ThrustSSC

ThrustSSC, also spelt Thrust SSC (SuperSonic Car) by secondary sources, is a British jet-propelled car developed by Richard Noble, Glynne Bowsher, Ron Ayers and Jeremy Bliss.^[1]

ThrustSSC holds the World Land Speed Record, set on 15 October 1997, when it achieved a speed of 1,228 km/h (763 mph) and became the first car to officially break the sound barrier.

The car was driven by Royal Air Force fighter pilot Wing Commander Andy Green in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, United States. It was powered by two afterburning Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engines, as used in the British version of the F-4 Phantom II jet fighter. The car was 16.5 m (54 ft) long, 3.7 m (12 ft) wide and weighed 10.5 tons (10.7 t), and the twin engines developed a net thrust of 223 kN (50,000 lbf), a power output of 110,000 bhp (82MW),^[2] burning around 18 litres per second (4.0 Imperial gallons/s or 4.8 US gallons/s). Transformed into the usual terms for car mileages based on its maximum speed, the fuel consumption was about 5,500 l/100 km or 0.04 mpg U.S.

The record run in October 1997 was preceded by extensive test runs of the vehicle in Autumn 1996 and Spring 1997 in the Al-Jafr desert (located in Ma'an Governorate) in Jordan, a location unknown before for its capabilities as a test range for high speed land vehicles, with numerous advantages compared to the salt deserts of the Western United States.

After the record was set, the World Motor Sport Council released the following message:

The World Motor Sport Council homologated the new world land speed records set by the team ThrustSSC of Richard Noble, driver Andy Green, on 15 October 1997 at Black Rock Desert, Nevada (USA). This is the first time in history that a land vehicle has exceeded the speed of sound. The new records are as follows:

• Flying mile           1227.986 km/h (763.035 mph)
• Flying kilometre   1223.657 km/h (760.343 mph)

In setting the record, the sound barrier was broken in both the north and south runs.

Paris, 11 November 1997.

In 1983 Richard Noble had broken the world land speed record with his earlier car Thrust2, which reached a speed of 1,018 km/h (633 mph). Both ThrustSSC and Thrust2 are displayed at the Coventry Transport Museum in Coventry, England.

The date of Andy Green's record came exactly a half century and one day after Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in Earth's atmosphere, with the Bell X-1 research rocket plane on 14 October 1947.

Several teams are competing to break the record, including Richard Noble's Bloodhound SSC project and the North American Eagle project.

Run History

The complete run history is given below: ^[3]

See also

• List of vehicle speed records

Notes

References

• Richard Noble: Thrust: The Remarkable Story of One Man's Quest for Speed, Hardcover: Partridge, 1998, ISBN 1-85225-268-5; Paperback: Bantam, 1999, ISBN 0-553-81208-4

External links

• The Official Bloodhound SSC website Project - Successor of the ThrustSSC
• Official ThrustSSC website (no longer being updated)
• Photo-Diary by John Coppinger — including the aerial photo by Richard Meredith-Hardy showing the shock wave as ThrustSSC narrowly exceeds the speed of sound.
• Video of ThrustSSC in action
• Video shot from the air showing ThrustSSC in action
• ThrustSSC the car and the run
• ThrustSSC Photos Pictures from Blackrock, Nevada — 15 October 1997
• Coventry Transport Museum where ThrustSSC is on display