this man is trying to break 1,000 miles hour on land his name is Rosco mcglashan and he has so much passion and grit for Motorsport and Engineering that I think he might just do it I'm Rosco mcglashan and I'm going to be the fastest man on earth I spoke to him to understand how he's gone from a rocket powered 250 mph go-kart to designing a 200,000 horsepower vehicle with the potential to break 1,000 mph and the engineering behind it so we're talking about the land speed record here and that's a record that's been broken many times over the years so let's take a really brief look at how the cars have developed first ever land speed record was recorded in 1989 in France and I love this it was only 3 years after the first ever car was invented the car was actually powered by an electric motor and completed a flying kilometer in 57 seconds which is a massive 39.2 4 mph the competition then quickly raged on being broken another four times before passing through the 60 mph barrier with the first vehicle produced specifically for this record the Jame contant Just 4 months later it then took another 5 years to break through the 100 m hour barrier in 1904 with this 15 L machine that produced a massive 50 horsepower but it then took 23 years to break the 200 mph barrier with the beautiful Sunbeam 1,000 horsepower also called the slug this car had two 22 L aircraft engines and although it had 1,000 horsepower in its name it was actually closer to 900 the next Milestone was 300 mph and things were progressing quickly with this record only taking another 8 years to surpass with Malcolm Campbell of the wheel in 1935 so Malcolm hopes to be the first man to achieve a speed of 300 mph again this is a beautiful car this time using a 37 l Rolls-Royce V12 producing 2,300 horsepower so the next barrier to be broken was 400 mph in 1963 and this is when we get rid of the internal combustion engine and turn instead to Jets however it is worth noting that a top speed of 400 mph had already been surpassed by John Cobb in 1947 400 mph on the ground using 48 L of internal combustion engine although not across back-to- back runs which is required for the official record but it was Craig Breedlove who was officially the first person to break the 400 mph barrier Craig Breedlove wants to build and drive the world's fastest car and break the world land speed record Craig was driving the spirit of America a turbojet powered vehicle that got to 407 mph over 1 mile in 1963 but a record that was to be broken another four times in 1964 with Craig then being the first person to break the 500 mph barrier in the spirit of America Sonic 1 with a more powerful jet from an F4 Phantom 2 600 mph was broken through in 197 by the blue flame a rocket powered vehicle producing 22,000 of thrust pushing it to a top speed of just over 650 mph on October 23rd 1970 Gary gabelich secured himself one more time in the cockpit of the blue flame a car designed with one purpose in mind to capture the land speed record it then took another 27 years to break the 700 mph barrier in September 1997 with Andy green and the Thrust SSC this footage was from just 3 weeks later when the Thrust SSC completed another run and averaged 763 mph over a mile so what happened after this well actually this is the last time the land speed record was broken 26 years ago so is it even possible to break 1,000 M hour well Andy seemed to think so and was more than right with his production from 1997 you could build 1,000 M on our car but I think the technology and the money involved it would take you about 20 years to do it but don't worry the story doesn't end there we do have a race to 1,000 mil hour and the contenders are the Bloodhound LSR team and Rosco mcglashan with the Aussie Invader 5r who I spoke to on the driver 61 podcast Rosco is an incredibly interesting guy so before we get into the engineering let me tell you a little bit more about him and the crazy Machinery he's driven or ridden from a VA drag bike with no clutch to a 250 mph rocket powered go-kart to his land speed record attempts and his bid to break 1,000 mph but before we get into Rosco's wild story I need to tell you about today's sponsor Babble and this one is close to my heart my wife is Colombian and I met her in Spain I could speak a bit of Spanish and she could speak only a bit of English and if I couldn't have pieced those few and very Charming sentences together we may may not be together today and it's also just very cool to be able to speak to people in other countries they always look so happy when they realize you're really trying so Babel is one of the top language learning apps in the world and is scientifically proven to help you start speaking a new language in just 3 weeks it teaches you to have real world conversations lessons prepare you to have practical conversations about travel business and more I'll be at Paul Ricard in May with our Drive NF1 car competition winners so I've been brushing up on my French these lessons are designed by real language teachers and there are multiple subscriptions for you to choose from to join and get 60% off your subscription click the link in the description now back to the video so Ros go speed story starts with a bike named The Crazy Horse the Crazy Horse was a V8 Chevy powered motorbike that was used for drag racing with a 9.1 second qum best time and a top speed of 172 mph now I'm all for going quick in a race car but drug bikes just aren't for me I mean just look at at the rider's position the engine's so big on this thing that he's got nowhere to put his legs and it didn't even have a clutch so to start it he had to rev it up with the rear wheel spinning on the stand then drop it off the stand and then deal with whatever wheel spin the bike had and according to Rosco it only just started gaining traction towards the end of the quarter mile if that wasn't exciting enough Rosco then moved on to a rocket powered bike which was so fast it was banned from the Australian tracks it ran on hydrogen peroxide rocket fuel which at first was extremely hard to come by before being banned by the Australian government so in what looks like an effort to improve safety Rosco moved to the protection of four wheels with a rocket powered go-kart now I'd be slightly more comfortable getting in this than the Crazy Horse but not by much this thing did the quarter mile in 5.9 seconds and reached a top speed of 253 mph to put that into perspective the Red Bull rb7 F1 car did the quarter mile in 9.2 seconds and RCN does it in 8.2 and even the Top Fuel dragster only does it in about 4 seconds but again that wasn't enough a for Rosco he wanted to go even faster and so he started his journey into jet power vehicles starting with the Aussie Invader one and there he is the man himself Rosco mcglashan and the Aussie Invader jet dragstar it was a dragster that produced 65,000 of thrust and could reach a top speed of over 300 mph and as you can imagine this thing was absolutely wild with lots of fire smoke and noise he lets the brakes open drives it straight down the middle of the track it looks like it's going to be a good one lots of fire lots of nor Rosco's gone there with an 874 at 372 kmph but that wasn't fast enough what Rosco really wanted was to be the fastest person in the world and so his first attempt at the land speed record was with the Aussie Invader 2 Rosco mcglashan came here putting 10 years of hard work and millions of dollars worth of other people's time and money on the line and this thing was serious it had an atar 09 C5 jet turbine as used in a mirage fighter jet The Invader 2 was 4,100 kg 8.5 M long and had 36,000 horsepower I mean just look at it it's not the prettiest machine but it does look like it's going to get the job done and so in 1994 Rosco went out with the Invader 2 at Lake Gardner in Australia for context at this point in time the last record had been set by rid Noble in the thrust 2 at 634 mph but had remained unbeaten for over a decade initially Rosco's goal was to become the fastest Aussie in the world which he managed to achieve his wife Cheryl anxiously watching and waiting asore HED they'd be a beautiful set of numbers and they were the average speed for the two runs was 81.3 km hour we can bring the champagne so we've got it guys we got it so mightily impressive but still not enough for Rosco there was still the overall land speed record to beat and the title of the fastest person on Earth so in 1995 the team returned to try again though things didn't go well at almost 600 mph The Invader tube broke through the salt surface and veered off course crashing through timing equipment that was located 200 meters from the track's measured mile a timing marker went through the engine kill this engine Big Black Plum out the back of the engine and the noise that made went ahe it's just absolute mindboggling I got out the car I'm still alive and that was the end of the Aussie Invader 2 it was completely written off but even after a crash and not managing to break the record Rosco moves straight on to the Aussie Invader 3 he gets down and and in the dumps for probably about 5 or 10 minutes after a disappointment and then he's back again The Invader 3 was The Reincarnation of the two so it still had 36,000 horsepower and a Kevlar composite body again designed and built in Australia no one could appreciate how many uh how many mans are going into building this and how much work and uh to think that this car has been built here in this shed and that's what I love about these projects these guys are doing incredible things with quite a small team they are purely driven by Passion and I think we can all connect with that and you might ask what's the point in doing this spending all this time effort and resource and just going faster but it's simply to see if they can so in 1996 Rosco went back to Lake Gardner to try and beat Richard Noble 634 mph with a new faster car Aussie Invader 3 Rosco clock 643 mph in 1996 breaking Richard Noble's World Mark however requiring a two-way pass to make it official the team was again beaten by bad weather however things got even worse for the Aussie Invader team in 1997 Andy green and the British Thrust SSC team raised the bar to 763 mph the biggest increase the land speed record had ever seen and one that Rosco knew his Invader 3 couldn't get close to it just wasn't designed for that kind of speed so as usual Rosco picked himself up and started again with his eyes on this new and incredible Benchmark he spent the next 10 years planning and designing a car that could beat the thrust SSC and potentially break through the 1,000 mph barrier and that's where we're up to currently with the Aussie Ina 5 this is a typical Suburban Street on perth's Northern beaches now people build their big houses here their big garages check out what this guy has in his garage yes Rosco is building a car capable of breaking 1,000 mph in his garage at home this car has been designed to travel from zero to 1,000 600 km an hour that's almost 1 and 1/2 times the speed of sound in just 20 seconds okay so let me give you the incredible stats for this part of the video I've relied heavily on the interview with Rosco and his book which again you should check out it's an absolutely brilliant Story by Mark Reed so the car it's constructed with a bipropellant rocket engine providing 62,000 of thrust equivalent to about 200,000 horsepower its size is Big too with a length of 16 M and a weight of 9 tons which is mostly Fuel and really in essence this car is pretty simple it's basically a huge rocket which burns fuel with exhaust gases coming out of the back and pushing the car forward so what will this record attempt actually look like well the car will take about 3 m and just 22 seconds to accelerate to the measured mile this is where the world record attempt and the speed measurement begins and hopefully at this point Rosco will be doing the s estimated 1,000 mph once Rosco gets to this marker he'll actually throttle back slightly reducing power but maintaining speed otherwise the extra speed would literally rip the wheels apart as he'll be traveling at 1,000 mph the mile will be covered in just 3 and 1 half seconds after which his only job will be to stop the vehicle as safely as possible the deceleration period will take another 8 mil which seems like a long way but it's for good reason first if you were to shut the engines off too quickly Rosco would experience a high negative G and would probably pass out which wouldn't be great and second the wheels would likely lose traction again not what you want in 1,000 mph braking zone so where do you even start when designing a car like this well you start with the main thing stopping any car from going faster the air before knowing what was needed from the rocket Rosco needed to understand the shape of the vehicle he was going to be pushing through the air and most importantly the coefficient of drag once he had that he sent the findings to Rocket expert and CEO of Rocket lab Peter Beck to understand how much thrust he was going to require which as mentioned was £62,000 worth and capable of getting to 1,000 mph in 22 seconds and I'll be honest I have no idea what 200,000 horsepower or 62,000 of thrust really means or what it would look like so here's a video of a rocket producing £ 54,000 and for a moment just imagine being strapped to that now one issue with rocket engines compared to jet engines is that they're much less predictable to drive which isn't great for the dri and you might also be asking what is the difference between a rocket and a jet engine well a jet engine draws in air from the atmosphere in order to burn the fuel relying on the oxygen in the air for combustion whereas a rocket engine carries its own supply of oxygen to burn that fuel now there are many technical challenges but one of the biggest problems to solve is the fact that this rocket is driving along the ground not flying off into space this means that feeding the rocket with fuel is a problem as it's moving horizontally and not vertically to resolve this the car has seven 6 M long aluminium tubes that have Pistons to push the propellants into the engine's injector then when the propellants meet the engine they ignite spontaneously and a load of thrust is created and another reason these tanks are configured like this with pistons is so the liquid doesn't just slush around the last thing you want when accelerating to 1,000 mph is almost 3 tons of liquid moving about side to side and front to rear that isn't very good for the handling of a car and what's incredible is that Rosco's team have designed all of this themselves as apparently they couldn't find anything off the shelf which isn't really a surprise so we've got enough power but how do we we hold everything together the main part of the chassis is 12 M long with the whole Invader 5r being 16 M now that's very long about 1 and a half times the length of a bus and it's so long purely because of the amount of fuel that it needs to carry the main frame is a high-grade steel tube which is just under a meter in diameter it was rolled from a flat piece of 10 mm thick steel and seam welded at the join and just this Mainframe alone weighs 2 and 1/2 tons that is a of metal mounted from the main frame are the wheels two at the back with a 2.3 M track and two positioned very close together at the front and these wheels are a really beautiful piece of engineering the front wheels are positioned under the Bodywork for aerodynamics and they're placed only 30 mm apart now the Invader 5r could just use three wheels with one at the front but that means that it then wouldn't qualify for the world record for which it needs four each wheel is made from some very expensive sounding Aerospace aluminium and they're massive 90 cm tall and almost 20 cm wide and they weigh 140 kg each now just take a moment and think about what the wheel is actually doing here yes they're big for the stability and the weight of the vehicle but they're also spinning incredibly quickly at 1,000 mph they'll be rotating close to their 10,000 RPM limit put that into perspective that's about 10 times the RPM of a road car wheel and tire and that's one of the reasons The Invader 5 doesn't have tires at those speeds they simply disintegrate and the car could actually accelerate faster but the team are holding it back because of the Integrity of the wheels if the car speeds up too quickly the wheels which aren't driven wouldn't be able to spin up quickly enough this could mean that the wheels are all spinning at different speeds to each other and a different speed to the vehicle as a whole this in turn could cause a loss of traction which gain isn't what you want but with the tanks taking up so much space where exactly does the driver sit and what are the considerations for the cockpit well first of course it needs to be as safe as possible so Rosco will have a web of thick and strong tubing around him along with all the safety devices you'd find in a race car but one thing that you might not think about is the potential for not being able to see exactly where you're going Rosco is going to be strapped to a rocket with solid wheels and very limited suspension the vibration are going to be huge and if you can't see where he's going then it'll be a massive problem so the seat will be mounted on rubber and the roll cage will be strategically mounted to the main frame in order to reduce the vibration as much as possible and the position of the cockpit within the entire car is also important for example Spirit of America and Thrust SSC have their cockpits and Drive-In position just behind the front wheels according to Rosco sitting in that position means you can see and feel what the front of the car is doing but you have little or no idea what's happening at the rear so if the rear of the car is losing control the driver might not feel it right away and that's a huge problem but the Invader team realized that the best place for the driver is to sit about 2/3 of the way down the car just behind the center of gravity there Rosco can feel what's happening at the back of the car while still seeing the front and the team have learned from other previous attempts as well when driving the Sonic arrow car at 650 mph Craig breed was thrown to one side which in turn caused his foot to get jammed on the throttle pedal so to protect from this The Invader team have two throttle pedals instead of one if Rosco lifts his foot from either pedal the engine will shut down avoiding the issue that breed have had okay so we have power we have a chassis and we have a small space for the driver but how do we keep it all on the ground after all this car is basically a massive rocket and Rockets are designed to go that way well this is where aerodynamics come in and as you know we love aerodynamics on this channel aerodynamicists around the world are still understanding and evolving the theory of aerodynamics it's deliciously complicated unfortunately William didn't join me on this video but the arrow is still delicious the main things for the arrow are the nose cone design the tail fin the canards which are the winglets just behind the front wheels and the v-shaped underbelly of the Mainframe all of these things will help keep the wheels connected to the surface when driving at 1,000 mph first let's talk about the normal Arrow before we get into the problem of passing through the sand barrier which is quite a big problem actually just behind the front wheels we have these canards basically they're little winglets that arej just the way over the front wheels and help keep the car stable and it's important to think about how the car's weight will be reducing quickly during the run as it uses its propellant the center of gravity will also be changing and so the balance of the car the canards are there to offset that issue as the car Burns propellant the front of the car becomes lighter and lighter and so the canards will add more angle and therefore more load to the front wheels to keep them connected to the surface on the other side of things if they have too much load which could cause the front to dig into the surface the canards will help unload now one of the most important error parts of the Invader is the nose cone as with an F1 car the nose sets up the air flow over the rest of the car but when you going through the sand barrier the aerodynamics get a bit weird back in 1979 St Barett was the first person to break through the sand barrier in the Budweiser rocket but things went wrong and he was extremely lucky to survive when a car or a plane passes through the speed of sand it creates a shock wave which can really disrupt the air flow and stability but compared to planes the effect on a car is stronger because the ground bounces that shock wave back into the car so when the Budweiser rocket created the shock wave it lifted its rear wheels off the ground for over 250 M at which point it's pure luck as to whether you crash or not luckily Stan did not Stan had broken the sound barrier as he'd approached mark one his two back wheels left the ground he'd gone Supersonic and come dangerously close to death so the invaded team designed the chassis with an unusual vshape this is for stability when the car crew creates the shock wave the vshape softens the blow somewhat and keeps the car more stable now controlling the shock wave is one thing but there's more when the car is running subsonic below the speed of sound a lot of the airflow can be predicted as there's a decent amount of data available on cars running at this speed but the problem comes when traveling at transonic and supersonic speeds now transonic speed is when some parts of the car have subsonic airflow and other parts have supersonic air flow what what exactly does this mean and how does it happen well to use an example imagine a car is around the speed of sound you have air flowing over the car under the car and around the sides but the air flowing under the car might move faster in areas than the air flowing over the car that means that you'll have some air that's subsonic and some that's supersonic basically when the car reaches and passes through the speed of sound it causes complex aerodynamics around the car with different air pressures and forces acting on it but all you need to know really is that ultimately it reduces the stability of the car as you might imagine there's very little real world data about supersonic cars running on the ground as opposed to supersonic planes so the team have used cfd to design the nose cone and the rest of the car to optimize for Trans and supersonic speeds but while it provides good insights they know they need real world data so they plan to run preliminary trials and methodical tests to ensure that they step their way up to speed pretty safe in the knowledge that the car isn't going to take off or be too disrupted by unusual air flows so imagine Rosco's averaged over 1,000 mph over the timing mile he's done it it's all great but now he needs to slow down and ideally from his own instruction and we want to slow down quickly but not too quickly in fact it's going to take over 8 miles but for good reason if Rosco just shuts the engine off at 1,000 milph he'd experience negative 16g at which point he'd black out and not be ready for the champagne at the end of the run and we want to make sure that we're belt and braces here so the Invader has five braking systems engine shutdown hydraulic air brakes a highspeed parachute a lowp speed parachute and an emergency break now that sounds like a lot but he will be doing 1,000 mph after all first the engine shutdown basically Rosco lifts his foot off one of the two throttles and the engine will transition into deceleration mode don't forget the car is creating so much drag it will actually decelerate incredibly quickly then at 800 mph he'll deploy the air brakes they're located just behind the driver and continue to slow the car before the high-speed parachute is deployed at 600 mph then the low speed parachute is deployed at 400 mph and finally at 200 mph The Invader will use highp speed disc brakes to bring the car to a complete stop but what about the emergency brake well of course this is only to be used if one or more of the other braking systems fail and it's very simple it's basically a hydraulic steel Ram with a flat metal plate on the end it can be lowered from the bottom of the car and would dig into the ground to stop it probably not the best way to stop the car so let's hope that Rosco doesn't need to use it and so the big question will Rosco and his team actually make this happen well there's no getting around that technically and financially it's a huge challenge but having spoken to him on the podcast I can safely say that he will never give up and I absolutely love that grit and determination I've also read his book which is a wild story that confirms his True Grit and is actually very interesting from an engineering perspective too I really recommend the read you can find the book at Aussie invader.zim ating engineering check that out just here or click here for more thanks for watching and please consider subscribing
