The supersonic race started in 1990 when Richard Noble, current holder of the World's Land Speed Record at 633.468mph, and Craig Breedlove met on the Bonneville Salt Flats - they had come to watch Art Arfons develop his last Green Monster LSR car. Breedlove turned to Noble and told him that he had just bought two J-79 8 series engines and he was going to build a third Spirit of America, capable of 700 mph and then Mach 1. This was just what was needed to stimulate the build of the third Thrust car. The Challenge was on!
Whilst Breedlove moved ahead using property profits to build his car, Noble was unable to start until the other half of the partnership was complete - and it took two years for the chance meeting with aerodynamicist Ron Ayers. Thereafter the team quickly formed, and with Castrol funding the crucial and inspirational aerodynamic research was completed by Ayers, using CFD on a Cray 92 supercomputer and 13 live supersonic rocket model firings at Pendine. Results of both tests convincingly validated each research method - and the project could go ahead and build.
With 173 companies on the programme the build is estimated to have taken 60,000 man hours and two intensely frustrating years with only 33% of the funding from corporate sponsorship. On May 1st the project moved to its current site, Q Shed at Farnborough, and the project leapt ahead with the help of around 20 additional highly skilled technicians working on the project between their normal work shifts.
A key feature of the project is its own promotional programme which involves the huge Digital 300 page Internet site (1.2M accesses - 50-100,000/week) which is now one of the more popular in Europe - and the Mach 1 Club which now boasts some 4000 members - the latter producing around 10% of the project spend.
In November 1995 Breedlove had secured the huge backing of Shell which included a $14M promotion through 10,000 retail sites - the current workload is so great that Breedlove has had to take on additional telephone staff to cope with the traffic.
Whilst it is now clear that the two cars will compete on the Black Rock Desert this autumn for the greatest car race of the decade - Breedlove has a huge advantage in that he has the use of Edwards Air Force Base with the 5 mile desert surface Shuttle runway available for development purposes.
With this in mind the Thrust team set out to find a new desert track which would provide development facilities for the team before Black Rock. Andrew Noble set up a huge programme which involved testing 12 similar deserts in 3 continents.
Jafr was found as a result of the BBC Tomorrow's World programme on the desert search. Ken Waughman, sitting at home, saw the programme and remembered his days in Jordan driving the water truck across the Al Jafr desert as part of the British Survey Team in 1946. He immediately made contact and thanks to an official approach to HRH Prince Feisal additional information was received and the first visit made in January 1996. A track of 7.5 miles was found with exceptional hardness and consistency equal to the best of Black Rock. Several desert crossings had to be filled to enable the track to be viable. Test fills were undertaken by the Royal Jordanian Air Force with highly satisfactory results. Subsequent visits have enabled the course to be extended to 10.2 miles with 650 mph potential for ThrustSSC. The team is to be accomodated at the nearby Al Jafr military base with accomodation, hangar facilities and runway length for the project's HeavyLift Antonov 124.
The advance party leaves on June 20th and after completion of engine tests and slow speed runs at Farnborough, the 25 man and 10 vehicle team will follow - around July 14th in the HeavyLift Antonov.
The car will be on display at the Goodwood Festival of Speed from the evening of Friday June 21st until Sunday June 23rd, accompanied by the support vehicles and ThrustSSC Team. For more details, please see our Roadshows page.
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The author of this article, Richard_Noble, is the ThrustSSC's Project Leader and held the World Land Speed Record from 1983 to 1997. |
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