Sjeltur

On October 15, 1997, at Black Rock Desert, Nevada, British RAF-pilot Andy Green drove the Thrust SuperSonic Car to speeds above the speed of sound. That day he did two runs, achieving a speed of 759.33 mph (Mach 1.015) on the first run, and 766.61 mph (Mach 1.020) on the second. That makes Green the current holder of the land speed record with 763.035 mph (1228 km/h). But it seems this record will be broken within a few years, an American/Canadian team is working on a high speed car, and Green himself might be the driver of an even faster car.

The North American Eagle Project is a cooperation of American and Canadian engineers, pilots and mechanics. They are using a chassis of an F-104A Starfigher jet, powered with a General Electric LM-1500 turbojet. The goal is to reach a speed of 800 mph (1287 km/h). The team has already done some test runs, some time after Labor Day the car will be transported to Black Rock Desert to perform another series of test runs. A date has not been set yet when they will attempt to attack the current land speed record.

Meanwhile, the British team that designed and built the Thrust SuperSonic Car is working on an even more ambitious project, the Bloodhound SuperSonic Car. Their goal is to achieve a speed of 1000 mph (1609 km/h), or more. Andy Green will be the driver, and if the team gets the funds to continue the project, they expect an attempt to break to current land speed record already by 2011, again at Black Rock Desert. Leader of the British team is Richard Noble, he broke the land speed record himself in 1983 with the Thrust2, reaching a speed of 633 mph. The world land speed record is now more than 25 years in British hands, between Noble and Green. The new Bloodhound SSC will be powered with an Eurojet EJ200 jet engine, thrusting the car to a speed of 300 mph. Then a hybrid rocket engine will be ignited, accelerating the car to 1000 mph. Wow!