The Bloodhound Will Stay On the Ground At 1,000 mph 242
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that engineers designing the world's fastest car, the Bloodhound SSC, built to smash the world land speed record of 763 mph set by the Thrust SuperSonic Car in 1997, believe they have a solution to keep the vehicle flat on the ground at 1,000 mph after initial iterations of the car's aerodynamic shape produced dangerous amounts of lift at the vehicle's rear. John Piper, Bloodhound's technical director, said: 'We've had lift as high as 12 tonnes, and when you consider the car is six-and-a-half tonnes at its heaviest — that amount of lift is enough to make the car fly.' The design effort has been aided by project sponsor Intel, who brought immense computing power to bear on the lift problem. Before Intel's intervention, the design team had worked through 11 different 'architectures' in 18 months. The latest modelling work run on Intel's network investigated 55 configurations in eight weeks. By playing with the position and shape of key elements of the car's rear end, the design team found the best way to manage the shockwave passing around and under the vehicle as it goes supersonic. 'At Mach 1.3, we've close to zero lift, which is where we wanted to be,' says Piper. In late 2011, the Bloodhound, powered by a rocket bolted to a Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine, will mount an assault on the land speed record, driving across a dried up lakebed known as Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape of South Africa."
But what happens when... (Score:3, Funny)
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Righto, time to ask the serious questions! But what happens when they hit 88 miles per hour?
Accelerating or decelerating?
Re:But what happens when... (Score:4, Funny)
Easier solution (Score:4, Funny)
Why don't they make it drive on a treadmill?
Re:Easier solution (Score:4, Insightful)
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AND IT WOULDN'T BE AS COOL!
Says the guy whom never got together with his drunken buddies, turned a treadmill up all the way, dropped stuff on the belt, and watched it fly thru the air and crashland. If you prop up the end, a 15 MPH treadmill can launch a pumpkin surprisingly far. Not as far as one of those "pumpkin chucking compressed air gun" things, but still plenty of fun. One empty beer can launched through space is "eh". A couple dozen, simultaneously, is much louder, visually impressive, and funny. Especially if your buddi
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Re:Easier solution (Score:5, Funny)
There is a high tech solution for that, it's called a "strap".
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thats what she said! /cries
Re:Easier solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Since it's a jet engine (pushing against the air), it would be the old "Plane on a treadmill" problem. Meaning it would drive off the treadmill.
Re:Easier solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Its a jet engine pushing it up towards 1000mph, but its a solid fuelled rocket (liquid oxidiser) that pushes it over.
A lot of their design towards the end of last year was deciding whether to put the Jet over Rocket (JoR) or Rocket over Jet (RoJ) in the tail of the vehicle.
They decided on the JoR configuration as it provided better stability & airflow through the jet.
This project is also about getting kids interested in engineering again, and they're making their data publicly available.
They've been touring with the full size model of the car visiting towns doing workshops with the school kids about the stuff they're doing and experiments & tests the kids can do themselves. They were kind enough to park the car outside my office when they were in my home town.
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And I think that was the entire point of the question posed.
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A rocket engine works like you explained. A jet engine still uses air pressure as a "pillow to push against".
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A rocket engine works like you explained. A jet engine still uses air pressure as a "pillow to push against".
Interesting engineering question. If the jet engine depends on having air to push against, how can it go past Mach 1? Can air "push" faster than the speed of sound?
Re:Easier solution (Score:5, Informative)
The air it ejects backwards moves way faster than Mach 1 relatively to the engine. The momentum of ejected material must be higher than momentum of intake material. With rockets, there's no intake material, and it depends strictly on ejecting most of its mass backwards. Speed is a boon but even ejecting the mass slower than the speed of surrounding air (or near-void) gives it thrust.
With jet, the momentum of air at the intake (which is zero, immobile air) must be lower than exhaust mix ejected backwards, and considering the mass of the jet fuel used is quite low comparing to mass of air used, the mass of the exhaust gas is not significantly higher than mass of intake air, so it must use higher speed to achieve higher momentum and thus thrust - so no matter how fast the plane moves, exhaust gas always moves backwards relative to static air - thus pushes against static air and as result creates a pressure pillow.
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Evidently, yes. Why would air lose its physical properties just because it's moving faster than compression waves travel through it?
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Not necessarily - only while exhaust gas speed doesn't exceed the rocket speed. A rocket engine will -still- be propelled when the exhaust gas travels in the same direction as the engine, only slower than the engine. (engine travels at 3 Mach, exhaust speed is 2 Mach, per every kg of fuel ejected the engine gets 2 Mach*kg thrust, despite the ejected gas still traveling at 1 Mach in the same direction as the engine.)
Of course the question remains whether the "break even" point (where exhaust speed equals roc
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Because if it vibrates at the right resonant frequency on the treadmill, it might accidentally be transported to the 30th century or to Earth-Two. [wikipedia.org]
I'm debating if this thing really counts as a car. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, you rip the wings off of a fighter jet and make it stay on the ground does it become a car? To really be a "car" I would almost argue it needs to be propelled by the wheels.
Re:I'm debating if this thing really counts as a c (Score:3)
Aside from the fact that that is a different world record in itself, I would like to point you to TFA which goes to great lengths to explain to complexity of even keeping this thing on the ground, so it's hardly some trivial feat.
Re:I'm debating if this thing really counts as a c (Score:4, Insightful)
That has nothing to do with the fact that this simply isn't a car. It's a rocket/jet with wheels attached. Just because a plane has wheels doesn't make it a car either. Yes, it's very difficult (to understate the issue) to keep any object traveling 1000 mph on the ground, but that doesn't negate the GP's point. It's not a car. It's not designed like a car would be, it's not propelled like a car would be, and it's not driven like a car would be.
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It's not a car. It's not designed like a car would be
And that is precisely why Lamborghini and Ferrari have decided to stay at home for this one, and McLaren also sent in their regrets (they had other plans that day, TBH).
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i would argue that not the design method, but rather the designed purpose would determine what an object is.
This thing is designed to move accross a hard surface supported by wheels, pretty much making it a car (notice i explicitely said wheels to rule out any funnymen with the 'but but hovercraft is a car' argument).
It might not be a car in the traditional ford sense of the word, you wont drive your kids to school in it, and it isnt practical for everyday use, but its purpose is still driving accross terai
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So are "fastest vehicle with an FM radio" and "fastest blue vehicle". However, they aren't interesting records.
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Motor cars weren't (Score:2)
Motor carriage -> motor car -> car.
Horse drawn carriages were never called cars AFAIK. Though oddly railway carriages were.
Then of course there were carts.
Re:Motor cars weren't (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile#Etymology [wikipedia.org]
The...name car is believed to originate from the Latin word carrus or carrum ("wheeled vehicle"), or the Middle English word carre ("cart") (from Old North French), or karros (a Gallic wagon).
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The...name car is believed to originate from the Latin word carrus or carrum ("wheeled vehicle")...
Excellent point! You've totally refuted the OP's point about this not being a real car.
Let me show you a few "cars."
Here's one! [3d-screens...nloads.com]
Here is another "car" [niu.edu]
These are all really fast cars! [shoppersdrugmart.ca]
There's no separate league for cars driven by internal combustion engine, but here [wikipedia.org] is the fastest of those.
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I don't think it does (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing it has in common with a car is that it has wheels and runs on the ground. Given its size and weight it would be more accurate to call it a jet powered truck.
IMO the real land speed record is the wheel driven ones , not the one where you just strap a huge rocket on the back and try and stay on the ground.
Re:I don't think it does (Score:4, Interesting)
If this works it will be travelling across the land with a higher speed than anything that has ever travelled across the land, hence the title "land speed record". I agree with you that the wheel powered one is in some ways more important, but something has to be declared fastest land vehicle and it seems fitting for it to be the fastest vehicle on the land. If Fred Flinstone could run fast enough to make his car faster than any other car in history, would you deny him the land speed record?
Re:I don't think it does (Score:5, Funny)
his record would be in doubt. look at the video of his record. Notice how the background seems to keep repeating over and over again.
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planes fly by using engineering trickery to keep them in the air so why can't a car use engineering trickery to keep it on the ground
Re:I'm debating if this thing really counts as a c (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on if it's a fixed aero-surface vehicle or not. F1 cars had variable surface aero-parts for one or two years before they were outright banned. The idea was that you could increase the angle of attack to increase downpressure in the corners, but make the car aerodynamically neutral in the straightaways so you're spending more power on thrust rather than dividing it between thrust and downforce. Depending on how the rules for "world's fastest car" are written, how the aero is done determines how impressive this really is. If John Carmack can write a javascript to control thrust for a vertical takeoff rocket (Armadillo Aerospace), you can design a fast car with dynamic aerosurfaces. Building a fixed aero car that's neutral at 1000mph but won't fly into the air and flip when you hit a rock is a lot harder to do. Check out this hella sweet video of a Le Mans car doing exactly that at 220mph: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM4guvo6Ifo [youtube.com]
I'll admit this post was an excuse to post that video, but damn if it isn't cool. And that's at a quarter of the speed at which they'll be attempting this. It's not as easy as it looks.
Here's another cool video of the same thing happening. It's relatively common, even though they design against this exact sort of thing from happening. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y65oUlBMSUs [youtube.com]
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Yeah I think they should build it as a ground effect aircraft with non-load bearing wheels which reach down to the ground to make it technically a car.
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Those were cool videos.
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What they need to build is a car that can do that at the touch of a button and land on all 4 wheels.. kind of like in Speed Racer. Entirely pointless, but it would be fun on a victory lap!
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I wonder how the conversation went after that race... "well, you completely destroyed the car, and broke every bone in your body, but at least we didn't lose the race!!"
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Second is losing.
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Only in the 2000-2004 F1 series*. Each race in the series assigns points, so a 2nd place (2pts) is far superior to a DNF (fleet+1, or 9pts). You can recover from a 2nd, or even a 3rd place and still win the series, but after one DNF you're just racing due to your sponsorship contract, hoping another team has more DNF or DNS than you do by the end.
*2000-2004 is when Schumacher wiped the floor with the F1 series, pretty much running uncontested in 1st place with the Ferrari team, basically uncontested
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Umm...I've been watching F1 for a lot of years, and I'm pretty sure you never got more points for a DNF than for a second place. DNF = 0 points (except in very unusual circumstances), 2nd = 8 last year or 18 this year.
As for a DNF killing your season, that's crap. Button won the championship last year and got 1 DNF, Hamilton did the same the year before. In 2007 Raikkonen won the championship despite 2 DNFs, likewise Alonso in 2006. For a driver to complete every race in the season is pretty rare, particula
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>>Depending on how the rules for "world's fastest car" are written, how the aero is done determines how impressive this really is.
I guess. Even the world's fastest car will be doing between 0 and 10MPH in Los Angeles traffic if it can't fly.
I just don't see the point to taking an airplane, putting it on wheels, and spending effort trying to get it not to fly when it's doing 1000MPH.
Why not just get a supersonic fighter and have it tow a little unicycle along the salt flats?
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http://www.formula1.com/news/technical/2009/0/617.html [formula1.com]
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I'm sorry, but after changes in the FIA and FIM rules between 1963 - 64 [wikipedia.org], the only thing it needs to qualify as a 'car' for the purpose of making a stab at the absolute land speed record is four wheels or more. Less than four wheels and it's a motorcycle.
There is however a seperate record for wheel driven cars [wikipedia.org].
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Does it even matter?
Does it have to be a car to break the land speed record, or will any land vehicle do? If it's the latter, then this thing fits the bill and that's what matters.
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that would be one hell of a sight, a submarine going across land at 1000mph.
My vote is on a Blue Whale. Technically it could also count as the driver.
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I'm am suddenly thinking of the Christopher Moore book called Fluke, or I know why the winged whale sings. Seriously, it will make you look at whales differently from now on.
Intel FPU? (Score:3, Funny)
Who in their right mind would trust an Intel FPU with their life?
Yeah, it may look like a troll, but some of us remember the FDIV bug.
Every billion, or so, calculations might be wrong, but, since you never know WHICH is wrong in an application, it must be assumed that they ALL are.
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If there was a bug, it's unlikely the final result would make sense. "It would go fastest with the engine in the ground!", or "it would go fastest with the engine backwards!". With that many calculations, one error would be magnified.
Re:Intel FPU? (Score:4, Informative)
If there was a bug, it's unlikely the final result would make sense. "It would go fastest with the engine in the ground!", or "it would go fastest with the engine backwards!". With that many calculations, one error would be magnified.
A floating point conversion error caused an Ariane 5 rocket to explode back in 1996
http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/ariane.html [umn.edu]
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I'd consider that evidence supporting my assertion. A minor bug caused a pretty obvious error in the software's output. In this case the output was rocket motion, in the bloodhound's case the software's output is only the design of the vehicle. A similar bug at the design stage should be just as obvious (e.g. "The wings should be minus 3000 meters long!") and not result in loss of life.
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I would interpret this as:
In other words, it is
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You must be new here:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/03/16/2318223/The-State-of-Robotic-Surgery?art_pos=3 [slashdot.org]
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Yeah, cos when a company fucks up like that, it's not like they ever learn anything from it, and that company remains static for the rest of it's existence in this respect.
It is doomed to repeat these expensive costly mistakes, and would never do anything to rectify them.
Seriously, you think a 16 year old bug is in any way relevant to Intel's modern line of chips where processes, architecture, and methods have changed drastically? You realise that AMD wasn't even building their own design chips until 1996 a
And for the rest of the world... (Score:5, Informative)
1000 mph=1609 km/h
Re:And for the rest of the world... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:And for the rest of the world... (Score:4, Informative)
That's the same unit. kilometers per second is kilo (1000s of) meters per second. The kilo part is an SI prefix, not part of the unit. Just like kilobytes means 1000s of bytes and kilograms means 1000s of grammes.
Bob
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Just like kilobytes means 1000s of bytes
WRONG 'bytes' is NOT a SI unit, so the SI naming simply DOES NOT APPLY. a kilobyte is exactly 1024 bytes, not more, not less.
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That's not what the IEEE or ISO say ;)
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Fuck em. I'm sure there is some mention of 1 kilobyte equalling 1024 bytes somewhere in POSIX.
If not, there should be.
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well, they are actually advising against using kilobyte to mean 1024. Nowadays it's supposed to mean 1000 bytes and you're supposed to use kibibyte when you mean 1024. I know, it's horrible
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte [wikipedia.org]
Re:And for the rest of the world... (Score:5, Funny)
I;m sure there is an equivalent of Godwin's Law for stories related to science or technology, regarding the correct size of the kilobyte. :)
Until someone names it though, remember that Hitler would have supported decimal kilobytes
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Re: Real Physicists (Score:3, Funny)
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Or hertz per diopter [google.ca]
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1.31 Mach.
So... would a Star Wars Landspeeder not qualify? (Score:2)
It seems to me there's something silly about the requirement of a physical connection to the ground. No one would argue that Luke Skywalker's land speeder wasn't a 'land based' vehicle -- and yet (if it existed) it would not qualify for the land-speed record by the rules currently set forth.
Today's hovercraft are not "airships" per se. I would argue that an 'association' to the ground, and a strict limitation in terms of altitude still qualifies as ground based.
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Yeah, right (Score:2)
By your definition someone could break the land speed record by just flying a jet fighter at very low level.
"Today's hovercraft are not "airships" per se"
No , they're hovercrafts, not cars or ships.
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My definition included: "and a strict limitation in terms of altitude".
A jet fighter would not qualify.
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Don't they realise what they've done?! (Score:5, Funny)
At last!
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It will, you just need to start off high enough. And it will fly downwards.
Re:Don't they realise what they've done?! (Score:5, Funny)
That's not flying. It's falling, with style.
Tsutomu's aerodynamic cellular automaton (Score:2, Interesting)
Tsutomu never actually got his degree. I have long lost touch with him, so I don't know whether he ever went back to school, but at least for many years he was working as a research physicist with no degree of any sort. Not even a BS. I actually got better
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My bullshit detector is tingeling quit a bit in your post.
He hasnt published anything even near that direction.
He isnt mentioned or documented in even working in that field.
If he really did a breakthrough that was so top secret they have it still confidential 20+ years later, than why did he tell YOU?
I take it back (Score:2)
Damn, thats emberassing. got the wrong person...
He did work on cellular automatism for fluid dynamics, but that whole field was just a stopgap that never went anywhere.
The quote you said is pretty telling. 1000 times the speed of a cray isnt really much at all, especially for algorithms poured into custom hardware.
Back in those days it was (Score:2)
As for telling me stuff that ought to have been top secret... you don't know Tsutomu. I wouldn't dream of accusing him of any kind of crime, but he did like to brag about what a cool frood he was.
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>>I don't have a link or a literature reference for you. I don't know whether he published an unclassified paper about it, but if he did it shouldn't be hard to dig up.
Sounds kind of like a transputer. I think they even used it to run Conway's game of life.
1000mph (Score:2)
I guess that at 1000mph, anything can fly.
British space program failure (Score:5, Funny)
In all seriousness... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anybody knows the point of this?
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Yes.
Because records are always increased with time, because it can be done.
Bloodhound SSC is a project designed to showcase British engineering capabilities and talent and to enthuse and encourage the next generations of engineers who are currently at school and have not yet decided what they want to do for a career.
Have a look at the project web site, all the information is there.
http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/ [bloodhoundssc.com]
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1. Take rocket
2. Place it horizontal instead of vertical
3. ???
4. Profit!
Translation to standard units (Score:2)
A solution, at last. (Score:2)
Finally - no more of those long, boring police chase videotapes coming out of L.A.
Just "This is Action 4 News enroute to a reported car chase on the I-TABOOOOOM....what the hell was that?"
Holy hell seatbelted to a nuclear warhead (Score:3, Funny)
This story made me think of the phrase "not enough of him left to fill a matchbox".
The race is on (Score:3, Informative)
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Too bad the North American Eagle team are having a hard time raising funding. It's interesting to see a J79 powered 104 go up against all this new radical technology. The F-104 was known for it's low altitude speed ability.
Darryl Greenamyer's [wikipedia.org] Red Baron F-104 did 998 mph (mach 1.30) officially and 1013 mph (mach 1.33) unofficially. At less than 300 ft, back in the '70's. The J79 has to be water/alcohol injected during runs like these, otherwise it will exceed it's maximum inlet operating temps.
How about some reverse wings? (Score:2)
I can’t imagine that they didn’t come up with just attaching reverse wings / gigantic spoilers to it.
If they did, then what’s the reason they don’t use them? Sounds extremely obvious to me...
Car? Plane? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me see.. Rocket engine, uplift much higher than weight, 1000mph...
That's a jet plane, not a car. Sure, it got better landing wheels than normal, and a bit special body, but it's still a goddamn jet plane.
If that's a car, we've had flying cars for over 50 years now.
Hands-free? (Score:3, Funny)
Hopefully it includes SYNC or some other means of hands-free cell phone use. You know, for that ever-important phone call. Can't really consider it a car until the driver can yak away while driving...
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