my name is mwd

Last night I was fortunate enough to get to listen Richard Noble, the man behind the the holders of the Land Speed Record for almost the last thirty years talk a little about their final assault on the title (which they currently hold), the None, designed to reach Mach 1.4, or 1000 mph.

It was a fascinating talk – even though the “who can piss highest up the wall” nature of it doesn’t particularly appeal, it does motivate some fascinating engineering. A big part of the project is also to try to promote engineering to school children too, as there’s currently a huge underflow of engineers. All the designs and data for the Bloodhound are fully open – perhaps the ultimate open hardware project – though a little harder to recreate than an arduino.

Anyway, in amongst all the engineering geekery I was amused by one particular design point, which gets home the sense of how different a scale they’re working on: the Bloodhound SSC contains a Cosworth Formula 1 race engine, and hugely advanced and optimised engine that puts out more power than most cars you’d see.

However, the Cosworth F1 engine in the Bloodhound SSC doesn’t drive the wheels – it just drives the fuel pump for the rocket engine in the car.

So to drive this one car, they take one of the most performant engines on the planet, and use it as a component for one half of the car’s propulsion system (in addition to the Rocket, it has a jet engine from a Eurofighter). It’s just a different scale of working.