The Fastest Car On Earth

The Thrust SSC is the only car to officially break the sound barrier. Listen in as Scott tells you all about the car, the team and the driver that made it all possible.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
I and welcome to the fast Track. I'm your host,
Scott Benjamin, and today we've got a topic that is
something that has just been fascinating to me from the
very beginning, since I was a really young child. And
I want to tell you a little bit about that
in just a moment. But I guess there's a couple
of kind of housekeeping things that I want to get
out of the way early on, because you're gonna hear

(00:29):
some some paper shoveling along the way here. I'm looking
at a sea of notes in front of me. I've
got a laptop, I've got my phone going, I've got
all kinds of things happen here. And I just wanted
to tell you that if you do hear some of
that paper shoveling, that is me going through a series
of notes, are looking for information that um is all
over the place because there's a lot there's a lot

(00:49):
of information about today's topic. And and today's topic is,
by the way, uh, the fastest car on Earth. And
it's the outright fastest car, the outright record holder, the
land speed record holder. And I'll give you some history
about it. I'm going to talk about the car itself,
the driver, you know, the search for the driver, you
know how all that happened. And it's something that has
just fascinated me from the very beginning, because when I

(01:12):
was a kid, and this goes way way back into
the mid nineteen seventies, early nineteen seventies. I'll tell you
how long ago this was. I for Christmas, I wanted
a gift that was a hard copy version or hardcover
version of the Guinness Book of World Records, and right
that right there shows you how long ago this was.
You can just look that up online now, of course.

(01:32):
And I did get that as a gift, and one
of the first things that I flipped to would be
the automotive records, anything that was, you know, the fastest,
the longest cars, you know, the most outrageous cars, most expensive,
whatever it happened to be at the time. But one
of the things that really piqued my attention was the
fastest car in the world. Of course, and at the time, uh,

(01:54):
there was a car that was out there that was
called the Blue Flame and it was the nineteens. The
records broken nineteen seventy. But this is a rocket powered
car and it achieved a speed of about six hundred
and twenty two miles per hour. And that was again
back in nineteen seventy. Uh, that's really moving even now.
That's really really fast for now. But that record held,

(02:15):
I believe, until about nineteen eighty three. And so you
can hear this one. That paper shuffling happened right now.
That record was broken by a guy named Richard Noble,
or at least he held the record in three I
should say, in a car called the Thrust two, and
that achieved about six thirty four miles per hour. So
we're not talking about a huge, huge increase there. We're

(02:38):
talking about it like twelve miles per hour was all
he bested the other record by at that point. And
then fourteen years later along comes a guy named Andy Green.
And we'll talk about Andy Green in another section here
in this show. But you know the search for him
and who he is and and uh you know why
he was qualified to drive this vehicle. But he is
the current outright Lands speed record holder right now for

(03:02):
the one mile and the one kilometer, the flying mile
and the flying kilometer. And these are f i A records,
their official records. They were time by USAC officials. These
that's the United States Auto Club, and that is the
the officiating group that makes all of this, um well official,
uh you know, they're the ones that have to measure
the record in order to make it, to make it so,

(03:23):
and of course gain US you know, records this as well.
But in October of n so that's fourteen years after
Richard Noble broke the record, um you know, by again
twelve miles per hour, along comes Andy Green in the
thrust S s C. And the thrust S SC is
the vehicle that we will focus on today. But the
record that he he achieved on that day, or on

(03:45):
October fifteen, and there were many many runs which I
guess we'll we'll talk about a little bit, but not
in depth. We want to talk about the main record
breaking runs. But the the average speed that he achieved
on October was seven one hundred and sixty three point
zero three five miles per hour. That is a supersonic speed.

(04:05):
So this car was designed with the idea that they
were going to go supersonic. And it's again that's another
little something we're gonna touch on here. And you know
what what it takes to go supersonic in a car.
It's unbelievable. The the the engineering that has to go
into this vehicle in order to make this happen. I
should tell you that the the average I say it's
the average speed, UH is seven sixty three point zero
three five. Because you have to make two runs. You

(04:27):
have to make a run both directions. You know what,
it's north south east west in this case, I believe
it was a north south run. So the first run
was run at seven hundred and fifty nine point three
three three miles per hour. The second run was seven
hundred and sixty six point six zero nine. They average
the two together to get the seven sixty three. Again,
that is a you start measuring in mock speeds at

(04:50):
that point, so this is mock point one zero two zero.
So they just broke the sound barrier in this vehicle,
which is incredibly impressive for a vehicle. Now this is
a of course, it's a vehicle that has to be
um on land when it breaks this. It can't be
a low flying aircraft, which we'll also discuss. You know, actually,

(05:11):
you know what, I'm going to talk about that right now,
because I think this is one of those like fascinating
little bits of information that comes up. Uh that that
maybe not a lot of people understand. The car looks
like a like like a jet. If you look up
to thrust SSC, which I encourage you to do on
um you know, just Google, image search or whatever, it's
very simple to look it up. Um. The car, of course,

(05:31):
it was designed by math and science. I mean, that's
that's why it shaped the way it is. But it's
two enormous engines, which which we'll talk about in a
bit too, which is the uh the giant Rolls Royce
jet engines. And then there's like a pencil shape in
the middle like a fuselage. And it's a very very
long vehicle. I want to say, it's like fifty four
ft long. Well, we'll talk about length and in a

(05:52):
moment as well. Boy, I'm promising a lot. I hope
I get to all this. I really do. Uh. Well,
we'll see. I'll do my best to get to everyone
that I say we'll talk out. But the car itself,
it looks like it does look like a rocket ship
on land or or jet on land. And one of
the fascinating things about this is that the car does
have to remain in contact with the Earth through the
whole run through the entire measured mile or measured kilometer

(06:16):
as it may be that we're going to talk about, Um,
you know, how they how they get this and how
long it takes to get up to speed and all that,
but uh, they do actually look the full distance and
make sure that you know that the cars leaving a treadmark,
not treadmarks, but but tire marks on the surface for
that whole time. Now, one thing that complicated this is
that you know, and you know other vehicles they're they're

(06:38):
measuring to make sure that you know it's again, it's
not like a low flying aircraft. They don't just fly,
you know, like a foot above the ground for that
distance because then there isn't the rolling resistance that there
would be with any uh you terrestrial vehicles. So the
one thing that complicated all this with with this vehicle
is that because there was there was a sonic boom
that was associated with this vehicle. And of course you

(06:58):
know it's a it's a an arid environment. It was
the record is broken in the Black Rock Desert in
Nevada Lass, not Las Vegas, but in Nevada um north
kind of like the northwest corner of Nevada. And one
thing that the Sonic Boom did was it's sort of
not disintegrated, but it kind of it kind of made
the tire tracks difficult to see. I mean it kind

(07:21):
of blasted them away as it went over as well. So, um,
it was difficult for them to to to prove, but
they did in fact see that there were tire tracks
the whole way. So I always find that fascinating. And
I think maybe we can talk about wheels in just
a moment too, because the wheels are interesting on this car.
Everything about this vehicle is fascinating. I've been reading some

(07:41):
of these these websites that are you know, like maybe
engineering sites or you know sites were they're just fans
that are just as deeply excited about this as I am.
And you know they'll they'll talk about these little tiny
things that make this car different to unique and and
special in some way. And um, the course it's out
like any other car that you would see on the road,
it's it's a lot different. Um. I said that, you know,

(08:04):
it's powered by jet engines and in fact it's two
rolls Royce spay Turbofan engines. And initially they were the
Rolls Royce Spay two two models, and then eventually they
went up to the Rolls Royce Spay two oh five models.
And there's a lot of interesting facts about those engines
and the speeds and you know, the um all kinds

(08:25):
of things we need to talk about. Um. You know,
I mentioned just a moment ago that this car did
break the sound barrier, and one thing that we should
note here is that the sound barrier varies by by
altitude and even by temperatures. So, uh, you know, when
we're talking about the place that this vehicle broke the record,
I think it was, the altitude is something like and
I'm trying to remember this off the top of my head,

(08:47):
but it's like three thousand nine feet above sea level.
So at sea level, the sound barrier is something like
seven hundred and sixty one and it has to be
fifty degrees fahrenheit. So that's how particular that is, right,
So it changes. So if you go up to between oh,
I'm going to give you a meters uh measurement here,
not feet. I don't know why I'm doing that, but

(09:07):
eleven thousand to twenty thousand meters above sea level, the
speed drops down to about six hundred and sixty miles
per hour at negative seventy degrees fahrenheit, So the temperatures
very greatly, the speeds very that's almost that's almost a
hundred miles per hour off when you get to a different,
different altitude, so very specifically for this record, you know,

(09:30):
at three thousand, nine hundred feet above sea level, when
you know Andy Andy Green piloted this vehicle at seven
hundred and sixty three miles per hour. He was breaking
the speed barrier, the sound barrier, which I think is
is just fascinating. All that, you know changes, so you know,
when people try to break this record elsewhere, uh, they're
gonna have to deal with with stuff like that as well.

(09:52):
Now this happened again. This happened on October fifteenth, and
of course there was an official press release that went
out and I'll read just a little bit of this
because this is how kind of the world became aware
of this. It says the World the World Motorsport Council
hamligated a new world land speed records set by the
team thrust S sc of Richard Noble, who is the

(10:13):
owner of the team or the founder of the team,
along with about three other people by the way, driver
Andy Green on fifteenth of October at Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA.
This is the first time in history that a land
vehicle has exceeded the speed of sound. The new records
are as follows, and they give the flying mile and
the flying kilometer. Of course they measure different ways. Of course,

(10:36):
this is a British team, and you know here in
the US we don't necessarily measure kilometers all the time.
We go with with miles and feet and all that.
And just for a heads up for everybody out there,
I mean, this is the we're talking about the difference
between the metric system and the imperial system. I think
everybody knows that. But one kilometer is equivalent to about
zero points six miles, which is about three thousand, two

(10:58):
eighty feet if you want to break it down that way,
and one mile, of course um is about five thousand,
two hundred and eighty feet if you're using the imperial system.
And the way that they break this down again, the
flying mile and the flying kilometer, these are the measured
distances where the actual record is taking place. So you
know there's a ramp up to speed at full speed.
They measure it from a starting point a finished point

(11:20):
and uh, and then there's a slowdown area. And of course,
you know, the only thing that they really care about
is that one mile or that one kilometer, and they
called the flying mile or the flying kilometer. The flying
mile speed we've already talked about many times, seven hundred
and sixty three point zero three five miles per hour.
The flying kilometer again, that shorter distance is about seven
hundred and sixty point three four three miles per hour,

(11:41):
so that means he was gaining speed as he was
going farther and farther. Now, the end of the the
end of the press release, it's a very short line.
It just says in setting the record, the sound barrier
was broken in both the north and south runs. And
this is from Paris, the eleventh of November, so roughly
about a month after the you know, to verify all
the speeds everything, um, I will tell you this. I

(12:02):
will tell you that I did a quick thing. I
went to a speed distance time calculator and I inserted
the numbers and it just gave me a rough number.
Because the numbers are so large that it doesn't exactly
give me. It doesn't give me the most detailed number
that I that I wanted. It's more rounded two seconds.

(12:22):
But um, I put in the numbers and the speeds
for the mile, and the the speeds given, and according
to this this car, this thrust s sc went through
that one mile uh section, So you know, one mile
from start to finish, exactly one mile five thousand feet
in roughly you know, four and a half seconds something

(12:45):
like that, So a full mile. I mean, I think
we can all picture what a mile is and imagine
that going by in about four and a half seconds.
And the kilometer speed, of course was even even faster
than that. I think there was about three seconds. Of course,
that's only just a little bit over half a mile
in distance really if you want to look at it
that way. Um, but the kilometer, the flying kilometer was
done and just over three seconds, so really really fast.

(13:08):
I mean again, nothing really can relate. You can't really
relate to anything like that on Earth, so it's it's
a very difficult thing to relate to. But but just
picture that the next time you're traveling on the road,
and you can kind of if maybe you can even
look ahead a mile and imagine being at that point
you know, in in four and a half seconds. It's
just it's a mind blow. It's an astounding record that's

(13:29):
been broken. And we've got a lot more to cover here.
We've got, you know, several other topics that I want
to talk about. In fact, i'd like to talk about,
you know, getting somebody to drive this thing, somebody who
can pilot this thing successfully and uh, and the steps
and processes that they went through to do that. And
we will do that in just a moment after we
take a break for a word from our sponsor. And

(13:52):
we are back and you're listening to the fast Track,
and I'm your host, Scott Benjamin, and we were just
before the break saying that we were going to to
talk a little bit about UM, how they found the driver,
how they how they selected somebody to drive this uh,
this incredible machine. UM had such an amazing speed on land.
And I'm gonna get to that, I promise you I will.
But there's a couple of things that I think I

(14:14):
may have kind of skirted over here at the at
the beginning that I need to go back to. And uh,
I want to talk about the engines just a little bit,
and ways we said that it's Rolls Royce Spay two
oh five turbo jet engines. These things, between the two
of them produced an approximate one hundred thousand horse power.
I've seen numbers a little bit higher than that, a
hundred and ten thousands something like that, but we're talking

(14:35):
about a ballpark of about a hundred thousand horse power
between them. And I know that they're typically measured in
thrust output and all that, but to be honest, for
a lot of us, it doesn't really make a whole
lot of sense of exactly what that what that means.
And um, the reason that they um are have to
be so powerful is because well, you know, as you
as you get going faster and faster and faster, and

(14:57):
we've seen this with you know, some of the other
land speed record attempt so you know, with with other
vehicles with piston engine vehicles, with wheel driven cars, and
that is that the faster you go, the more wind
resistance there is against you. And and it just it's
like this this um this give and take, this push
and pull that happens where you need more power, but
there's more force coming against you and more power more

(15:17):
forced against you. And even in a car that shaped
the way that the thrust SSC is shaped, which is
very I mean extremely aerodynamic. You wouldn't think you could
design a vehicle more aerodynamic than this if you were
to look at it. Um, it's it's unbelievable how much
pushback there is against this vehicle. I mean, I've seen
numbers and they like to do you know, comparisons like
this number of tons that you know, tons of force

(15:39):
that are against the vehicle and at that speed, you know,
at the at the high rate of speed that it's
going seven sixty plus miles per hour, it's something like
it's got the equivalent of like like pulling three three
and a half full size elephants behind it or something
like that. You know, it's like that's the amount of
drag on the vehicle as it's trying to push itself forward.
So um, it's it just becomes expon actually more and

(16:00):
more difficult the faster that you go. And I figured
I just mentioned that at at this point because we're
talking about some of the more interesting numbers. I guess
that go along with us. And at the rear of this, uh,
this whole thing at the rear of the craft. Um
and they do call it a craft, not a car.
That's a craft. Um, the temperatures can be more than
three hundred degrees celsius and to the rest of us

(16:21):
using the Imperial system, that is five hundred and seventy
two degrees Fahrenheits. So it's incredibly hot back there at
the back. Of course, as you would expect the materials
that have to be used. You know that all of
this has to be considered that you don't just melt
the back end of the vehicle as soon as you
fire up the engines because they are after burner engines
um or or jets rather and um. There's also a

(16:43):
good bit of noise that goes along with this. As
you might expect, um, the sound levels are just unreal.
I mean it's a hundred and seventy five deciples at
at speed, and I'll tell you that the air begins
to heat up just because of the sound at a
hundred and seventy four deciples. So it's like, um, I
think it's the equivalent of if you can imagine this

(17:03):
a quarter stick of dynamite igniting, only it's a continuous sound.
It never lets up. There's not like one moment when
you know it's it's it's intolerable and then it goes away.
It's like that's a continuous roar at seventy five decibels,
it's just uh, I think a hundred and sixty three
you can actually break glass. So you know, it's it's
just one of those crazy, crazy things. And you know,

(17:24):
one of the other things that's a little bit nuts
about this whole thing are the wheels. And you wouldn't
really consider the wheels to be um as important as
they are. Maybe that's not the right way to say this,
because you know, wheels, of course are important, but it's
not the standard wheels that you're thinking of for an
automobile as well. Now these are not driven wheels, and
that's another thing we've got to talk about. But there's

(17:45):
a lot um the car is not. The engines aren't
driving the wheels in order to make this go. It's
simply relying on thrust. The wheels are there to keep
the vehicle on track, to keep it straight, and you know,
of course that's a function of the chassis and of
course of the driver has a huge input into that
as well, obviously, But the wheels themselves are made of

(18:06):
not of rubber. Of course they could, they wouldn't stand
seven hundred and sixty three miles per hour. There's no
way that they would do it. Because, um, these wheels
are subjected at speed and when they when they're at
top speed, they're rotating at eight thousand, five hundred RPMs.
So the tires are spinning that quickly at seven hundred
and sixty three miles per hour, and of course that's

(18:27):
far greater than any kind of you know, rubber or
carbon fiber or anything like that would stand up to.
They are made of solid aluminum and it's something called
L aluminum. I don't know exactly what LN aluminum stands for,
but there they were forged by a company called h
d A Forgings, and then they were machined by another company,
and that's Dunlop Aviation, and they tested them on a

(18:50):
dynamometer at speeds of up to RPMs. They exceeded what
they expected to to reach out in the desert, and
they actually achieved that. It was successful to as obviously,
but you know, the wheels come along with other things
as well. That now it's strange enough that they're solid
aluminum and you can find again, you can find you know,
google images of this on online. You can find um

(19:10):
you know. Actually there's a pretty interesting short documentary that
I'll point you to in just a moment about the wheels,
just the wheels themselves, in the shape of the wheels,
because that's important. But you have to remember that these
also have to have different different roller bearings. They also
have to have um some type of lubrication to keep
them going. So that was another company, and there's a
company called s KF that that created these special tungsten

(19:33):
carbide roller wheel bearings for these for these wheels in particular,
and for the lubrication, the lubrication technology that allows them
to continue to spin at that fast you know PM
in the desert. So you gotta imagine the environment that
they're in as well, you know, the sand and the
dirt and rocks and all that. The company that was

(19:54):
I guess awarded the contract to to do this was Castrol.
So Castrol developed lubrication tech analogy that that that that
lubricated the wheels in order to allow them to go
this fast. Now, now the wheels themselves, I don't think
I mentioned this. They weigh about three hundred and fifty
three pounds each. So these are substantial pieces of metal.
And I mentioned just a moment ago that you know,

(20:15):
there's a a short documentary that you can watch, and
it's an easy thing to search online if you just
search thrust SSC wheels or you know wheel technology or
something like that. You know, anything point you to the
right place. The company that that did these, they're the
one that machine them. I guess it was Dunlop Aviation
and h d A h d A for genes. They
together went out and tested these as as they do

(20:36):
out in the desert, and they found that the first
set of wheels that they were using, uh, the profile
of the wheel was digging into the surface too deeply.
It was going down to the bedrock this just below
the surface, and um, it was actually damaging the wheels
as they spun. And they knew that you know, at
a certain speed or above the speed that they could
even test it at um because they're just dragging trailers
behind them with these wheels, you know, with with weight

(20:58):
on top of it, you know, the approximate weight of
the vehicle um in water ballast, and that's how they
test them, how how far they sink down into the
earth and so that you know, the dragon it with
a van or truck or whatever. And they realized they
were sinking too deep. So they went back and they
changed the profile of the wheel, came back for more testing,
and finally determined that yeah, it does allow this thing

(21:19):
to have the grip that it needs as well as
you know them the ability to sink in just the
right depth. Thing. You know, it won't it won't go
in too far. It won't it won't stay you know,
too far on top as well, because that would allow
the vehicle to kind of you know, slide and skirt
all over the place, and and that would be no
good as well. Um boy, okay, so the wheels are
one thing that I found fascinating. There's gosh, there's so

(21:40):
much here I think I might even just have to
skip over this. But there's a scale model test that
was done, a one scale model that was it was
built and it was tested on a military rocket sled.
That's how they tested the design, the shape of this
whole thing and to understand you know, that how this
thing would i would operate at supersonic speeds, that the design,
how it would hold up. Again, one scale model, and

(22:01):
there's again more information about this. I encourage you as
I always do in all of these podcasts, and I
do this every single time that we'll we'll talk. I
hope I remember too, but I but I say that
this podcast is probably just a good starting point for
you to kind of dig in and do your own
research on a lot of these things. That a lot
of these topics because I just simply don't have enough

(22:22):
time to to talk about everything as in depth as
I would like to. Because each one of these things,
you know, the wheels, the driver, the car itself. I
think you know some of the three D printing technology
that went into even the steering wheel of this thing. Um,
all of this is stuff that that it deserves, you know,
its own its own show, really and uh and I
would love it if you would dig into it and

(22:42):
maybe you know, get back to me with questions or
maybe we can even focus on it in future shows. UM.
But but again, use this as kind of a springboard
to dig into these topics much much deeper, because there's
a lot of information out there. And UM, I do
want to talk about the um the driver and and
how they selected that driver. But um, first you know

(23:03):
I was just thinking about this, and one place that
I would like to point you before we go much
much further here is back to I have another podcast
that's called Car Stuff, and Car Stuff is is coming
back very soon. But we had done a podcast for
a good nine years up until about the very end
of Seen, and we had myself and my co host,

(23:26):
his name is Ben Bolan, and we we had an
archive of material that has at least eight hundred, maybe
even nine hundred shows, and you can find all of
those on our on our website. It's called Car Stuff
Show dot com, and if you go to car Stuff
Show dot com, you can search all of our podcasts
going all the way back to the very beginning. And
there's a couple that are related that I think you

(23:46):
would be interested in if you're if you like the
land Speed Record Show and you want more information about
land Speed Record anything that was related to it. We
did a full show on another car that we're gonna
talk about at the end of this podcast called the Bloodhound.
SSC also did a show on belly tank racers, which
are just that's another really interesting one, mostly salt flat racing,

(24:06):
but again fascinating I think. And then we also did
a show on the ten fastest cars on land and uh,
ten fastest cars in the world whether and even you
know what, even going so far, we've we've done you know,
high speed trains, you know, so we've talked about some
incredibly fast vehicles and uh and I think that's a
good place to go. So go to car stuff show
dot com and and search the archives and you'll find

(24:28):
some other land speed record information that that I think
you'll like a lot. And um, you know, there's just
so much, as you can tell. I'm I'm kind of
all over the board on this one. There's a there's
a lot of information about this car that every little
tiny thing is just fascinating about it. And and I
a couple of things that I really want to get
out there that I again I hope I do. And

(24:49):
one thing and I don't want to neglect here is
the aero dynamics of the whole thing. And and I'll
just be real brief about this because there's there's again
a lot to say about it, but let's just get
past this one thing because I found it fascinating. Um,
it's so important you know that that this thing, of
course remains remains on the ground, it remains in contact
with the earth. And that's for control, you know, so

(25:11):
that the driver is able to you know, reasonably directed
in the in the direction he wants to and hopefully,
you know, reliably steering in the direction that he wants to.
But the other reason is that you know, this is
essentially a rocket. You know, it could be like a
flying ship at any moment. You know, we've all seen
race cars that catch a little bit of air underneath
them and they fly, uh, they go, they're going so

(25:33):
fast that they take off in the air. They do flips. Um,
they become if they've spin around backwards, they become you know,
instead of being the having the down force, they have
more of an upthrust that brings them up into the
air and sometimes you know, even headed forward. If you
get our you know, air underneath, the same thing happens.
They take off into the air. That's exactly the case
with this. Now imagine you know, it's seven hundred and

(25:54):
sixty miles an hour. If if this car were to flip,
that would be a well, it's a life ending event, really,
I mean, it is really not a whole lot you
can do. If you're if you're you know, you're already
on the ground in this thing. There's no chance for
um um fuel dumping. There's no chance for an injector
seed or anything like that. They and they thought about
that in in this case, and to be honest, they

(26:14):
decided that, um, they're just really at this speed and
at this at this height, which is you know, just
a couple of feet above the ground, you know where
the driver is that uh, it's really difficult to survive
a wreck at this at the speed, So they can't.
They they countered that by just going over the top
with stability and control and trying to make this the
safest vehicle to drive as far as um, you know,

(26:38):
maintaining control instead of you know, building a roll cage
that wouldn't do anything in the end other than add
weight and and you know, complex nature to the design
of the vehicle. So you know, the driver, the poor
driver this thing has to get into this this vehicle
knowing that you know, a wreck is essentially a life
ending event, or it can be, um likely would be

(26:59):
at that speed and you know, again you're already on
the ground. You can't deject, you can't do any of
that stuff. Um but but just so you understand what's
going on, and there are a couple of countermeasures. So
there's a I guess they call it the responsible aerodynamic system,
and I don't know exactly what that means. But this
thing can be uh it's not even activated by the driver.

(27:20):
It's just an automatic thing that happens, but it can
be activated within ten milliseconds. And it adds an extra
three tons of down force to the vehicle almost immats.
So that's immediate. Um, something goes wrong, you know, like
so let's say this thing just goes a few degrees
off of course, and you know things are not going right,
and you know, the systems can tell. I mean they
read it instantly, ten within ten milliseconds, an extra three

(27:42):
tons of down forces added to this And and I
found this pretty interesting too, someone said one of the engineers.
Just I don't remember who exactly said this, but I
wrote it down because I found it was fascinating, you know,
in just a moment. But right now, let's take a
break for a word from our sponsor. Vehicle as it
travels through the speed the air at the speed and
on the ground at the speed, if it's one degree
off upwards. Uh, it's gonna take off if it's one

(28:04):
degree downwards. He said, it's like you're mining, which I
thought was kind of a funny way to say it,
but it truly would. It would dig itself into the
ground at that speed. So um, just again, so many
fascinating little things that go along with this ten milliseconds
for an extra three tons of down force in this car.
It's incredible. There's so much information about this car out
there that that it's a wealth of information that, you know,

(28:28):
an embarrassment of riches. I guess maybe is what I
have here in front of me. And I don't know
if I'm gonna be able to get to all of it.
But I did want to talk about the driver for sure,
because I've been promising it, not only from the being
in the show, but just because it's kind of a
fascinating story about how they got to the person that
they eventually chose to drive this thing. And you can
imagine it's not a decision that they take lightly. That's

(28:49):
something that you know you have to be chosen for.
And uh, there's more of a process to it than
than what you might think. And I'll get to that
in just a second, but we've already mentioned who this is.
Who the driver is. His name is Andy Green, and
Andy Green was born in Warwickshire. He's an English born
wing commander for the Royal Air Force. He's a fighter pilot,

(29:09):
and it kind of makes sense that they went to
a fighter pilot for this instead of a driver. I mean,
this thing is is more or less again like a
like a jet on the ground really with wheels and
and that's really essentially what it is. So he has
quite a bit of experience operating vehicles that you know,
are powered by jets and and has um you know,
the know how and the and the ability to control

(29:31):
these types of vehicles at these types of speeds. He's
a good choice and you'll find out why in just
a second as we as we go through this. But
I do want to tell you that the the one
of the founders of the company here, the one that
you know the thrust S sc the um, the initiative
to go supersonic in a vehicle. His name is Richard Noble,
and I mentioned Richard was the current record holder. He

(29:51):
was the you know, the guy that drove the vehicle
that was called the Thrust two back in three to
his own land speed record and the one that Andy
would eventually break in this vehicle. And so Richard was
of course heavily involved with the choice of who would
be behind the wheel for this one. And you know,
initially it was thought that maybe Richard would do it himself.
But Richard decided that he needed somebody that had even

(30:13):
more skill than he had with this and maybe he
was getting a little too old. I don't know exactly
what he was thinking, but he needed somebody that had
what he called exceptional skills in order to be able
to achieve this goal. And so he decided that he
didn't have the skills to do this one, which is
pretty incredible to begin with, and they needed a driver.
The reality is that they went to somebody. You know,

(30:33):
they went to a lot of people that had experience
going fast, and so they selected a group of about
thirty people. Well, thirty people applied, or thirty people wanted
to do it. They might have gone to more than that,
but thirty people did apply for this. And you'll find
it as you might expect. It was drag racers and pilots,
and it was all drag racers, all pilots that that applied,
But they did have to kind of decide how they're

(30:55):
gonna whittle down this group, and they said the most
obvious thing to do was to give them all a
sanity test and then and take the ones that This
is kind of funny, let me tell you, this is
like a tongue in cheek team. But they said the
most obvious thing to do was give them a sanity
test and then take the ones who failed, which I
kind of understand. You know, to drive a car, so
you know, supersonic on on land, it's it definitely takes

(31:18):
someone who's uh, a little bit out of their mind, right.
But I don't want to say too much about Andy's
mental state at this point, but I think he's fine.
Everybody head, He's fine. We'll we'll find out what he
went through in just a moment. But again, the thirty
were first narrowed down to about sixteen and they were
given a lot of different intelligence and personality tests along
the way, so you know, it's not just getting behind

(31:40):
the wheel and seeing what you could do. That was
a big part of it. Of course, they took them
to several different circuits and allow them to drive, you know,
formula race cars and all kinds of crazy things like
that and allow them to you know, kind of show
what they have their skills behind the wheel. But a
lot of it was intelligence and personality tests, and the
reason is that they were trying to find someone that
was very analytical, somebody that could be trusted to make

(32:01):
changes not only on the fly, but to be able
to help the team, to be able to contribute the
most too, you know, solving problems and controlling the vehicle,
and you know, it kind of had to be a
well rounded person, somebody that could do all of these
things all at once and do them quickly and efficiently,
and you know, just make sure that they could trust
this person's opinion as well. You know that the recommendations
that they give we were spot on. So once they

(32:23):
got down to finally eight, once they you know, they
would hold down again from thirty to sixteen down to eight.
And when they got to eight, here's the interesting thing
is that only pilots remained at this point. They remained
in the top eight spots. So all of the drag
racers and some of the pilots were gone at this point,
so there was down to just pilots at that point.
It turns out that they were the ones going to

(32:44):
kind of handle like the extreme stress and discomfort. And
one way that they did this was they put them
through a couple of surprise tests. So you know, they
had a couple of days and a couple of nights
where they're at this place they got they called the
Center of Human Sciences, and the team spent a lot
of time, you know, working on with them, uh you know,
training and you know how they would deal with you know,

(33:05):
the the hot desert environment and how that would affect
their mental capacity and you know whether or not they
would affect them as far as you know, like you know,
some of the decisions that they would make. And as
a surprise, they were kept awake all night one night
in the in the heat chamber. They put them all
in a heat chamber and they were filmed at various
times and they were given computer based tests at different
intervals and they were kind of tested at that point

(33:28):
to see how they dealt with like fatigue and stress,
and you know, how the performance was was measured at
that point, um, you know, based on all of the
stuff that they were they were subjecting them to, and
a couple of the people you know, there there were
maybe three or four people that kind of rose to
the top during that, and then you know, after that,
then they did some more driving testing and just on
and on and on they they finally got to the

(33:49):
point where just one man out of all these contenders
finally comes out on top. And again it was this
British Royal Air Force jet fighter pilot by the name
of Andy Green. And Andy Green, I think I met
this already. But he was born in nineteen sixty two.
And um again he's he was he was made in
n SO the year after he was um, a year

(34:11):
after this record was made. Uh, he was made an
Officer of the Order of the British Empire, which is
a prestigious award. And if you're looking for more information
about Andy Green and uh, and I think you might
be after you kind of find out exactly what he
had to go through with all of this, you could
find it all over the place. Of course, there's a
thrust SSC website you can go to. It's just thrust
s SC dot com. Actually, just do a keyword search

(34:32):
for him in Google and you'll find a lot of
information about him everywhere. He's done many talks of course,
there's there's documentaries about him. In fact, I watched one
that was really really fascinating. There was there's one that
was actually cockpit recording of the day that he made
the final run, the one that was the record breaking run.
It's just really interesting. He also is in the shop

(34:52):
talking about it in front of another vehicle. This is
one of the most fascinating bits of footage that I
found of Andy Green because combines both what he did
in the vehicle and you know, him outside of the
vehicle being able to kind of like calmly describe what's
happening at at what points. It's just it's really interesting
because you know, he tells you exactly how he begins
the run, how you know he's getting up to speed,

(35:14):
what's happening at the time, the radio commands that are
going back and forth between him and uh, you know,
the the base camp or whatever they call the the
encampment of people that are that are watching this whole
thing from a distance, of course, but it's it's fascinating
to see how he brings the vehicle up to speed,
and that's alone that is interesting because it doesn't just
take off like a like a rocket. Like you would

(35:35):
think it would. He has to slowly creep up to
speed so that all of the debris from the desert,
you know, the rocks and the sand and all that
doesn't get into the engines. And there's a certain point
I think it's about eighty miles an hour that he
can start to really kind of you know, open it
up and let it go, and then the speed comes
incrementally faster. I mean, it's it's amazing how quickly this
thing it gets up to speed, and once it's at speed,

(35:56):
how quickly it gains speed. But it's again, it's interesting
to watch. And one thing I'll I don't think I'm
ruining anything when I tell you this, but there's a
series of gauges on the on the dash that are
in front of you, and actually the view out the
windshield is it's difficult to see, and I would guess
that it would be difficult for him as well. He's
mostly doing this by gauges and um a little bit

(36:16):
by sight. But he's got his hands on the wheel
and it's it's not a typical steering wheel. It's not round,
it's got it's kind of a yoke design almost At
some point and he's going incredibly fast at this points,
still gaining speed. The vehicle does start to track a
little bit off. It's not exactly on the line that
is supposed to be on. And he's talking about this
very calmly when he's in the shop, but you know,
in the car he's just as calm. And that's so

(36:39):
impressive because here's what happens. The nose of the vehicle.
I can't remember which direction is headed. I believe it's
headed off one one direction or the other by several degrees.
And he's got to have so much steering input into
this thing. You would think it would just be you know,
you know, mashing the throttle forward and hanging on and
just going straight and that's it. But there's a lot
of input on the steering wheel by Andy Green, and

(37:00):
a lot of effort put in, you know, with what
he's doing controlling all this. At one point he has
got ninety degrees of input into the steering wheel, so
his left hand it's in the twelve o'clock position instead
of being over at the nine o'clock position. That's how
much steering him put he's in. He's got into this thing,
and he's traveling again at more than five miles an hour,
faster than a jet would travel in the air, a

(37:21):
commercial jet would travel in the near and he's on
the ground on a desert like a sandy sandy surface,
in a vehicle with metal wheels, two jet engines that
are that are full throttle. It's just, it's it's an
unbelievable moment, and he maintains control and regains control and
then completes the run. It's it's so impressive to watch,
and it's more impressive to see how he is able

(37:43):
to control the situation and keep it all kind of
reined in. He's a he's so calm under pressure. That's
exactly one of the reasons why they chose him and
why some of those tests that they gave him early on,
the intelligence tests, the kind of the analytical things, you know,
the personality tests, all that, um, they knew that, you know,
if something like that did have up and he wouldn't
just simply give up, and you know, that's it. He

(38:03):
tries to maintain control, he tries to fight to get
it back under control, and he does so and then
makes it successful. And it's just it's again, it's it's
ultra impressive. It really is to to watch how calm
and collected this guy is under pressure, and again to
to watch the final run and him just to describe
the process of you know, the the ramp up, the
flying mile, the shutdown, and then you have to turn

(38:25):
the car around hundred and eighty degrees and go back
the same direction to do the exact same thing again
with different wind currents. And uh, it's just it's it's
an unbelievable thing to watch, and it's it's really easy
to find online. You can you can check that out. Um,
but again to search for Andy Green and you'll find
all of this. It's uh, he's he's just an impressive
person all around. And and I like hearing him talk anyway.

(38:45):
I mean you watch, um, some of the other talks
that he's given when he's in front of a large
group of people, sport coat and tie and discussing the
land speed record very calmly. It's it's it's he's just
an impressive person to it to listen to. And of
course he's got some great stories as well, so um,
there's that. And uh again just check him out if
you get a chance. And I would like to talk
about another project that's coming up, and it's something that

(39:07):
we've heard about for cash. We've heard about it seems
like for decades now, not kidding, like almost decades now.
And it does involve Andy Green. It does involved land
speed record and uh, and we'll get to that, but
right now, let's take a break for a word from
our sponsor. And we're back and you're listening to the
fast Track, and I'm your host, Scott Benjamin. And just

(39:28):
before the break there, we were talking about Andy Green
and the amazing process that he had to go through
in order to be selected as the as the pilot
of this vehicle as actually I will call it a pilot,
not a driver. He was a pilot of this vehicle. Really, Um,
I do know that you drive, because he was technically
touching the ground, but he's he's a lot like a
pilot in this in this situation. Fact Um, that's what

(39:49):
his experience was. And I got all the tests and
you know some of the stressors that they put them
through in order to be selected. It was just an
unbelievable process really, I mean it was incredible. I found
a couple of other little notes here that I want
to mention before we get into the successor of the
thrust s SC and really not a whole lot on these,
but um, something that I found really really fascinating as

(40:10):
as I dug through some of this, one thing was that,
you know, of course, the vehicle wasn't wasn't built here.
It wasn't created here in the United States where the
record was broken. It was from overseas. It was as
an English built vehicle. They had to have it transported
over somehow, so they used this enormous cargo plane. And
I find this really funny is that, you know, the
cargo plane that brought the team and the vehicle over

(40:31):
here was only capable of doing something like three and
forty miles per hour in the air. It's bringing a
car that you know it does more than twice that,
you know, more than twice that on the ground. It's
just it seems like a funny. It's just a funny
image in my head. I don't know why I thought
that was hilarious, but I wrote a quick note that
I should mention that. Um. But maybe one of the
other more maybe more fascinating, I don't know, or something

(40:54):
that you might have more interest in. Here. It was
about the fuel, and we haven't really talked about the
fuel a whole lot. And as you can imagine, it
takes a lot of money to run this program. I
mean it takes as the as the program progressed the
thrust s SC people realized exactly how much that was
gonna be. And it's it's tens of millions of dollars.
It's really really expensive in order to put forth an

(41:15):
effort like this. You know, that's that's everything that's paying
for the team, that's paying for the testing, and the
vehicle itself. And you know, fuel is one of those charges.
And it's going to take an awful lot of fuel
to do this in order to even make an attempt
at this run. And that's not not just one run,
it's it's many many runs. I think that the thrust
SSC ended up making something close to seventy runs. The

(41:36):
record breaking runs were somewhere in the sixties, so they
made you know, like sixty five and sixty six. I
think those are the record breaking runs. But that's the
number of times they're traveling, you know, twelve miles across
the desert and then twelve miles back. That's you know,
that's one run or two runs rather, but it takes
a lot of fuel in order to do that, and
so on the website. Early on, in the early days

(41:57):
of this project, they started mentioning that it was going
to take a total of about two hundred and fifty
thousand gallons of fuel in order to do this, in
order to to make this effort work. So once they
got to the United States that the Black Rock Desert
two hundred and fifty thousand gallons of fuel in order
to make it happen. Then it's jet fuel. Of course,
it's very expensive fuel, and there was no single source

(42:18):
to provide this. There was no one that was, you know,
offering up the money in order to be able to
do it. So they put out a guess would be
like an early go fund me thing, really, if you
want to think of it that way. But people were
donating money, and this is the strangest thing. There was
no single source against So so they said, you know,
if you could just help out by buying maybe twenty
five gallons of fuel for this program, that would be helpful,

(42:38):
or you know what, five gallons or whatever you can
afford to pay for, please help us out. And it
became kind of like a a national pride thing. You know,
the British were chipping in to be able to say that,
you know, I helped fund uh this this um this
effort in order to maintain uh, the the land speed
record in the British name, because you know, there's something

(43:00):
that is very it's it's typically a very British record.
And again two and fifty gallon or two or fifty
thousand gallons of fuel to do this. And I'll tell
you if I found a number here that was astounding
that is related to fuel, and I want to share
that with you. Um Now we're talking about you know,
the two rollsories engines at speed for for long distances.
We're talking about twelve miles at a time at full

(43:21):
output the twin engines. The thrust that they're developing is like,
you know, fifty thousand pound feet of force, which is
the equivalent of about a hundred and a hundred thousand horsepower.
The amount of fuel that is burned at speed is
just unreal. Here four point eight gallons per second, so
that's four point eight gain. So imagine I think we

(43:41):
all can can picture like a five gallon bucket. It's
roughly that much fuel every second that this thing is
in operations. So even even at you know, top speed
in that measured mile, that flying mile, at four or
five seconds, they burned twenty five gallons of fuel in
that four or five seconds. You know that that it
took them to do that record run. It's just one
of those facts and figures they come out of this

(44:03):
whole thing that you'll find there. There are hundreds of
these if you if you really dig into the thrust
SSC program, you know it has its own um place
in a museum. Now you might wonder where the vehicle is,
and the thrust s SC is at the Coventry Transport
Museum in Coventry City Center in England, and it's part
of the permanent collection there. They have a huge collection.
So I guess if you get there, if you get

(44:23):
to the Coventry City Center in England, you should check
out this this display. They've got something like two hundred
and forty cars, like two hundred motorcycles. Of course they've
got the thrust s SC on display. And I believe
this is also the claimed birthplace of the bicycle, so
they have something like two hundred bicycles on display as well.
It's just a really interesting place. It must be a

(44:45):
massive collection, but again it's it's now a museum piece
and you can go and visit it and look at
it and over it and you know, check it all out.
I don't think that they will allow you to get
into it or anything like that. I'm sure you're kept
at a distance, but it's still a fascinating vehicle to look.
It's a little bit it's also a little bit sad
to see a vehicle like that parking museum. Sometimes I'm
a little bit sad that it's not going to be

(45:05):
out and and doing this thing anymore. But I guess
that's what happens to some of these older cars, you
know that maybe maybe it might not be safe to
you know, continually run it, you know, year after year
after year. So maybe that's maybe that's the best place
for it at this point. But they're almost immediately, almost
immediately after the thrust s sc had broken this record,
there was a call for someone to break the record again,

(45:26):
as there always is. There's always someone who's gonna want
to top that, you know. We always try to go fast,
a little bit faster, a little bit higher, a little
bit longer, you know, whatever it is. But this car.
There's another new vehicle out there, and this is the
new name of it. It's the Bloodhound LSR, which stands
for Land Speed Record. But the Bloodhound is something that
we have been hearing about for approximately I'm gonna say ten,

(45:47):
maybe even fifteen years now, maybe even twenty years at
this point. It seems like it's been mentioned for a
long long time. The interesting thing about this is that
they're not only trying to break the record by a
few miles per hour or you know, maybe a hundred
miles per hour, whatever it is. They're a shatter this record.
They want to achieve above one thousand miles per hour
in this vehicle. Now we're talking about a car that again,

(46:09):
it meets every requirement that the thrust s sc met
as far as you know, stand on the ground and
you know, traveling, the flying mile, the flying flying kilometer, etcetera.
But it has to go um a thousand miles per
hour in order to achieve the goal that this one
is looking for. It's as similar, and I will say
it's similar in design, but it's different in a lot
of ways as well. And this one has a couple

(46:30):
of different things going for it. It's not only powered
by a jet engine, a single jet engine in this case,
it's also powered by a hybrid rocket. So this is
a jet powered and rocket powered vehicle combined into one.
And I believe there's even a piston engine in there somewhere.
There's a there's a big Jaguar V eight that runs
like the auxiliary power or something like that. It's a

(46:51):
it's just an incredible machine. There's a there's a whole
episode of car stuff, as I mentioned on on the Bloodhound.
I think it was called the Bloodhound s SC when
we did this, but now it's called the bloodhoud An LSR.
And the reason is because the ownership of this company
has switched over. There have been plans to run this
car for a long time. It's been in development for
a long long time, you know, at least maybe ten, fifteen,

(47:12):
even twenty years. But recently, very recently, and I believe
the program went into what they call administration. They were
running out of money real quick, and they needed an
additional thirty million US dollars in order to operate to
run I think it's like twenties six millions sterling pounds
or something like that. It was a lot of money.

(47:32):
A guy by the name of Ian Warhurst stepped in
at the last minute and he bought the entire project.
Instead of just donating the thirty thirty million that they needed,
he bought the whole thing. He bought all intellectual property,
the car itself, the team members, you know, everything, everything
involved with the program and as far as far as
I know, as as late as March of two thousand nineteen,

(47:53):
they had formed this new company called Grafton LSR, which
later became known as just the Bloodhound LSR team, and
they are planning, or they have been planning as as
late as March is nineteen, to make a record run
in this car. So they're gonna make a go of it.
And you'll see this car testing. Could find images of it,
you can find video of it running, and it'll be
running on rubber tires, which is not going to in

(48:13):
the desert, but it's gonna have a similar set of
tires as as the thrust as the c did. So
those tires and wheels, I guess, I guess you can
call wheels really in this case will be used and
it's just it's it's got a whole new set of
not only features, but also problems that come along with it.
So the bloodhound is another thing you need to look
at with a whole different group of facts and figures

(48:34):
and information that is just again just fascinating. One thing
that I should mention here, and you'll see this in
one of the animations that they sent out I think
it was. This goes back to about two thousand eight
when I saw first saw this animation, so it tells
you it's a long time ago. But at a thousand
miles per hour the goal speed that they're they're hoping
to travel and this is gonna happen in South Africa,
by the way, this this will all go down in

(48:55):
South Africa. Um again, on a desert situation, a flat
area that is the car at speed will be traveling
faster than a bullet that is shot out of a
three fifty seven magnum So it's literally a car that
is faster than a speeding bullet, as they like to say.
So um, it's and again in the animation they kind
of describe exactly how that happens and everything. It's all

(49:17):
of this is just extremely interesting to me, and I
hope it's been interesting to you as well. Um, again,
there's a lot of information out there, and just use
this as a springboard to dig into any one of
these little topics that I've just only briefly covered, and uh,
and really find out you know about the body, the chassis,
the power trains, you know, even the dimensions of it,
the history of it, the people that are involved. It's

(49:39):
just every bit of this thing is just fascinating to me.
And I hope you found some of it interesting as well,
if it's not all of it. You know, if you
like to reach out to us and contact there's there's
a few different ways you can do that. And of
course we'ren all forms the social media at this point,
so we've got a Facebook and Instagram where we are
the fast Track Show and if you want to talk
to us on Twitter or check us out there, we

(49:59):
are are the fast Track Pod. And we have a website.
Of course, we've got a new show website that you
can check out and that's The fast Track Show dot com.
And of course you can always leave a review on
Apple Podcasts or on on the I Heart radio app
or wherever you have been to listen to your podcasts.
And if you likely you've heard, tell your friends we're
always trying to get new listeners and you know we're
We're happy the year here as well, so I hope

(50:21):
you keep listening and uh having as much fun as
we've had making the show. Thanks a lot,