5 things you didn’t know about...ThrustSSC
1. In 1990, land speed record holder Richard Noble met fellow racing enthusiast and 1960s lane speed record setter Craig Breedlove. He was planning on challenging Noble’s then record of 633.47mph. By the time Breedlove and Noble parted ways, they were both planning to attack the record with newbuilds. Breedlove went on to develop his Spirit of America, Noble the so-called ThrustSSC.
2. Noble worked with aerodynamicist Ron Ayers. The first challenge was to design a test bed. While there was data available on how a car reacts at Mach 0.83 from Noble’s record Thrust2 ride, there was no supersonic wind tunnel with rolling roads. Help came from the University of Swansea, UK. The aircraft engineering faculty had a Cray 92 – a supercomputer with a maximum working memory capacity of a now underwhelming 8GB. The team ran the Flite software that was normally used to test plane designs for their calculations.
3. When determining the design for a super fast car, the engine is of utmost importance. The team had to decide between rocket and jet propulsion – they decided to go with heavier jet engines, two Rolls-Royce Spey engines, which were also used to propel the RAF Phantom jets, making the car more stable when running on high speeds.
4. The team used the Internet and crowdfunding to fund the project. One of the sponsors had suggested early to build a website that would document the project – which today exists in its archived version – and serve as an online project newspaper with regular articles.
5. On 15 October 1997, ThrustSSC reached speeds of Mach 1.01, which was agreed with the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile to be the minimum speed to make an official record. In the end, ThrustSSC reached Mach 1.020, 763.035mph, and the land speed record was set for years to come.
To find out more see Ines Nastali’s Material Marvels in the upcoming August issue of Materials World.
