Andy Green, RAF fighter pilot, record breaker and action hero, slipped off his shoes before clambering into the cockpit of Bloodhound, the supersonic car being handcrafted in the UK to hit the 1,000mph mark. By next summer Bloodhound SSC will be racing along a Cornish test track and few weeks later be transported to a desert in South Africa where the plan is for it to reach 800mph and break Green’s own current land-speed record of 763mph. Then in 2015, if all goes well, Green will return to South Africa and drive Bloodhound at 1,000mph, faster than a bullet, faster than an aircraft.
At the unveiling of the cockpit — a key stage in the development of the 10-year project — Green said the idea was not just to make history but to push back the laws of physics and inspire a new generation across the world to become scientists and engineers.
It is hard to grasp just how fast 1,000mph is (Watch >this video to see for yourself). Green said the best way of illustrating it was to imagine it travelling the length of a football pitch. If a spectator blinked, he or she would not see the car driving past. The cockpit turns out to be a pleasing combination of the super-high tech and the ordinary. It features, for example, state-of-the art ballistic armour to protect the driver from a shooting stone or bird strike.
Should the digital displays suffer a catastrophic failure, the team has got Rolex to create a comforting-looking analogue stopwatch and speedometer.
There are also chunky back-up levers to activate the parachutes that help stop the car and to cut off the fuel supply to the jet engine.
But, to be fair, most of it is super high-tech. The cockpit is made of five different types of carbon fibre weave and two different resins.
Naturally, huge care has been invested in the titanium steering wheel, shaped to Green’s hands and finger reach. Buttons on the front control the radio (for communicating with his team rather than listening to music), air brakes and parachutes, while those power drill triggers on the rear of the handgrips prime and fire the rockets. Bloodhound has pedals like a normal car — right for the accelerator, left for the brakes, though these wheel brakes only contribute to about 1 per cent of the braking power.
For the moment the cockpit has a comfy foam seat. By next year this will be replaced by a carbon fibre one moulded to Green’s body shape to mitigate the effects of the huge G-forces that will be exerted on him.
Green said it would be noisy, hot (there is no air conditioning). And he accepts he does not know what it will be like travelling at 1,000mph along a desert trace track. “This is human adventure, it’s about people doing stuff, it’s climbing Everest, it’s Neil Armstrong stepping on to the moon. We don’t know what it will be like in this cockpit. That’s part of the adventure.” — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2014
