Well July was supposed to be the month we went to Jordan. The build team believed it - they kept telling me it was just a few more days - the military in Jordan believed it, Andrew Noble at Jafr believed it (because he was telling the military in Jordan) - and the Independant most definitely believed it because last Friday their 3 page feature told the World that we are in Jordan. And the Evening Standard was best of all - they reported that the first few runs in Jordan had been a great success!

Well I'm here in Farnborough and further down the hangar is ThrustSSC with people swarming all over her. We are putting in well over 1000 man hours a week, week after week and she's still not finished! We are suffering from the Finishing Syndrome; remember all those thousands of small jobs that got left until later? Well, they have to be finished now! And all those jobs that everyone said: "That's just a piece of p...!" Well they are most definitely NOT because as the car is finally nearing completion the Finishing Syndrome means that firstly they have to be done in a strict sequence because otherwise you can't finish the next job, and secondly as more and more of the car gets finished there is less and less room in which to cram people and equipment - so the efficiency falls right off. But one thing never changes - the money keeps flying - even faster than it ever did before. And somehow we are keeping pace - but the tension is terriffic.

Magic people have joined the team - Robbie Kraike left the Navy after 12 years of acquiring superb workshop skills. He and his wife Susan decided to spend two years doing something special so he just rolled up in his beautiful Caterham 7 and started work. Being a submariner by experience Robbie is happiest working in confined spaces like fuel tanks and there is a constant flow of jokes about periscopes, pinging asdic and blowing tanks. Leigh Remfrey who spent so much of his time sorting out the fuel system left his job to join us full time spending most of July with Jonathan Tubb of Fuel Safe who redesigned and sorted out the tank design against an appalling timescale. I am not quite certain where Glynne Bowsher sleeps: he can be found designing at his computer in Q Shed late at night, or in A+Z Engineering in Caversham who seem to supply an endless overnight machining service. There is a vague rumour (probably spread by his family) that he lives in Birmingham!

Al Harkness, Steve Wiltshire, Nick Cooper and Paul Remfrey have got the engine situation under control devoting their entire holidays to the project and made the very sensible decision to switch to air start which has meant more redesign, more struggle and more cursing as yet another set of large bore pipes have to be routed around the engines-there is so little room now that we cannot take the airstart pipe to the far engine through the centre of the car. But the outcome is going to be improved reliability and lower risk when compared with fiery GTS (Gas Turbine Starter) units we planned to use before.

Jerry Bliss spends his life surrounded by computers and his tremendous electronics team - all of whom put in the most godawful hours. The huge collection of electronics test and support gear that has built up over the weeks is testament to how the suppliers view his clear thinking and wicked humour! The electronics department appears to run very smoothly with a huge inflow of components resulting in a net outflow of grey boxes and 5 kilometres of wiring. From time to time lamps glow on ThrustSSC which sends Jerry into a frenzy of Olympic Gold Medal exultation. Andy Green just raises an eyebrow.

God knows what we would do without Sandy Glen and Pirtek - in fact the blue and white Pirtek Transit has become a fixture in Q Shed as the Pirtek team wrestle with the hoses and connectors for the car's complex hydraulic system which provides suspension damping and active ride. 10 days ago Al Harkness reluctantly condemned the G-Force davits which had handled so many engine lifts that they were suffering from metal fatigue. We needed a forklift with a three tonne capacity - quick. Within 2 days Pete Ross had found Merlo and there was a smiling Chris Oliver with a brand new Merlo on loan for three months. Team clothing is being supplied by TUF and the workshop team insist on wearing Technasales badges - since Chris Campbell of Technasales has just kept supplying all the consumables they needed: drills, belts, polishes, blades - and immediately to save downtime. When I asked Chris about this huge continuous commitment for such a small Farnborough company he just replied "Just got to be done!"

Most people are now working at least 70-80 hours a week with many like Jerry running 100+, but although its clear that people are getting very tired the quality and determination doesn't drop off. Jerry sometimes can be heard to kick a door in utter frustration , but otherwise the machine works very steadily and smoothly, backed by Pete who is running the support infrastructure

Pete works seven days and I have never seen him frustrated even when Al asked him to source a Spey electronics test box. The boxes had all been destroyed when the RAF cleared out the F4 Phantoms - but Pete and Robert calmly found the only surviving boxes in California.

Mike Horne's carbon bodywork is just brilliant - almost all the carbon is on the car now and the quality is outstanding. Typically Mike and Chris can be seen at the front of the car dressed in white overalls with hoods and masks grinding down yet another carbon panel. "Got to work all night Saturday," says Mike, "It's the only time I can get the overhead panels properly bedded." So whilst most sane sensible and well paid people are in bed - the lights are on all night in Q Shed. The guards on the DRA Farnborough Main Gate are also raising eyebrows "Did you know they worked all night again, Richard?"

At the far end of the hangar is Brian Palmer. Brian is blissfully happy with his Scania trucks. The huge supermarket box wagon has now been turned into our air-conditioned ICL computer internet workshop - and the ThrustSSC transporter has just been delivered from Tiltec: Jim Cramp has designed and built the transporter trailer which has turned out as large as an aircraft carrier. It will sweep all before it on the roads including the inevitable Police escort - and will be absolutely and totally impossible to overtake.

To load ThrustSSC we need 18 metres of ramps before the car even reaches the trailer!

Martyn Davidson should be the one with the long face - he has the logistics job and the huge packing lists for Jordan - which includes all the vehicles and spares as diverse as Spey engines, explosive parachure deployment squibbs, and frozen food. Last week there was a crisis over the export licence but the DTI went for it and issued the licence in days. Martyn is now at the 75 tonne mark and holding! A posse of wonderful Mach 1 Club volunteers are standing by to pack.

Any same businessman or accountant would be asking the acid question How is all this going to happen? How is the organisation going to sustain this huge growth and huge expenditure - surely it must run out of money and fail! There is no government backing, there is no lottery money, there is no tobacco money - there is no Big Money!

Well it is all about people - hundreds and hundreds of them. The Mach 1 Club people now totalling over 4,000 have bought vast numbers of Jordan certificates. The sponsors have bought huge numbers of Board Room certificates. The ThrustSSC Jordan models are selling all over the World via the Internet. We have just moved a thousand through my home this week!

Oh, and remember the Land-Rover 4x4 Discoverys - well there's one Hell of a story! For those of you who missed the last episode, Rover decided to back the project and pay the sponsorship in Discoverys. But just not ordinary Discoverys - a special edition of three with every conceivable extra and painted in the special ThrustSSC 50% matt colour BASF Supersonic Black.

We promoted the Discoverys in a double page spread in Autocar Magazine with Andy surrounded by ThrustSSC parts and looking uncharacteristically mournful. This immediately resulted in bids totalling over £350,000 - Obviously Andy has to look mournful more often and we need a larger supply of Thrust Discoverys!

Elsewhere, you will read Al Harkness' story of the engine runs at Pyestock - great work was done there, but at my end there was the absolutely frightening open ended financial implications. These engines burn 2 gallons of fuel each second and all this work has to be paid for. You can't possibly tell the engine team to stop because we haven't got the money - they have to keep going and somehow you just have to find the money. Otherwise we are stuck with unproven engines. Somehow we all managed to hang on, desperately trying to finance the test bed time while Al and the engine team got the engines up to standard. We made it in the end.

Back in the US Breedlove tells me he is having financial problems, which I am not sure I believe. After all the car has been launched with 300 journalists turning up, it is covered in logos and is about to run at Bonneville - when the salt dries. He has a huge main sponsor in Shell and he doesn't have to worry about creating this vast marketing effort to create the financial resource. He tells me that he has set aside September for the challenge.

One of his sponsor ads which was widely published claimed that Thrust was being sponsored by the British Government. I rang his sponsor to explain that the way the money was flowing we are sponsoring the British Government and the sponsor kindly agreed to discontinue the ad.

The US rumours are now running really wild. A Los Angeles journalist called last night and told me that the rumour was that John Major was personally backing the project and that the Jafr Desert was considered as far too soft for high speed runs. I explained that John Major had once spent three minutes on our stand at the 1994 Motor Show and that we had had a friendly letter from his department recently. Jafr I explained is as hard as the best of Black Rock far more consistent but shorter.

And then there was the London ad agency that was masquerading as a small video production unit chasing down footage of the Budweiser Rocket. I gave them an explanation of this complicated and unfortunate episode in LSR history and asked them why they wanted it. It's for Budweiser they said! "OK then you can make contact with Stan Barrett and suggest he comes and runs the car again with independant audit and credible timing!"

The American Eagle Team has just made contact wanting to know about Black Rock. I explained that for Black Rock to be a success, we have to have a Permit, the desert has to be in good condition and the cars have to be credible. The Permit we will know about very soon, the desert condition will become clear at the end of August - but no one yet has a credible performing car. Neither ThrustSSC nor Spirit of America has turned a wheel yet and the best thing that all challengers can do is go and get credible audited desert performance - quick! I hope we can achieve that by the end of the month or early September.

Back at Farnborough the build team now seems to have broken through the worst of the grind and once again there were smiles and banter around the meeting table - something we haven't seen for a few weeks. The installed engine tests will happen next week and Thrust SSC will run for the first time a few days later. A number of good runs on the Farnborough runway, and we can call in the HeavyLift Volga-Dnepr Antonov from South America, load it up in four hours and be on our way to Jordan.

You can bet your life it won't be that simple...

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