Richard Noble and the ThrustSSC team would like to express their heartfelt relief to Craig Breedlove and his wife Marilyn for his safe escape from extreme personal danger when the Spirit of America car went out of control on the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA on Monday 28th.
The ThrustSSC team are currently in Al Jafr, Jordan, preparing the ThrustSSC supersonic car and the 10.2 mile course for high speed runs early next month. The car has developed a fuel system fault which is being rectified, and the desert surface requires the removal of a considerable quantity of small alluvial stones which could damage the ThrustSSC's wheels or be ingested into the Rolls-Royce Spey engines. This requires a very considerable manual effort to clear the desert 170 mile track system.
The Spirit of America accident contrasts the very different approaches by the two teams competing for the first to achieve Mach 1 on land. Whilst Breedlove, a man of huge Land Speed Record experience and extreme personal courage, decided to design and build his personal concept of a supersonic car, the ThrustSSC team have created their design using 2.5 years of supersonic rocket modelling and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) evaluation. The two design channels have resulted in very different vehicles for the same task - ThrustSSC is a 10 tonne twin jet powered car of 110,000hp and Breedlove's is a needle sharp 47ft dart of car of 4.5 tonnes and 47,000hp. Detailed explanations of the research are available on the ThrustSSC internet site (http://thrustssc.digital.co.uk).
The two different approaches continue with the running practice. ThrustSSC will be developed in Jordan using small increment speed increases to maximise the data acquisition and minimise personal risk to driver Andy Green. As stated by Ron Ayers - ThrustSSC's aerodynamicist - ThrustSSC is a high speed research vehicle before it becomes a record breaker. Possibly in an attempt to beat the inevitable onset of winter Breedlove embarked on a programme of rapid speed build up with increases of as much as 130mph between successive runs.
As the cars speeds increase into the transonic region the aero loads which normally increase as the square of the speed start to increase even more rapidly and in a complex manner. Craig Breedlove states that he was travelling at 675 mph which equates to approximately Mach 0.9 or 90% of the speed of sound. Eyewitness reports state that the Spirit of America ran into difficulties just before reaching the second timing light and then flicked right toward the spectator line - travelling two miles before coming to a halt. Whilst it is too early for a full report to be announced it is likely that the accident will have involved a combination of transonic and stability effects.
Also starting to run on Australia's Lake Gairdner is Australian Rosco McGlashan who is reported to be trying for Mach 1 also.
Ends.
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