Inside BloodHound
To achieve 800mph, the car needs five to six tonnes of thrust on top of the nine tonnes it already receives from the Eurofighter jet engine.
The extra power will come from a booster supplied by the Norwegian aerospace company Nammo.
Bloodhound’s engineers still need to develop the pump system that feeds this rocket with a high-test peroxide monopropellant. And they have in mind to introduce an electric element – a battery or supercapacitor to run the motor that drives the pump.
This would make Bloodhound, on one level, a hybrid vehicle.
It’s the obvious solution, says Mr Warhurst: “This is where motorsport is going, and we were talking to various manufacturers about them coming onboard to showcase their technology.”
The rocket and electric upgrades would take some time to implement. To make a land speed record attempt a viable prospect in 2022, the new owner therefore really needs to be in control, bringing the engineering team back together, by Easter at the latest.
The Bloodhound project is currently based at SGS Berkeley Green University Technical College (UTC) in Gloucestershire.
