Features editor
After seven years’ hard work and a complicated build programme, Bloodhound SSC is finally making its public debut ahead of its first full test and record attempt next year. The Engineer visited and spoke to the team

The first time I visited Bloodhound SSC was in 2010. I’d just been to see some pioneers of 3D printing at what was then EADS Astrium’s technology campus just outside Bristol, and I made a quick side-trip to talk to the project’s chief engineer, motorsport expert John Piper, to get the low-down on the project.
There wasn’t much to see. Bloodhound’s HQ at the time was near the Bristol city centre, close to the SS Great Britain, and incongruously a few units along from Aardman Animation. I remember commenting on the irony of a building already known as the Doghouse being so close to the home of Britain’s favourite plasticene dog, Gromit. The only hardware in the building was the EJ200 jet engine that forms Bloodhound’s primary propulsion system, and whose acquisition on loan from the MOD was key to the whole project. The walls were, however, plastered with posters showing the car speeding along the desert, a rooster-tail of dust in its wake. Piper was a little apologetic; the project had only been going for 18 months, he said, and the car really only existed virtually
And yesterday, more than five years later, I stood chatting to Piper’s successor as chief engineer, Mark Chapman, next to Bloodhound SSC itself.

As we’ve mentioned on the website, the Bloodhound team has brought the near-completed car to London’s Docklands to make its public debut. Over the next two days, 8000 members of the public will troop into the East Wintergarden, an arched, glazed space just over the road from the main Canary Wharf tower, to look at the needle-nosed vehicle that, its team hope, will break the land speed record twice on the dried lakebed of South Africa’s Hakskeen Pan: aiming for 800mph next year (exceeding the current mark of 763mph, set by Bloodhound driver Andy Green in the same core team’s previous vehicle, Thrust SSC, on 15 October 1997); then, after a return to the UK for analysis and refitting, going back to Hakskeen in 2017 to try for the biggest increase in the record’s history, to 1000mph.
Over the intervening years, I’ve seen Bloodhound under construction several times at the team’s new, larger headquarters near Bristol’s western docks, but it’s a very different sight now. It’s not quite complete: mechanical engineering design lead Mark Elvin told me it’s about 95 per cent there. The most visible sign of this in Docklands is that the panels on one side of the car have been removed to the public can see the jet engine, fuel tanks and ancilliary systems, including the pump for the rocket oxidiser and the V8 Jaguar engine that runs it. One side of the soaring tail is also missing, revealing part of the network of 500 sensors that will monitor airflow over the car and strain on its frame as it careers along its track. The car also doesn’t have its final airbrake panels, the aerodynamic winglets that will sit behind the front wheels and on the tail, or its strake (the long ridge that runs along part of the top of the car from the root of the tail; in Bloodhound, it houses some of the car’s electronics, including its wireless modems).

Even so, the car has a presence very different from the full-scale plastic model that’s been touring schools and exhibitions for the past few years. It seems larger; not just because of the full 2m height of the tail, which on the show model was reduced so it could fit through doors. ‘It’s a more massive feeling; in the flesh you’re much more aware of the size and power of the thing,’ commented Mark Chapman, visibly proud of the achievement of his team.

That sense of pride was palpable yesterday. The co-ordinator of the involvement of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) on the project, Major Oliver Morgan, told me that one team member, ‘a big burly bloke but I can’t tell you who,’ had broken down in tears at his first sight of the car in the hall. Elvin added that project director Richard Noble, whose famous gift of the gab has been instrumental in securing much of Bloodhound’s funding, had been rendered completely speechless (though judging from my brief view of Noble at the event, he got over it).
For Morgan, Bloodhound represents the UK’s undiminished ability to take on cutting-edge engineering projects. “I overheard someone saying this morning that we used to do things like this, and I went up to him and said, ‘Stop. We still do this, we’ve always done this and we’re bloody good at it.’ This is a milestone; it’s part of our national story.”

The team’s confidence is armour-plated. You will never hear anybody even entertain the notion that they won’t succeed in breaking the landspeed record, even though the project still needs to raise in excess of £10m. “That’s so we can finish the build programme and run the car in the desert,” Elvin said; part of the reason for the exhibition this weekend is to attract new sponsors. “The fact that we’re doing two record attempts works in our favour,” Elvin continued. “When we come back already holding a new record, it’ll prove our capability and attract new companies who’ll want to have their name linked to this.”
Another part of the car still to be proved is the integration of the V8 engine, fuel pump (which is a new model, with much improved efficiency compared with the first unit) and the hybrid rocket system that will provide the final thrust for the car to go through the record barrier. The pump has been fully tested with water, which has very similar physical properties to the high-test peroxide it will pump in the desert, and the rockets themselves have been tested by their manufacturer, Norwegian firm Nammo, but the whole system has yet to be fired. “We’ll take the engine and pump out to Norway in the next couple of months,” said systems engineer Joe Holdsworth. “They have a much better testing set-up there.”

Bloodhound’s next outing will be for runway testing at the team’s operations base in Newquay. It will run on rubber-tyred wheels rather than the solid aluminium discs it will use on its record runs, and will only run at about 200mph under jet power; the main reason for these runs is to shake-down all the electronics and ancilliary systems before heading off to South Africa. “If we have the winglets on we’ll test them, but really we’ll be going too slowly for them to have much effect,” Holdsworth said. “And the same with the airbrakes; we can stop on parachutes and wheel-brakes at that speed, but it makes sense just to test the systems.” Integrating all the systems on the car has been a challenge, Holdsworth explained, particularly because the jet engine, via a gearbox, also runs the car’s electrical generator and hydraulic systems. “Everything for the jet came from Rolls-Royce,’ he explained, “but the gearbox came from another supplier, so we had to make sure it all worked together.”

The runway tests will take place “before Easter,” according to Chapman, and the date for the team’s first record attempt has now been announced: 15 October 2016, 19 years to the day after Green first broke the record. Notably missing from the observers will be many of the Army personnel who have worked on the project: most are now back on active service and gathering them from all over the world would be impractical. But for Corporal Holly Jenkins of the REME, who has wired up the cockpit instruments and lighting system, witnessing the public seeing the car and knowing her work is instrumental to the project is reward enough. “It’s definitely something to tell the grandchildren.”
Having the air intake at such a high level gives me concern for the dynamic stability of the vehicle if at high speed a slight deviation from the straight ahead direction alters the airflow into the duct possibly leading to turbulence and lateral forces which may lead to loss of control.
Just my thinking and I’m happy to be proved wrong.
Many congratulations to the team for hitting this major milestone! I look forward to finally getting to see Bloodhound myself.
Of course one cannot be otherwise than amazed and stimulated to see the results of so much intellectual Engineering effort, translated into hardware: [I can claim a very small connection -Richard Noble in a former life was a synthetic-fibre/yarn salesman for the well known manufacturer of Terylene, Crimplene [ICI Fibres] and I was one of the team of Engineers responsible for designing the machines and operating the processes that applied. But in one part of that (the modification and installation of a US designed machine to process so-called ‘tow’ into pillows and duvets) amongst the very first in the UK -we had the same boss! [His name was Norman Mimms. Richard speaks of him in his book!]
I can only offer yet again my ‘usual’ caveat: yes, nice to get the record, lots of PR puffing (punching above our weight?!) but do the two presently most successful ‘Engineering’ nations [the losers in WWII?] spend their time doing this…or do they spend their time dealing with the multitude of ‘ordinary’ Engineering projects that citizens and firms require in millions, rather that prestigue ‘one-offs?’
Answers on a post-card please in case someone has hacked into my lap-top?
Talking of ‘hacking’ -I sincerely hope that the systems on Bloodhound are fully protected. If not, some exceptionally expensive ‘noise’ will surely be the result!
Mike B
This is one of the most marvellous things for UK Engineering for many years! Mike, stop outting on your usual caveat and get behind our country and our proffession. We need the media to give more time to projects of this kind and less to the documentaries that show how good we used to be. Well said Stuart, we still do things like this and we ARE bloody good at it. People just need to be shown at a time they will be watching (put in the middle of EastEnders)!
Peter L: please read my first sentence/paragraph again.
Our Editor (as are other bloggers) is aware of some of the ways in which I have had the privilege of getting behind our country and our profession. Your reply to my personal e-mail: mikeblamey@yahoo.co.uk will elicit more.
I reiterate my remarks about Germany & Japan: two countries I have visited on many occasions throughout my 50 year career: and with who’s excellent (if not always particularly innovative) Engineers I have enjoyed courtesy, mutual respect and totally professional liaisons.
Those Engineers and particularly (textile) Technologists with whom I have dealt I know ‘rate’ my skills: such that I have probably brought over £1,000,000 to UK Plc during my career. Amongst my work was some of the very earliest effort to define processes to convert acrylic (PAN) materials into carbon fibres and subsequent (textile processed) ablative and high-strength materials. Important parts of many high-tech items including BloodHound.
I look forward to further direct communications.
Mike B
“People just need to be shown at a time they will be watching (put in the middle of EastEnders)!”
I agree totally: Peter and other bloggers will I am sure be aware of the concerns we all hold about the present weaknesses amongst children in mathematics, STEM etc, etc.
Anticipating this and Peter’s proposal (when my children were young and seeing the time they happily spent watching Blue Peter et al), I suggested to the BBC that they might consider a short (20 seconds) piece of visual science/technology -perhaps interspersed with the credits at the end of the programme-, using some part of the reports in the programme as its basis: and including surprise surprise an appropriate simple equation. I offered to develop a series of such.
Had I suggested that the BBC should include pornographic images insteand of simple equations, their response could not have been more outraged and dis-interested. How dare ‘I’ question their skills, abilities and absolute control over programme content!
Needless to say, the idea was not followed-up. But I have seen not dissimilar approaches in varous parts of the world: and still believe that it has merit. Mike B