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The Bloodhound Project – to set a 1000 mph land speed record

25 points by dmmalam 11y ago

Theodores 11y ago
There is so much wrong with this project that it beggars belief: Comedy timing. This project is taking decades. The tortoise and hare story really needs updating to include the ill-fated 'Bloodhound', maybe to become 'The Three Toes Sloth and the Bloodhound'. Or 'The Snail and the Bloodhound'. Desperate sponsorship levels. Everything has to be on the car due to some sponsorship arrangement. If Rolex made fluffy dice there would be some Rolex Fluffy Dice hanging in the windscreen. Okay it is par for the course to have some over-priced watchmaker sponsor efforts like this but whatabout the Jaguar engine that now powers the fuel pump? Originally that was a Cosworth F1 engine but Cosworth quit F1 some years ago and no longer needed to be associated with the Bloodhound money pit. So they get a Jaguar engine instead. At least the Jaguar engine works without there having to be scores of engineers needed to fire it up. However, this raises questions as to why they needed an F1 engine in the first place, or why they need a special engine from Jaguar, when any performance engine from any consumer grade sportscar would do fine, particularly if you let any tuning shop do a bit of tuning on it. The cockpit comfort levels. In most motorsport the parts inside the cockpit are off the shelf. Pedals, steering wheels, knobs and buttons inside the 'Bloodhound' are again made super-duper by companies on sponsorship deals. Everything is custom crafted from things like titanium which is all very interesting but not exactly necessary. Why can't those pedals be from some Jaguar car, or a Toyota(!)? Next they will probably 'need' to be gold plated. A swanky cockpit is just not needed. The militarization of the project. In the UK most people have a dim view of the military and really would not want their children to join the army when they grow up. Yet this Bloodhound effort is a sort of army recruiting tool. I don't see what this 'land speed record' has to do with killing beige coloured people in oil rich countries, but yes, there is an unfortunate mix of 'army' and 'school kids need to know about this'. Waste of taxpayer money on the project through the military. We pay our taxes so that the army can recruit petty thieves and other no hopers to go off to foreign places and kill beige-coloured people so that we can keep the third world war torn and poor. We don't pay the army to tinker about with pet project land speed records. There is no competition. It is not 1957 any more and nobody gives a toss whether this white elephant of a project wins the land speed record 'for Blighty', Queen and country. Frankly it is an embarrassment, maybe of interest to some pre-pubescent teenagers with parents in the armed forces. Maybe if there was to be a showdown between an American effort or a German effort then there could be grounds for wanting to support 'team GB' and this awful Bloodhound thing. But there is not. Nobody really cares about the land speed record. It is irrelevant and there is nothing to be learned from it. There is no new technology. Previous land speed records have had vaguely notable technology innovations, but with Bloodhound all the bits and bobs are aero parts that are not new. This is a plane that doesn't fly (although it might do as those aerodynamics are dated - it has the 'Bernoulli effect' with the low pressure air going over the 'car' providing 'lift'). It is not a 1000 mph car. The plan is to do 800 mph, with 'phase 2' being the original design goal of 1000 mph. It is not even a car. Originally land speed records had the power delivered at the wheels. Strapping a second hand jet engine and some Norwegian rocket to some glorified hand-cart is cheating. It is a dubious vanity project with high shadenfreude potential - when it fails to set any record due to some engineering oversight.
- PhantomGremlin 11y ago
  In the UK most people have a dim view of the military and really would not want their children to join the army when they grow up. That's interesting. Only 75 years ago the UK came oh so close to speaking German, were it not for the military. Do you believe that human nature has changed in such a short time? I don't. In fact I think there are quite a few Ukrainians (and other Eastern Europeans) right now who can only wish they had a capable military to counteract that little megalomaniac dictator in Russia. The military doesn't exist solely to "kill beige-coloured people".
  - EwanToo 11y ago
    It's not so much interesting as wrong. Most of Britain has a very high regard for the military.
    - ablation 11y ago
      This. From my experiences, I've seen nothing but high regard for the military in Britain. Huge amounts of respect, even.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        True, but the. This kind of stuff happens and makes me wondoer how rare this kind of stuff if. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/26/hospital-moved-raf-sergeant-over-fears-his-uniform-would-upset-patients http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/26/hospital-move...
    - stuaxo 11y ago
      I think you can be pro "the troops", but anti war at the same time.
- bane 11y ago
  I suspect the answer to many of your parts sourcing questions is that this is a very British project, and there's a requisite desire to source everything from "British" companies first to show off British engineering and manufacturing prowess. I'm not a Brit, but I think it's cool, pushing the envelope kind of thing. The competition is the previous car, which broke the sound barrier [1]. Phase 1 beats that car and Phase 2 is designed to cement it in. Achieving Phase 1 is "good enough" if sponsorship runs out immediately after. It is a money pit, but in the sense of being a national marketing effort is a money pit. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC
pcunite 11y ago
Nice video: https://youtu.be/krcLNgLcF9Q https://youtu.be/krcLNgLcF9Q
mpnordland 11y ago
I've been reading about this for years, when are they actually going to do it?

25 points by dmmalam 11y ago

There is so much wrong with this project that it beggars belief: Comedy timing. This project is taking decades. The tortoise and hare story really needs updating to include the ill-fated 'Bloodhound', maybe to become 'The Three Toes Sloth and the Bloodhound'. Or 'The Snail and the Bloodhound'. Desperate sponsorship levels. Everything has to be on the car due to some sponsorship arrangement. If Rolex made fluffy dice there would be some Rolex Fluffy Dice hanging in the windscreen. Okay it is par for the course to have some over-priced watchmaker sponsor efforts like this but whatabout the Jaguar engine that now powers the fuel pump? Originally that was a Cosworth F1 engine but Cosworth quit F1 some years ago and no longer needed to be associated with the Bloodhound money pit. So they get a Jaguar engine instead. At least the Jaguar engine works without there having to be scores of engineers needed to fire it up. However, this raises questions as to why they needed an F1 engine in the first place, or why they need a special engine from Jaguar, when any performance engine from any consumer grade sportscar would do fine, particularly if you let any tuning shop do a bit of tuning on it. The cockpit comfort levels. In most motorsport the parts inside the cockpit are off the shelf. Pedals, steering wheels, knobs and buttons inside the 'Bloodhound' are again made super-duper by companies on sponsorship deals. Everything is custom crafted from things like titanium which is all very interesting but not exactly necessary. Why can't those pedals be from some Jaguar car, or a Toyota(!)? Next they will probably 'need' to be gold plated. A swanky cockpit is just not needed. The militarization of the project. In the UK most people have a dim view of the military and really would not want their children to join the army when they grow up. Yet this Bloodhound effort is a sort of army recruiting tool. I don't see what this 'land speed record' has to do with killing beige coloured people in oil rich countries, but yes, there is an unfortunate mix of 'army' and 'school kids need to know about this'. Waste of taxpayer money on the project through the military. We pay our taxes so that the army can recruit petty thieves and other no hopers to go off to foreign places and kill beige-coloured people so that we can keep the third world war torn and poor. We don't pay the army to tinker about with pet project land speed records. There is no competition. It is not 1957 any more and nobody gives a toss whether this white elephant of a project wins the land speed record 'for Blighty', Queen and country. Frankly it is an embarrassment, maybe of interest to some pre-pubescent teenagers with parents in the armed forces. Maybe if there was to be a showdown between an American effort or a German effort then there could be grounds for wanting to support 'team GB' and this awful Bloodhound thing. But there is not. Nobody really cares about the land speed record. It is irrelevant and there is nothing to be learned from it. There is no new technology. Previous land speed records have had vaguely notable technology innovations, but with Bloodhound all the bits and bobs are aero parts that are not new. This is a plane that doesn't fly (although it might do as those aerodynamics are dated - it has the 'Bernoulli effect' with the low pressure air going over the 'car' providing 'lift'). It is not a 1000 mph car. The plan is to do 800 mph, with 'phase 2' being the original design goal of 1000 mph. It is not even a car. Originally land speed records had the power delivered at the wheels. Strapping a second hand jet engine and some Norwegian rocket to some glorified hand-cart is cheating. It is a dubious vanity project with high shadenfreude potential - when it fails to set any record due to some engineering oversight.

PhantomGremlin 11y ago
In the UK most people have a dim view of the military and really would not want their children to join the army when they grow up. That's interesting. Only 75 years ago the UK came oh so close to speaking German, were it not for the military. Do you believe that human nature has changed in such a short time? I don't. In fact I think there are quite a few Ukrainians (and other Eastern Europeans) right now who can only wish they had a capable military to counteract that little megalomaniac dictator in Russia. The military doesn't exist solely to "kill beige-coloured people".
- EwanToo 11y ago
  It's not so much interesting as wrong. Most of Britain has a very high regard for the military.
  - ablation 11y ago
    This. From my experiences, I've seen nothing but high regard for the military in Britain. Huge amounts of respect, even.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      True, but the. This kind of stuff happens and makes me wondoer how rare this kind of stuff if. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/26/hospital-moved-raf-sergeant-over-fears-his-uniform-would-upset-patients http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/26/hospital-move...
  - stuaxo 11y ago
    I think you can be pro "the troops", but anti war at the same time.
bane 11y ago
I suspect the answer to many of your parts sourcing questions is that this is a very British project, and there's a requisite desire to source everything from "British" companies first to show off British engineering and manufacturing prowess. I'm not a Brit, but I think it's cool, pushing the envelope kind of thing. The competition is the previous car, which broke the sound barrier [1]. Phase 1 beats that car and Phase 2 is designed to cement it in. Achieving Phase 1 is "good enough" if sponsorship runs out immediately after. It is a money pit, but in the sense of being a national marketing effort is a money pit. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC

pcunite 11y ago

Nice video: https://youtu.be/krcLNgLcF9Q https://youtu.be/krcLNgLcF9Q

mpnordland 11y ago

I've been reading about this for years, when are they actually going to do it?