Thrust SSC - the Castrol-supported car that aims to be the first through the Sound Barrier against stiff US competition - is the result of the most complex and demanding project ever to aim at breaking the Land Speed Record.
Thrust SSC itself is the longest and most powerful car ever to be built, at 54ft (16.4 metres) in length and with 50,OOOlbs (22,680kg) of thrust it dwarfs Thrust 2, which set the current record of 633.468mph (1019.44Okmh) in October1983. Thrust 2 was no lightweight itself, measuring more than 27ft (8.2 metres) long and producing 17,SOOlbs (7938kg) of thrust.
Apart from these two very different vehicles, each built to achieve different goals, the two projects initiated by Richard Noble - the Fastest Man on Earth - are very different.
Noble started Thrust 2 with only £175, the proceeds from selling the broken remains of his first prototype, Thrust 1, to a scrap dealer after a series of rolls had destroyed it during a test run at the airfield RAF Fairford, England in March 1977. From that seed capital Noble built up his dream, employing John Ackroyd to design and oversee construction of Thrust 2 while he knocked on the doors of industry in a relentless search for finance.
Thrust 2 was essentially a project that suited the aggressive environment of the nineteen eighties, but Thrust SSC takes a fresh approach that is more in keeping with the more cautious Nineties.
'SSC is a completely different sort of project,' Noble confirms, 'and we are tackling it in a totally different manner. With Thrust 2 we were essentially looking for money. But with SSC an awful lot of companies are really getting involved by doing design and construction work.
'This time around we are not going out with the begging bowl. Instead, we are trading our services just like everyone else does in what is a very difficult market.
'When we planned the Thrust SSC marketing we realised that the project is seen as higher risk than conventional sports - e.g. Formula 1, and we would have to create a very powerful global package which would deliver a far greater return. The television audience is moving from the passive television age to the participative video game age - so we had to create the first ever global interactive promotion. Today's television audience is educated, inquisitive and it is intolerant of poor quality production. So we had to change and produce a promotion which enables the viewers of the BBC footage, transmitted to 96 countries, to interact with the project direct as they follow the project from research right through to completion. The interactive side of the project is provided by Digital and British Telecom who have built us an internet server with 1m/day access capability. The software now amounts to some 15 Mb and is updated very regularly.
The web site has become something of a cult and has attracted over 350,000 accesses from 60 countries - and is currently running at the rate of 36,000 access/week. Back in the UK, the project's Mach 1 club has just under 3,000 very determined members and is growing very rapidly. The November Club Open Day is something of an embarassment as 650 members want to come.'
Part of Noble's current job is merchandising Thrust SSC wares, such as model cars, books and posters, as part of this new philosophy. Only a week after four days in all weathers at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, the tireless SSC crew was on duty again at RAF Fairford for the International Air Tattoo.
'We exist,' said Noble, 'not because we are a charity or because we seek charity but because we are satisfying the demand for an extremely effective promotional service.'
The diecast model maker Lledo has hard evidence of just what is going on. 11,500 models of their diecast Thrust SSC model have been sold in four months.
At the recent London Motor Show, where the partially complete Thrust SSC was shown for the first time, over 250,000 people visited and wore out the 300 metre display stand, ran 776 driver sessions on the DERA Thrust SSC simulator and purchased 7,996 items of merchandise.
If that was all Noble had to do, he would be a busy man. But merchandising is only a small part of the job. Effectively, it is his weekend relaxation. During the week he has a series of challenging tasks to occupy working days that certainly do not follow conventional 'nine to five' practise.
Primarily, there is the constant search for further finance, the negotiations with sponsors, the endless round of meetings, proposals, counter-proposals and fresh meetings. And then there are the tasks of servicing interest from the electronic and written media, of keeping happy the project's sponsors, who now number well over 100, and of pulling together the numerous technical threads of the project.
Once Thrust SSC emerged from its research and development phase, Noble started to create a complex network of communication and engineering. SSC is being put together rather like the European Airbus on a subcontract basis, where the utilisation of central CAD (Computer Aided Design) techniques allows separate workforces to carry out their roles in the knowledge that the compatibility and fit of their respective parts can be guaranteed regardless of the complications of geographic location. Setting up a complex videoconferencing link between the various parts, in preparation for a press conference, is the sort of thing Noble gets sorted out before most businessmen have stepped into their chauffeur-driven limousines for the journey to work.
This is another crucial difference between the two projects. Whereas Noble put together his own team to construct Thrust 2, this time the core work is being undertaken by G-Force Engineering. This company played a key role in making the complex fully-instrumented prototype scale models used in the critical initial stages to verify the aerodynamic concept during very high speed rocket sled trials at the Proof and Experimental Establishment at Pendine in Wales.
G-Force is a specialist engineering company which has an established reputation for excellence in the demanding and uncompromising world of international motorsport. G-Force is active in both Formula One and Indycar racing, as well as other categories, but its link with Noble was forged by director James Morton, who worked on Noble's ARV Super 2 light aircraft project which followed Thrust 2.
'We quickly realised,' said Noble of the decision to go with the company, 'that down there at G-Force is an absolute goldmine of people with terrific skills.'
G-Force's role is not only to assemble Thrust SSC, which is nearing completion at its workshops on the south coast of England, but also to liaise with Noble to integrate the work done by outside parties. One of the fundamental elements here is the 'World Class Coventry' initiative. Coventry University and a number of hi-tech companies in that English city are working flat out to complete the suspension components for SSC, and the University is co-ordinating this prolonged engineering effort via its Centre for Integrated Design.
The build process, of necessity a voracious monster, devours cash resources in the race to manufacture the car in time to run this season. And Noble is the man who must keep it fed constantly to maintain vital momentum, in time to run Thrust SSC for the first time in early 1996.
'This is,' he said with typical and commendable understatement, 'one hell of a project.'
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