Bloodhound achieves speeds of over 1,000km/h on South African soil

Human endeavour is a curious and equally marvellous thing. Outwardly there’s no good reason for wanting to travel across a piece of land at 1,287km per hour but here are a bunch of mavericks who’ve spent $32m, on top of original project costs, to achieve just that in the Bloodhound land speed vehicle. There’s no particular scientific outcome that the project aimed to achieve when it was first announced by Lord Drayson – then Minister of Science in the UK’s Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. However projects such as this are about inspiring people to push the envelope, to achieve the seemingly unachievable because without such endeavour the human race would still be hunting food with a pointy stick and dying of long forgotten illness. Seems as good a reason as any, then. First published on MyBroadband. – Miles Downard 

Bloodhound achieves speeds of over 1,000km/h in South Africa

By Bradley Prior

The Bloodhound SSC project has achieved land speeds of 1,010km/h – making it the sixth-fastest land vehicle ever.

This speed was achieved in just 50 seconds at the Hakskeen Pan dry bed race track in South Africa.

Notably, it was reached using only the vehicle’s EJ200 jet engine – with significantly faster speeds expected once the team attaches a rocket to the device to supplement the engine.

With this additional power, those running the project hope that the vehicle will reach 1,287km/h (800 miles per hour), which would break the land speed world record.

Financial woes

The Bloodhound project has struggled financially recently, and was reported as being cancelled by the BBC in December 2018.

The project was reported to have failed to raise the required $32-million investment it needed to continue operations.

However, the project was purchased by Grafton LSR CEO Ian Warhurst, who assembled a new Bloodhound LSR team to complete the Bloodhound vehicle.

“Since buying Bloodhound from the administrators last December, the team and I have been overwhelmed by the passion and enthusiasm the public have shown for the project,” said Warhurst in March.

“Over the last decade, an incredible amount of hard graft has been invested in the project and it would be a tragedy to see it go to waste.”

Watch the Bloodhound SSC reach a top speed of 1,010km/h below.

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