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Watch the world’s first supersonic car smash its first public test

Published Oct 26th, 2017 10:02PM EDT
Bloodhound SSC: First super-sonic test

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Bloodhound SSC, a British team that’s planning on using a jet engine strapped to wheels to travel at 1,000mph, just hit an important milestone. The team hit 200mph during a first public test run on an airfield in south-west England. Getting a jet-powered car to travel safely at that speed is difficult — just ask Richard Hammond! — and the fact that it went off without a hitch is a testament to how far the project’s come.

The Bloodhound car is powered by a military jet engine, and ultimately should be capable of 1,000mph on a long course. For this test, it accelerated to 210mph in around 9 seconds on a 1.7-mile runway.

“The car and the team are ready to go much, much faster and start chasing supersonic world land speed records,” said Andy Green, a fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force and the car’s driver. “This car is easily capable of being the fastest car on earth.”

The team has pedigree: it’s led by Richard Noble, the man who set the land-speed record in 1983, and the director behind Thrust SSC, the car that currently holds the land-speed record of 763mph.

Bloodhound SSC uses a EJ200 Rolls-Royce engine, the same one that powers the Royal Air Force’s Eurofighter Typhoon. Additional solid-rocket boosters will be added to get the car to its projected top speed of 1,000mph.

 

Chris Mills
Chris Mills News Editor

Chris Mills has been a news editor and writer for over 15 years, starting at Future Publishing, Gawker Media, and then BGR. He studied at McGill University in Quebec, Canada.