Richard Noble is at it again and now he’s planning on breaking 1000mph in a car!. And it looks brilliant The hell with ya Button and Hamilton! That is real speed. And what a car! 800bhp (that’s Bugatti Veyron territory) operates as the starter motor, fuel pump and APU. That starts an afterburning EJ200 reheated turbofan (just like in a Typhoon fighter) and then they they light the rocket!. Just look at it…
It looks like it should be driven by Scott Tracey but it’s even better than that. The driver is Andy Green who got a first in maths from Oxford on an RAF scholarship and then graduated top of his class flying Phantoms. He also holds the current landspeed record in the previous Noble car ThrustSSC.
That’s how I imagined 2009 as a kid - Boys own heroes blasting across salt flats at Mach 1.4. Not a bunch of holier than though twats pootling around in their Toyota Priuses to recycle their organic quinoa jars and worrying their beards grey over their carbon footprints or some fecking endangered Patagonian goats.
Who has the more compelling vision - the rocket men or the windy-millers? If you have the wrong answer to that question then watch that the door doesn’t bang your tie-dyed ass on the way out.
And these rocket men are British blokes in a shed on a tight budget.
Brilliant!
OK, so I’m a bloke. Going really fast (and looking cooler than Steve McQueen in the process) give me a techno-stiffy.
But don’t dismiss the vision of the windy millers too easily. There is another potential technology that is even more stiffy-worthy.
Instapundit has said a few times that he’s all in favour of renewable energy sources, not because he’s a green but because fossil fuels are more valuable as chemical feedstocks than they are as sources of energy.
OK, so current technology requires we burn gas and coal to provide us with electricity and heat. Civilisation as we know it depends on that. But imagine what we could achieve if we could find alternative sources of heat/power, and use fossil fuels for other more lucrative uses. How wealthy would that make us?
P.S. Any chance of adding a “Preview” button to CC/Z comments?
This is what Gaia thinks of Priuses.
I am sorry, but I am a traditionalist.
It should be named bluebird.
I disagree Cats.
(a) Bluebird was the inhouse brand of the Campbells.
(b) Bloodhound was a massive and fast Cold War British SAM designed to defend the V-Bomber bases. So it’s a good name. Also (take note Kevin) both Bloodhounds (like the Prius) are hybrid powered.
You have a point RobtE which is why we ought to go nuclear.
Three engines! And the least powerful is a V10 ex-F1 job. As the Clarkson might say, POWER!
But the reliance on CFD (however necessary) would scare me witless. I’ve seen enough crap F1 cars over the last few seasons to know that sometimes CFD gets it wrong. Andy Green deserves a truckload of medals. This is pushing technology into the unknown just as much as sending blokes to the moon or testing the first atom bomb.
[...] folks have it more than others. I’ll let CCinZ’s Nick M. explain Richard Noble is at it again and now he’s planning on breaking 1000mph in a car!. And it [...]
Pendine sands , in S Wales, is where they used to hold the Land Speed Records, back in the 20s.
I had a driving lesson there, from my dad, when I was about 17.
Well it’s about 10 miles long, and I had gone through the gears and was up to about 85mph, when dad said,
This is far enough now son, turn here,
Er so I did!
How I didnt roll it I will never know!
Cut a great scar of a skid into the beach.
Dad never gave me any more driving lessons for some reason…