You know when the project is beginning to pull well - it's when things don’t go as you expected and you have to move quickly. But you can only move quickly if there is someone out there who has the courage to respond to the deal - fast.

Saturday November the 9th was such a day. ThrustSSC fitted with its Dunlop desert wheels was to be loaded on the Tiltec trailer for the first time. It loaded easily with the rubber tyres - so the aluminium desert wheels should be no problem. Wrong! The aluminium wheels cut and tore the conveyor belting we were using to protect the ramps and as the wheels slipped they could not steer. It took 8 hours to load the car - and the writing was on the wall: even if we got loading down to two hours, we would have to spend 8 hours each day loading/unloading the car for every day we chose to run at Jafr. ThrustSSC would have to move outside the Jafr military base and stay on the desert. And so would we! But how do you create a fully operational hangar and workshop on the desert in just two days?

(Aireshelta being erected. Photo: Jeremy Davey)

A phone call to Richard Bailey of Aireshelta in Huddersfield struck gold. "I’ll do it for you guys just because I know who you are and it demonstrates the rapid deployment capability of the product. We have a demo unit available and it will be available in 12 hours packed and ready to go. You can have it for three weeks!"

The demo unit is a 40ft long by 25ft wide inflatable hangar.

So far so good but how do you get 500kgs of inflatable building 2,500 miles in 1.5 days? Mr Munib Toukan of Royal Jordanian was enjoying the call "Come on Richard - give me the punch line - what do you want?" The normally unflappable Munib was plainly poleaxed by the idea of 500kgs of valuable cargo space "I will see the President". Within 10 minutes the call came back "Mr Toukan says that the deal is on!"

But how do you get a whole building through customs in a foreign country within two hours of arrival? Mike Sedman the Air Attache at the British Embassy in Amman had an idea and two hours later he called back. "The Ambassador has agreed to guarantee that the Aireshelta will be re-exported on the Antonov - so you are on!"

(ThrustSSC being towed into the Aireshelta. Photo: Jeremy Davey)

Andrew Noble raced the 275 Km to Amman to meet the incoming flight. The Aireshelta was there - it cleared Customs almost before the flight landed - but the transport failed to materialise and a different truck had to be hired. He made it to Jafr by 10am the next morning and by 2.15pm ThrustSSC was in her hangar. It had taken 48 hours since Richard Bailey had said "Yes!".

It was a tremendous achievement by everyone - but particularly those wonderful people who said: "Yes- well go for it!"

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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