. If any of the designs and tech solutions have any, that would be interesting. Too bad the article doesnt go into such detail.

The aerodynamics research alone is going to bring us forward in rail and road technology by years if not decades otherwise.

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