Building the fastest car in the world can inspire young engineers

A world record attempt to build the fastest car in the world is underway in an ordinary-looking industrial estate near Bristol, UK, under the watchful eye of pupils at 4,000 schools around the country.

“We’re halfway through building and about 80 per cent through the design work,” says Mark Elvin, an engineer and lead mechanical designer on the car, the Bloodhound SuperSonic (SSC).

Elvin is one of 60 designers, engineers and support staff working around the clock in a chilly warehouse to give the car as much thrust as possible, a task which involves strapping in a rocket, a Rolls-Royce jet engine and a Formula One racing engine. But alongside the technology challenges, the project is intended to be a source of inspiration to schoolchildren.

When complete, the Bloodhound should be able to travel across four and a half football pitches in one second.

“We have two attempts at the record. If we fail this year, we’ll go for it next year,” said Elvin, who previously worked as a design engineer on the Williams F1 team. The car will be taken to a desert in South Africa in August, where the aim is to reach 800mph and break the current land-speed record of 763mph, set in 1997.

Then in 2016, if all goes well, the car will return to the desert and do a speed run of 1,000mph (1,690 km/h), faster than a bullet.

Education drive

This is not one big vanity project, but an engineering adventure to motivate a new generation of students.

It is a Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon kind of moment, Elvin said, “A heck of a thing to pin an education programme on.”

In the 1960s in the US, universities saw a huge uptake in students enrolling in science and engineering on the back of the moon mission, and the Bloodhound gang wants to leave a similar mark.

“The project has a big group of ambassadors who go out to schools to meet children and teach them about the car,” Elvin explained. Nearly 4,000 schools throughout the UK are following the project through the Bloodhound Education Programme.

Technology pushed to its extremes

“We’ve taken known technologies [along with some cutting edge technologies] and stacked them together to take on an impossible challenge,” said Elvin.

The seven tonne pencil-shaped car is long, at 13.4 metres, but not very wide at a little over one metre. “We’re tight on space," Elvin said. There’ll certainly be no room for any passengers on the trip, if anyone was brave enough to want to thumb a lift.

The car’s cockpit is made from five different types of carbon fibre, while the steering wheel, made from titanium, is 3D printed. “It’s a complex shape, with lots of grooves and hollows fitted specifically to the driver’s hands, so we needed a tight design,” Elvin noted. Safety design will have to be rigorous too: the car will not be fitted with an ejector seat.

For the rocket, the project is piggybacking a design used by the European Space Agency, manufactured by Nammo, a Norwegian company. In return, Elvin and his colleagues will share secrets of the car’s fuel-efficient pump with Nammo.

The car’s wheels, which will need to spin at four times the rate of a F1 race car, will be the fastest in history.

Luxury car

Naturally, the project, seven years in the making and four years behind schedule, comes with a hefty bill. “We’re burning through cash: between £7- and £900,000 per month,” said Elvin. There have been shortfalls in the past and months with hand-to-mouth activity.

The total cost will be in the region of £25 million, a tab divided between generous backers and corporate sponsors. One of the largest expenses is the fuel bill, £1 million, for the plane that will have to transport 100 tonnes of equipment to South Africa.

But the greatest cost of completing the project? Jobs! “We’re all aware that if we successfully clinch the record, we’re making ourselves unemployed,” said Elvin. “We’d love to find another adventure afterwards to keep this team together.”

More on the Bloodhound SSC here