
The Bloodhound Project – to set a 1000 mph land speed record - dmmalam
http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/
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mpnordland
I've been reading about this for years, when are they actually going to do it?

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pcunite
Nice video: [https://youtu.be/krcLNgLcF9Q](https://youtu.be/krcLNgLcF9Q)

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Theodores
There is so much wrong with this project that it beggars belief:

Comedy timing. This project is taking decades. The tortoise and hare story
really needs updating to include the ill-fated 'Bloodhound', maybe to become
'The Three Toes Sloth and the Bloodhound'. Or 'The Snail and the Bloodhound'.

Desperate sponsorship levels. Everything has to be on the car due to some
sponsorship arrangement. If Rolex made fluffy dice there would be some Rolex
Fluffy Dice hanging in the windscreen. Okay it is par for the course to have
some over-priced watchmaker sponsor efforts like this but whatabout the Jaguar
engine that now powers the fuel pump? Originally that was a Cosworth F1 engine
but Cosworth quit F1 some years ago and no longer needed to be associated with
the Bloodhound money pit. So they get a Jaguar engine instead. At least the
Jaguar engine works without there having to be scores of engineers needed to
fire it up. However, this raises questions as to why they needed an F1 engine
in the first place, or why they need a special engine from Jaguar, when any
performance engine from any consumer grade sportscar would do fine,
particularly if you let any tuning shop do a bit of tuning on it.

The cockpit comfort levels. In most motorsport the parts inside the cockpit
are off the shelf. Pedals, steering wheels, knobs and buttons inside the
'Bloodhound' are again made super-duper by companies on sponsorship deals.
Everything is custom crafted from things like titanium which is all very
interesting but not exactly necessary. Why can't those pedals be from some
Jaguar car, or a Toyota(!)? Next they will probably 'need' to be gold plated.
A swanky cockpit is just not needed.

The militarization of the project. In the UK most people have a dim view of
the military and really would not want their children to join the army when
they grow up. Yet this Bloodhound effort is a sort of army recruiting tool. I
don't see what this 'land speed record' has to do with killing beige coloured
people in oil rich countries, but yes, there is an unfortunate mix of 'army'
and 'school kids need to know about this'.

Waste of taxpayer money on the project through the military. We pay our taxes
so that the army can recruit petty thieves and other no hopers to go off to
foreign places and kill beige-coloured people so that we can keep the third
world war torn and poor. We don't pay the army to tinker about with pet
project land speed records.

There is no competition. It is not 1957 any more and nobody gives a toss
whether this white elephant of a project wins the land speed record 'for
Blighty', Queen and country. Frankly it is an embarrassment, maybe of interest
to some pre-pubescent teenagers with parents in the armed forces. Maybe if
there was to be a showdown between an American effort or a German effort then
there could be grounds for wanting to support 'team GB' and this awful
Bloodhound thing. But there is not. Nobody really cares about the land speed
record. It is irrelevant and there is nothing to be learned from it.

There is no new technology. Previous land speed records have had vaguely
notable technology innovations, but with Bloodhound all the bits and bobs are
aero parts that are not new. This is a plane that doesn't fly (although it
might do as those aerodynamics are dated - it has the 'Bernoulli effect' with
the low pressure air going over the 'car' providing 'lift').

It is not a 1000 mph car. The plan is to do 800 mph, with 'phase 2' being the
original design goal of 1000 mph.

It is not even a car. Originally land speed records had the power delivered at
the wheels. Strapping a second hand jet engine and some Norwegian rocket to
some glorified hand-cart is cheating.

It is a dubious vanity project with high shadenfreude potential - when it
fails to set any record due to some engineering oversight.

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PhantomGremlin
_In the UK most people have a dim view of the military and really would not
want their children to join the army when they grow up._

That's interesting. Only 75 years ago the UK came _oh so close_ to speaking
German, were it not for the military.

Do you believe that human nature has changed in such a short time? I don't. In
fact I think there are quite a few Ukrainians (and other Eastern Europeans)
right now who can only _wish_ they had a capable military to counteract that
little megalomaniac dictator in Russia.

The military doesn't exist solely to "kill beige-coloured people".

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EwanToo
It's not so much interesting as wrong. Most of Britain has a very high regard
for the military.

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ablation
This. From my experiences, I've seen nothing but high regard for the military
in Britain. Huge amounts of respect, even.

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DanBC
True, but the. This kind of stuff happens and makes me wondoer how rare this
kind of stuff if.

[http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/26/hospital-
move...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/26/hospital-moved-raf-
sergeant-over-fears-his-uniform-would-upset-patients)

