1000 MPH Car - BLOODHOUND

The first full test firing of the rocket that will power a British car to over 1,000mph (1,610km/h) will take place in the coming months.

Producing 122kN (27,000lbf) of thrust, the hybrid Falcon motor will be the largest rocket to be ignited in the UK for 20 years.

It will not be the only power unit in the Bloodhound vehicle when it tries to break the land speed record next year.

There will also be a jet from a fighter plane and the engine from an F1 car.

The team behind the project believes this trio of power units could secure the absolute land speed record for Britain for many years to come.

"We are creating the ultimate car; we're going where no-one has gone before," said Richard Noble, the Bloodhound project director.

Several locations are being considered for the rocket test.

They include places with historic connections to the land speed record - places such as Pendine in West Wales where several records were set in the 1920s, and at Shoeburyness in eastern England where the engines for the current record holder, the Thrust SSC vehicle, were tested. Both these locations have military evaluation centres.

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"
Start Quote
To the best of my knowledge there isn't a piston engine operating anywhere that's in a vehicle that's running at supersonic speed"
End Quote
Tim Routsis

Cosworth CEO
Bloodhound's 45cm-wide, 3.6m-long (18in by 12ft) rocket will be British designed and built.

It will burn a mixture of solid propellant (HTPB, or hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene) and liquid oxidiser (high-test peroxide, HTP) for 20 seconds.

To put its peak thrust of 122kN in context, it is equivalent to the combined horsepower of about 645 family saloon cars.

Added to the 90kN of thrust coming from the EJ200 Eurofighter-Typhoon jet, Bloodhound should have sufficient energy to put itself 8km away from a standing start in just 100 seconds.

The rocket is being developed by the Falcon Project Ltd, a specialist rocketry company based in Manchester and led by 27-year-old self-trained rocketeer Daniel Jubb.

"We've done 10 firings to date of our six-inch model - that was in the Mojave Desert in California," explained Mr Jubb.

"We've also done one on the 18-inch Bloodhound model, but it was pressure-fed; it wasn't done using our new pump and that's the point about this upcoming test."

The Falcon will need almost a tonne of HTP pushed through it, which is the job of the F1 engine.

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