High winds and extensive sandstorms on the Black Rock Desert brought delays to the ThrustSSC team and to Craig Breedlove's Spirit of America team. The ThrustSSC highest speed to date is 624mph (Mach 0.82) achieved on run 45 on 12th September. ThrustSSC is currently undergoing routine inspection before attempting the higher speed runs - so far no damage has been found.
Yesterday sand storms reduced visibility to virtually zero and slowed the engineering work on ThrustSSC which was due to be complete on the 17th. The sandstorms also created mini sand dunes on the parallel ThrustSSC and Spirit of America tracks which will have to be removed before restarting operations. The ThrustSSC team will be relining three of the 13 mile gypsum marking lines ready for operations tomorrow (19th September) when two over 600mph runs are planned.
Today's work includes a compressor wash to remove desert sand from ThrustSSC's two Rolls-Royce Spey engines.
The USAC timekeepers are now on site at Black Rock, the timing equipment has now been installed and the timekeepers are ready.
Spirit of America made two runs on the 16th but suffered engine problems - the third run was aborted. It was hoped that Spirit of America would run again today but we have heard unofficially that this is unlikely.
The ThrustSSC objective this autumn is to achieve the first supersonic World Land Speed Record - which means a peak speed in excess of 750mph. To achieve this the speeds above 650mph (Mach 0.85) have to be increased in small increments which is expected to start later this week.
ThrustSSC Internet Web Site is now achieving 1.8 million hits a week from 100 countries.
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