The Bloodhound SSC land speed record racing car will make its world debut at East Wintergarden, Canary Wharf, London on Thursday, 24 September before going on public display on Friday and Saturday the 25th and 26th of September from 9am to 5pm.
Bloodhound SSC is a jet- and rocket-powered car designed to reach 1,000 mph on land. It has a slender body of approximately 13.4m in length with two front wheels within the body and two rear wheels mounted externally within wheel fairings. It weighs 7.5 tons and in total the engines produce more than 135,000 horsepower!
The current record stands at 763.035 mph and was set by Andy Green, driver of Bloodhound SSC, when he piloted Thrust SSC in 1997. The Bloodhound SSC land speed racer will be presented in record attempt configuration but without the carbon fiber bodywork on one side, in order to show the car's inner workings. Visitors will see that 98% of the car has been completed including the Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet engine, which is also used to power Europe’s Typhoon military fighter aircraft. In order to accelerate the car to its top speed, each of three Nammo hybrid rockets will provide a thrust of 30kN (6,000 lbs). This will be combined with the thrust from the EJ200 jet engine to generate about 212kN (47,700 lbs of thrust). Nammo rockets are used by the European Space Agency (ESA) to separate the stages of the Ariane 5 satellite launcher. Since the rocket engines gulp down 40 liters of fuel every second, a 542bhp supercharged Jaguar V8 engine is needed just to power the fuel pump.
The Bloodhound SSC is scheduled to undergo runway testing up to 200mph (321km/h) at the Aerohub, Newquay, UK later this year. In 2016 the team will deploy to South Africa to begin high speed testing with the target of first reaching 800mph (1,287km/h) and then 1,000mph (1,609km/h).