Thrust SSC - still the only car to travel faster than the speed of sound

the wind at measures mile 10 o'clock at like some variable love it full video Wednesday morning 15th of October 9 o'clock the morning it's about 3 to 4 degrees outside we're looking for a flat outruns way to make it more like a supersonic a 2 way average today it's a popular misconception that driving a land speed record in a straight line is about anchoring the steering wheel planting your foot to the floor and just waiting till you run out of fuel if only it were that simple the car moves around an awful lot any Road car moves around a little bit and it moves around more so as you go faster when you go a lot faster like 700 miles an hour faster the car moves around a huge amount the wheels are now skimming across the surface the shock waves are generating uneven forces gusts of crosswind the car is sliding all over the track in terms of doing a run in thrust SSC begin takes very close to the ground I put very little power on to start with to accelerate the car without sucking lumps of desert into the intakes so initially just inching the throttle forward letting the car roll slowly progressively around about 80% rpm on the engine that's quite a low power setting just letting the car accelerate no faster than a normal family saloon car wood pulling away from the lights as I say ready to roll rolling rolling up through 10 20 30 all the way up through 50 60 miles an hour the reheat nozzles at the back of the engine starts close down to increase the thrust output now accelerating more quickly through 90 100 miles an hour now got really strong airflow into the engines now I can spin them up very quickly ease the throttle forward to the dry stop the turbines spin up to maximum speed they are now working flat out to get more thrust neat fuel goes into the exhaust of literally reheats the exhaust reheat check that both needles are showing a light up so that both light together if one lights and the other doesn't the cars going to want to go in a circle which is not good at supersonic speeds having gotten both lit ease my foot all the way down both nozzles open fully we get absolute full power and the car is now accelerating at something like 25 miles an hour every second 250 275 300 325 and it just keeps going at that speed up to 500 up to 550 approaching 600 miles an hour the airflow starts to go supersonic underneath the car which affects the handling it goes supersonic over the top of the car though though it's the loudest highest pitch scream I've ever heard the car tended to pull because of the way it was constructed in the staggered rear wheels tended to pull hard left at around 600 miles an hour and that was requiring up to 90 degrees of steering lock to keep it straight and on our first supersonic record run it was such a hard pull actually had to throttle back to minimum reheat and close the reheat nozzles right down to reduce the thrust rebalance the car car is now 50 feet off line and I'm steering it effectively on the throttle at 650 miles an hour as the car starts to respond as soon as it starts to come back towards the line I've got to put full power on or we won't get supersonic and as it comes back to the line take the opposite lock off straighten the car back up now it's going supersonic at over 700 miles an hour all the airflow settles down starts to go fully supersonic and it runs absolutely straight to the door Kirby's disability level of the mind for the record through the timing lights which took four and a half seconds about 4.7 seconds to cover the mile through the timing lights unbeknown to me we're also throwing a huge sonic boom out across the desert my job isn't only half done I now need to stop the car at the other end of the track so throttling back at the end of the measured mile we've now got warning captions for all of the oil thrown towards the front of the engines because it's slowing down so quickly the low fuel caption is flickering the car is now slowing down at over 1 G over 20 miles an hour per second but very rapidly as the car gets subsonic we've got a 10 ton car very slippery 10 ton car still hammering along at over 500 miles an hour I'm waiting until the distance at the end to the end of the track equals the speed I'm going which is also changing when the two numbers match punch out the parachute with a button on the left hand steering wheel yoke and immediately parachute goes out generates another 4 or 5 tons of drag and bumps the deceleration back up to 20 miles an hour per second [Applause] the car is now going to slow down I'm still checking the numbers slowing down through 400 350 300 miles an hour it's about 2 miles left to run 250 miles an hour 200 miles an hour we got a mile left to run I'm now going to shut the engines down they've had a few seconds to cool we don't want to ingest anything else so shut the engines down start to ease on the wheel brakes and I'm now looking about half a mile ahead looking at the recovery crew so that as we roll to a stop I ease the brakes on and we stop exactly 14 miles from where we set off right next to the guys we've got a turn a 10 ton jet car around look the best part of a ton of fuel in reload the parachutes do a full systems and data check and confirm it's safe to go back through the measured mile within one hour so stopping in the right place is the key bit to starting the pitstop on the fastest car in the world the drive then involves repeating all of that and subsequently stopping the car at the other end and waiting for the time keeper to have recorded it 15 through October 1997 he came back with those famous words pit station this is you sack timing I have some times for you and they were supersonic and that record still stands today [Music] the rest of the bolts have just arrived obviously

Channel: Bloodhound LSR

Views: 4,222,496

Rating: 4.7202816 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 7D4-49pkEWY

Length: 6min 26sec (386 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/CovMuayThai]

It's on display at the Transport Museum in my hometown of Coventry, England. I remember when it was paraded through the streets on route to the museum. It's huge and the scorch marks down the side are badass.

[u/mercury557]

carcivilian jet with tiny wheels underneath flying at zero altitude.

[u/Daneth]

So what kind of tires were on this thing? My understanding is that Bugatti can't achieve over whatever their maximum speed is (275?) due to the technology not being there yet to make tires that can stand up to that speed for more than a few seconds. Their engine could theoretically achieve faster speeds, but they govern it to a number so you don't blow tires out. Are the wheels not inflated rubber or something?

[u/bananatec]

Reminds me of a really nice BMW ad I like

LINK

[u/Dumb_Dick_Sandwich]

Yeah, that's not a car. That's a jet that never learned to fly

[u/papahawk]

they couldn't have pointed the camera out the windshield? The one angle I wanted to see was the pov...

[u/thegeraldo]

How do you start it?

[u/petaboil]

Incredibly interesting video!

[u/Randomundesirable]

ITT: pedantic armchair test pilots and automotive engineers with whole goddamn ant-farms up their butts not impressed with A ROCKET POWERED CAR LAND VEHICLE THAT BROKE THE SOUND BARRIER.