Following Bloodhound LSR’s successful testing in the Kalahari Desert, The Engineer asked what the most important benefits of the project are likely to be.
Running solely on its Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet engine, Bloodhound steadily built up its speed during a series of tests on South Africa’s Hakskeen Pan, topping out at over 1,000 km/h on its final run.
When it returns to the desert in the next 12-18 months, the addition of a hybrid rocket engine will provide another 40kN of thrust, and will hopefully see the vehicle claim the world land speed record and perhaps even push toward the 1,000 mph barrier.
It’s a remarkable turnaround for a project that was on the ropes less than a year ago, and huge credit should go to new owner Ian Warhurst for not only rescuing the endeavour but for making such rapid progress in a relatively short space of time.
- Bloodhound LSR breaks 500mph barrier
- Q&A: Ian Warhurst on rescuing Bloodhound
- Bloodhound LSR achieves fastest speed to date
But what of the long term benefits of Bloodhound LSR? The STEM and educational impact of the programme has often been lauded, and our readers were largely in agreement that this will be Bloodhound’s most prominent legacy. Almost two-thirds (62 per cent) said that inspiring tomorrow’s engineers will be the most important benefit. A boost for UK engineering’s standing was the next most popular answer, with 18 per cent of the vote. The remaining 20 per cent of respondents were equally split between those who felt the technological spin-offs would be the greatest benefit, and those who think there will be no appreciable benefits at all.
“I can very much confirm that the Bloodhound project is inspiring many young engineering students at all levels,” said Richard Masters. “I’m a lecturer in an FE college and initially, I was surprised that many of my students did not really engage with the team, but every day I showed them the video reports of each day of testing and created a YouTube user name for them to comment and real interest grew quickly.
“For the last few days of testing I found that many of my students had already seen the latest video and were keen to tell everyone how it was going. Things like this can inspire a lifetime of interest and learning.”
“Bloodhound visited my daughter’s school which made an impression on all,” wrote Mark Lyman.
“She was lucky enough to win a trip to the project HQ and was inspired by what she saw.
The outreach programme is fantastic.”
Other readers, however, were less impressed, and felt the effort could be better spent on other endeavours.
“I would like to sit down with the whole team and its financial backers and suggest to them all that undoubted talents and practical skills would be better targetted and finding solution to problem embedded in the climate change issues,” said John Swallow.
“Their own children and grandchildren are who they should be working for, not a go-faster on four wheels adding further toxins to the atmosphere. Bin the lot and work on capturing sunlight instead. When will man ever learn.”
As always, we encourage debate on the subject in our comment section but ask that all readers familiarise themselves with our guidelines before submitting. All comments are moderated, particularly for length and grammar and to ensure that debate does not become sidetracked.
I use the Bloodhound Project in my Design Clubs and STEM talks at my local Primary School. We have had a good turnout for Design Club whereby we discuss many aspects of the Project………..Materials, Aerodynamics, Structures and Dynamics. The children really engage with this Project and we can align with KS2 Curriculum. As a Mechanical Engineer it’s very satisfying to see this level of interest from Years 4 – 6. Well Done Bloodhound LSR team and Thank you.
I can see the benefit of planes which fly faster.
I can see the benefit of ships which sail faster.
I can see the benefit of trains which run faster.
I can’t see the benefit of cars which go faster – as they won’t be allowed on the road.
Above all else I admire the courage and daring of Andy Green.
Best Wishes and Good Luck Andy.
Can anyone explain what benefits British engineering/industry gained from the earlier success of Thrust2?
The project does look good and is good to see but “40kN of thrust on top of the 90kN provided by the Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet engine in afterburner mode seems certain to push Bloodhound to a new record; the goal of topping 1000mph also seems highly feasible ” seems a little like chicken counting. The last hundred miles an hour approaching transonic is an area of huge change. It is hard to get good figures on just exactly how hot the 2 spey’s on thrust ssc were running when it broke the sound barrier but some of the estimates seem to put the total thrust quite a lot higher than that of bloodhound (probably well over 200 kN) so getting to 1000mph on 130Kn would reflect a substantial improvement in efficiency.
I think the world looks on when projects of this ilk are progressed. In the past Britain has been a world leader in engineering and ultimately the final speed of the car will be of interest but it is the ‘spin off’ in the interest it will engender to our young engineers of the future that will be of most benefit. The technicalities encountered by every discipline involved must be mind blowing and if that does not attract people into engineering I don’t know what would.
“Dear Dave, thanks for getting in touch with the Bloodhound Team.”
“The rear suspension on the Bloodhound is a compromise on a number of levels.”
1. There is a compromise between aerodynamic drag and stability.
2. There is a compromise between suspension stiffness and drag on the rear suspension. 60% of the aerodynamic drag of the car comes from the rear suspension and rear wheel faring.
“I would be interested to see your layout designs, which are stable?” (and aerodynamic too)
Regards, Senior Design Engineer. (2 July 2009)
No NDA – no see. Same goes for Williams F1, BAR, Honda, McLaren, BMW, MIRA, et al. . . .
Consequently, no educational establishment in the UK (or the world) is teaching students how to design vehicles for optimal dynamic stability, which is a great loss – not any benefit.
1000mph, then what ? Or rather, so what ?
A jet engine mounted on a go kart, is that really innovation ?
If this is all that STEM ambassadors can come up with to sell engineering then we are doomed, and at the risk of being called sexist, I don’t believe this sort of thing appeals so much to females. Engineering is so much more than this, these sort of projects have had their day, time to move on !
There are certainly female members of the Bloodhound team, past and present, who would disagree with you.
Sorry Steve, but what a depressing attitude you have for the future of engineering. Aerodynamics, metallurgy, physics and more are all involved in cross linking of ideas in all fields of engineering from mechanical, structural, automotive aerospace and even civil engineering.
As for being sexist, yes you are. There are many girls who are interested in all of the above including motor sport. You need to get out from behind your desk and take a good look at the world around you.
Currently I am sat in a meeting with 3 female engineers and 4 male engineers and this is in Mexico!
Deeper, faster, higher… why not? All such endaevours must surely help attract the attention of a younger generation of aspiring engineers and technicians, and be good for Britain’s ailing manufacturing image. I applaud the effort, and especially the intervention of Ian Warhurst. Take no notice of the naysayers and push on, please…!
Frankly, even if the only benefit was for the record to be beaten, and by a British team of engineers, then that would do for me. Even if they ultimately fail, so what? Better to try and fail than to sit around moaning. I don’t remember anyone asking Donald Campbell why he kept up his life-long (and ultimately life-ending) pursuit of speed, we just basked in the reflected glory. Not everything in life has to produce short-term benefits. Sometimes its enough just to enjoy the ride. Well done to the Bloodhound team now and for the future.
Hello
I am amazed by how many frankly miserable, unitellegent, keyboard warriors have commented, so should we not, push the boundaries of engineering & science?
Imagine if Leonardo, George & Robert Stephenson,Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Tesla, Da Vinci, Fazlur Rahman Khan, Tesla, Barnes Wallis, Frank Whittle, etc etc, thought sod it cant be ar****, who knows what would NOT have been invented.
As well the above & others invented developed, who did they inspire?? no doubt thousands of others, without that inspiration, just think what might not have been developed, in the world we live in from Medicine, just with diagnostic equipment, disease, control, safety, modern transportation, we need now more than ever talented engineers to develop ways to power our future world with less & less & ultimately zero pollution.
So you miserable nay sayers, you go back into the back of your caves and leave the rest of us to encourage people to pursue the future
Yours B J W
Some pretty poor and uninformed comments here. Bloodhound is so much more than a go kart with a jet engine and the full build details we’re available on the old website…the whole point is, it’s an ‘open’ project allowing all to understand what’s involved.
We must not forget that the Bloodhound team are making all the data they retrieve from the tests freely available in order to spread the engineering know-how.
I think it’s a fantastic project, it showcases many of the disciplines within engineering as well as the cross dependencies. Bloodhound is a great project that STEM ambassadors can use to illustrate whatever their area of expertise is. I’m a railway signalling engineer and I use it as an example of the cross disciplinary nature of many large engineering projects. Teamwork and communication are essential attributes for engineers. I find this aspect often appeals to girls in my audiences. That said, girls are also excited by a rocket on wheels.
Being the parent of one of the bloodhound guys, I can honestly say the majority of comments and interest have been fantastic. There are already schools involved and interested in the project. Well done guys, so very proud of all of you. Engineering at it’s best.
I have followed this project since the early days, my dad inspired me into engineering (he passed away when I was nine) not to worry we are both travelling on the tail fin together. Good luck Bloodhound following in great tradition for British engineering land speed excellence. Inspiring others.
Bloodhound visited my daughter’s school which made an impression on all.
She was lucky enough to win a trip to the project HQ and was inspired by what she saw.
The outreach programme is fantastic.
Because we can and we should. If we didn’t undertake these goals as a species we would be still living in caves. To better ourselves we must push boundaries.
I’ve been interested in the history of British land and water speed records, especially Donald Campbell and the Bluebird K7, since 1983 (Thrust 2) and more so when The Bluebird K7 was raised from Lake Coniston in 2001, and now has been restored.
I’ve been fascinated with the Bloodhound LSR project since the beginning, I wish the British team all the best and success. I think this is British engineering at its best (that’s my opinion of course)
Britain lead the way in inventions and engineering, look at some of the famous people like :-
George Stevenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Barnes Wallis,Sir Nigel Gresley, etc etc.
The person who wrote this article needs to read up about drag.. Its velocity squared so you have to double the power to get from 680 to 1000mph. Hopefully the car was still accelerating hard when Andy backed off the throttle.
Exactly this. Without pioneers we would still be in caves on the Savannah. The whole point of pushing technological boundary’s is progress.
Most major advancements come long after the fact, for the mean time we should all be glad people still dream and attempt the impossible.
As I man who cried watching the world’s fastest indian, I might be slightly emotionally invested in all things land speed….
‘for engineering and the hell of it’
I may be biased as my father was involved in Thrust, the JCB DM and Bloodhound, but having a multi-disciplinary science and engineering project can only be of benefit. Cash costs for this project are a fraction of the annual F1 team budgets. The car is a high speed lab, with practical research benefits to future CFD and acoustic modelling, regardless of the advances made on metallurgy vis a vis the wheels.
National esteem.
The enthusiasts here have completely missed the point. Projects like this bring no ‘benefits’ at all, that wouldn’t be gained from smart R&D focussed on dealing with AGW. It makes no more sense than creating the world’s fastest tractor, which is just an indulgence for testosterone-fuelled male brains. Why wouldn’t STEM students want to join an engineering revolution in green energy? Their children will be inspired to follow in their footsteps.
If kids die through not wearing a seatbelt, their physics education is a tragic failure.
“This outstanding achievement is the culmination of an inspirational technology development, achieved through tremendous dedication, expertise and perseverance.” The technology puts the majority of the world’s offshore fossil fuel reserves in reach of electrification, allowing offshore hydrocarbons to be harvested more efficiently. “It is the result of intensive collaboration by over 200 scientists and engineers.” – Money and expertise being pointlessly squandered.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/abb-subsea-system-offshore/
Some caring, careful thought is all that’s required to redirect those 200 scientists to the intelligent pursuit of a world where hydrocarbons are left in the ground, until the time comes when they may be consumed for greater benefit:-
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/416786/global-warming-vs-the-next-ice-age/
The International Space Station is an exemplary, inspirational scientific endeavour. A ‘race’ to put a man on Mars is a good example of Man’s foolhardy hubris.
If we were to think of the convention of powering transport with fossil fuels as the current ‘rules’, it would put a different complexion on the oft-quoted words. . .
“Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise (wo)men”!
>A jet engine mounted on a go kart, is that really innovation ?>
try putting a fighter jet engine on a go kart and see what happens.
just reading this I cant help think that one of the wonderful things about engineering is that the engineering details are almost independent of the overall concept so a car racing across a desert may not have any practical applications but even if we look just at the airflow between the base of the car and the desert flashing past only a few centimeters away we have a transonic/ supersonic fluid flow regime which (despite significant differences in pressure & Re) is a somewhat of an analog to the situation between a hyperloop car and the wall of a partially evacuated tube at similar speeds. Driven surfaces in close proximity at high speed would be expected to suffer large losses so apart from the inside of some compressors or turbines (which are usually operating at much higher pressures and temperatures) and some high speed flywheel energy storage systems (which usually operate at much closer to absolute vacuum) this is a situation that doesn’t happen often in industry.
So this impractical car may genuinely benefit the future of trains in a way that cannot be modeled by experiments with planes or boats.
It seems strange to point this out in an engineering publication but I suppose the ultimate point of a project like this is to attract attention and engage discussion to let people see that the hard engineering of the machined & printed structures is a physical expression of understanding distilled from modeling and testing of entirely different structures and materials and systems that after being brought together as a rocket car will itself be analyzed and measured and the understanding from this fed into new models and equations and expressed in whatever form is meaningful to us at the time.
Admittedly at first sight this particular project involves a very noisy, shiny, pointy expression of engineering but these are really just the clothes that apart from some aerodynamic elements are nothing to do with the engineering understanding underneath and the human project management operational & organizational elements that make the project real.
Your point does intrigue me though and ties in to some extent with “another Steve’s” comment “Engineering is so much more than this, these sort of projects have had their day, time to move on”
Which makes me wonder, if you are reading this…
What would you envisage a more forward looking engineering project looking like ?
I am truly inspired by the Bloodhound team – stretching technology to the edge and the massive risk being undertaken by Andy Green. I salute you all – good luck.
Therefore, disappointed to see some of the comments above.
Before naysaying just stop and think what the; Concorde, Apollo, Boeing 747, and Lockheed SR71 (apologies for omitting other great achievements) engineering teams went on to do afterwards?
Standing on the shoulders of giants…or what?
Reading the above there seems to be two camps those in favour and those against. To those who are against, yes much of the engineering can be done on computer (and was), but without putting the theory into practice it will remain a theory. It’s also hard to get the next generation interested in engineering by showing them a computer simulation, a car doing 1000kph now they’re interested. However, there is a negative to this and that is the burning of fossil fuel which is not good for the planet. will the negatives be outweighed by the positives, I hope so but only time will tell.
One of the contributors here questioned whether Brunel and others would have come up with their inventions if they hadn’t pushed the boundaries. The difference is that Brunel’s amazing bridges, railways, steamships and even portable hospitals were not only pushing boundaries they were fulfilling needs. The chief “need” met by a 1000 mph vehicle appears to be to excite the younger generation.
Correct – and hopefully/possibly set them on a career in engineering, where they can become the next Brunel, Whittle, Tesla etc.
Sounds like fun, actually..
I can very much confirm that the Bloodhound project is inspiring many young engineering students at all levels. I’m a lecturer in an FE college and initially, I was surprised that many of my students did not really engage with the team, but every day I showed them the video reports of each day of testing and created a YouTube user name for them to comment and real interest grew quickly. For the last few days of testing I found that many of my students had already seen the latest video and were keen to tell everyone how it was going. Things like this can inspire a lifetime of interest and learning.
I would like to sit down with the whole team and its financial backers and suggest to them all that undoubted talents and practical skills would be better targetted and finding solution to problem embedded in the Climate change issues. Their own children and grandchildren are who they should be working for, not a go-faster on four wheels adding further toxins to the atmosphere. Bin the lot and work on capturing sunlight instead. When will man ever learn.
I imagine the true value to our next generation will become obvious and deeply appreciated once the attempt has been completed successfully and all data analyzed, plus current guarded secrets revealed to the world.
A moments inspiration can last a lifetime
I find the Bloodhound project to be a very useful example when discussing Ethics with my undergraduate engineering students. We use it as an example of the worst kind of engineering project – utterly pointless and pure vanity. When we’re in a climate emergency we need to be directing all our efforts to solving the most important issue facing humanity. Instead, we’re making a rocket car. A ROCKET CAR, really!!! For what! What a waste of engineering talent. Oh, and as one of my female students said, you couldn’t get a more blatant hyper-phallic symbol.
Sadly, Aleksandar is quite right – it’s a commercially pointless exercise too. The seeds were sown when the UK government scrapped the R&I budget of the CEGB in 1989:-
“Research was always the hidden side of the electricity supply industry. At peak the CEGB had up to 3,000 staff working on a bewildering variety of issues from nuclear physics to fish populations, reaction kinetics of burning coal to aerodynamics. The CEGB’s first wind turbine, installed in 1982 at Carmarthen Bay, had an output of 200kW. Later, larger machines were tested on the site. A much larger, one MW turbine was commissioned at Richborough in Kent in 1989.“ Then what?
The countries and companies that now dominate European windpower, then invested the millions required in Research and Innovation to reap the rewards. (but not massage egos!)
A university department, paid to work on Bloodhound, told me they didn’t have a ‘specialist’ to help build a (patentable) new design of suspension, which gives any chassis greater stability. . . !
I once was involved with a ‘project’ that was literally strapping a pulse jet to a skateboard.
It was ‘interesting’ in a ‘thank god noone was killed’ kind of way.
It’s very easy to criticise a project like this but there will be plenty of benefits over the long term and people want to do it because it’s exciting. They could all just sit on their sofas and complain about everything and do nothing; the exact same as all of their critics.