BLOODHOUND – FAQs

Richard Noble

Why start the BLOODHOUND project now?

We have always acknowledged that Britain was once a great centre for imaginative and creative engineering.  Over the last decade’s political and financial pressure have forced entrepreneurs and industry to move away from engineering and manufacturing, with the financial capital suppliers forcing their industry into ever higher returns in shorter timescales. In the schools and families engineering was seen as a dirty career which had a history of paying badly, and teachers appeared to have a bias away from engineering. Engineering graduate entry in UK has stalled at 24,500/ann for the last 10 years while university capacity has increased 40%.
     
Now the situation has changed dramatically – the financial system has under regulated and overreached, UK oil is running dry and the party is over. The country needs to re-establish its place in the world. One area of huge interest due to global warming is the redesign and manufacture of all most all of the world’s infrastructure, from utilities to transport - everything has to be redesigned and replaced with low carbon alternatives. The changes are huge and the engineering challenge represents a new industrial revolution. But with such a poor output of engineers, Britain will only be playing a minor role – already we have had to hand our nuclear power generation industry to the French government – probably because we are unable to design and build the new nuclear power stations in-house.

Whilst considerable effort has been made by the engineering institutions to rekindle interest in engineering careers – without a major iconic engineering programme on which to focus the promotion – the efforts can be reduced to the effectiveness of slogan advertising.  Now that the need for engineers has been recognised, is the time to do something about it .

The BLOODHOUND Project was given focus by Lord Drayson then Minister of Defence Equipment and Support.  He was acutely aware of the shortage of engineers and related this to a time in the last century when there was no shortage of engineers which coincided with the development of the great Britsh aerospace iconic programmes – such as Vulcan, Lightning Fairey Delta, TSR2 and Concorde. With these programmes readily available for study at school and home, there was never a shortage of school leavers wanting to become engineers. Drayson wanted a new iconic project with parallel schools activity to inspire a new generation of school population to consider becoming engineers. He offered to help - we set up the BLOODHOUND Project .

Why is it called BLOODHOUND?

The logical answer was to call it a derivative of the Thrust name, but we felt that something very new was required. We wanted to differentiate from the Thrust projects which were publicity focussed and were achieved on very small budgets using outdated technology and components - we felt that the project should be a push forward into the completely unknown with the most advanced technology available. We didn’t want to take anything away from the ThrustSSC team which had achieved so much against such odds – by diluting that project name and achievement. The project had to have a non-Thrust name.  We struggled for a temporary working title and chose Ron Ayers first missile – the SAM Bloodhound, a name which bore no relation to LSR racing which was ideal as the programme had to be developed in secret during its first research phase.  As these things do, the BLOODHOUND name stuck and the amazing coincidence that we would build the car in the same location as the Bristol Bloodhound reinforced that choice.

When and where will the run take place?

The Black Rock Desert in Nevada has been the traditional site for 25 years but now the desert surface has degraded and another site has to be found.  Working with the School of Environment and Society at Swansea University Andy Green has discovered a wide range of potential sites and is working his way around them. It seems that there are more salt sites than brown alkali playa sites – so the BLOODHOUND is being designed to run on both surfaces. As all this develops it may be possible to run BLOODHOUND both in the traditional Northern Hemisphere sites and in the Southern Hemisphere sites in the same year.  This may speed up development which is scheduled to complete by 2011.

When depends on cashflow – we fund concurrently to reduce risk of funding failure and its never easy to predict cashflow.  Its always cheaper to build faster and we would hope to complete the car in 2009 if we possibly can.

What has happened to ThrustSSC?

ThrustSSC was bought for the nation by the Lottery and other funds and placed on display at the Museum of British Road Transport Coventry, it is said that 50% of that superb museum’s visitors come to see ThrustSSC which is displayed with Thrust 2.

What will the measurable effect be?

It seems that no one thought to measure the effect of past iconic projects and so no correlation appears to exist. There is however a really interesting circumstantial comparison between the number of PHDs issued and the US manned space programme of 1961-72. During this time the number of PHDs issued increased from   12,000 to 30,000 per annum, falling off in 1972 which coincided with the Apollo 19  last moon shot. Physics PHDs rose from 600 to 1500 annually in the same period. It must be stressed that this a circumstantial comparison and there may be a great number of additional factors involved.

What is the risk for the driver?

The risk level is perceived as high. No one has travelled at Mach 1.4 on land before and no one knows the effects on the car for sure. The objective for the team is to mitigate the risk in any way they can – broadly this means:

1. Employing the best driver for the job
2. Designing the car with the greatest safety margins achievable
3. Involving the driver in the design and run profile decision processes
4. Ensuring that there is a safety culture built into every member of the team
5. Ensuring that the decision to run the car is made by the design team who each have to sign their approval for the proposed run profile
6. Creating an organisation which defaults to not running the car – unless the car is in perfect condition.
7. Choosing the safest track available.

What is the thinking behind BLOODHOUND?

The BLOODHOUND Project incorporates all the hard learned design financing and operational lessons we learned over 30 years from the Thrust1, Thrust2 and ThrustSSC programmes.

The project started from an initial idea created by Ron Ayers and Glynne Bowsher with experience from ThrustSSC and in Bowsher’s case from Thrust2.  Bowsher left the project in march 2008 which was a great shame.

Who is financing it?

The founder sponsors are Swansea University, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Serco plc, University of the West of England and Clorox Europe Ltd.

Have we got all the money?

Nothing like!  For a start we only have a first pass idea of the cost of the programme and secondly we fund the project concurrently which gives us greater financing latitude and a better chance of success – ie our budgets are not defined by available upfront money. This increases the project chances of success.

The financing comes in three stages – the Founder Sponsors who finance the research phase of the programme , the main sponsors who carry the project main development costs and the product sponsors who contribute free of charge product .

At this point we have achieved budget on the Founder Sponsors and we are getting close to signing our first Main sponsor. Since only four are required it is hoped that the launch process may enable us to sign the remaining three very quickly.

The product sponsors will develop as the programme develops and the needs become not only apparent – but urgent.

The buffer finance to enable us to meet severe budget excursions comes from trading with our supporters. With the ThrustSSC programme this generated around 20% of the finance.

Is the project out of step with the times?

No, the project is ahead of its time. This is not an Edwardian racer out for a boy’s thrill - this is a very carefully constructed programme to inspire and encourage the next generation of engineers.  The land speed record is unique in that it enables teams to share all the technologies with their internet followers. It will teach Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in a very creative way – and above all it will demonstrate the innovative skills which have been so carefully eradicated in current generations. If we have this right then its very likely that other industries will follow this lead and create their own projects to inspire the school populations. This could be a hugely interesting time.

Is this a green project?

Yes it is – in the most powerful of ways. The project is designed to stimulate a new generation of British engineers to consider engineering careers – and it is this next generation who will be able to provide the advanced and interlinked  skills to tackle the key engineering issues needed to replace our countries transport and power infrastructures  which are still dependent on oil and have little concern for emissions. The leverage on the green impact is going to be remarkable

In terms of the BLOODHOUND SSC car itself, the car is a short life vehicle unlikely to run more than 400 miles in its lifetime and has been designed to be highly fuel efficient in order to optimise the performance. The Falcon rocket uses high test peroxide as the oxidiser fuel – a fuel NASA has decided to focus on as a green rocket fuel.  The Eurojet EJ200 uses conventional jet engine fuel which it burns incredibly efficiently: the specific fuel consumption is lower than that of the Spey engine fitted to the ThrustSSC.

Mimimal environmental impact – we run on dry alkali and salt lake beds which tend to flood every year completely restoring the natural surface. We build no permanent roads or structures. The ThrustSSC Team won a major environmental award from the Bureau of Land Management after the ThrustSSC campaign. I personally found it impossible to locate the site where the base had been – even with GPS assistance.

Is the project male focussed?

With ThrustSSC the supporters club started to build a very strong collection of female members – had we gone on longer the supporters club might have approached parity. The world has changed very quickly and the concept of gender balance is out dated. Women are now in the front line in The Royal Air Force and in the Army. The engineers have been very male dominated which is a great shame since even today only 15% of engineering graduates are female. Our team is embarrassingly male, but that is only because we hired skills which were immediately available and known to us. I am hopeful that we will employ more females and using the publicity of the launch, we would like them to apply.

What kind of education projects will there be?

This is an area of great confusion - but we are fortunate in having a three year programme.  There is no template or precedent for what we are doing and we need to learn quickly. The best way to do this is to work with existing education suppliers and build up an experience base which will be audited in August to find out how we have done. We are recruiting an Education Director who is to be responsible for the educational strategy and content of the Bloodhound material being offered to schools.  As soon as we have feedback, we intend to develop the material as quickly as we can in conjunction with our suppliers so as to develop quickly. Remember the schools will have full access to the internet – and they will learn a great deal from that in parallel.

The 1000MPH objective

The project has 4 prime objectives
1. To inspire a next generation of engineers
2. To provide an iconic programme with student access
3. To reach 1000mph
4. To generate substantial publicity and awareness for our sponsors.

If we fail to reach 1000mph then we will have failed objective 3.

What is it like to travel at supersonic speeds/1000mph?

Mach 1.4 is at the outset an incredibly demanding programme, the more so because it is 40% faster than the ThrustSSC record. In short we don’t know how much more difficult it will turn out to be because there is no experience. Mach 1 was an incredible achievement and an iconic one because it was judged impossible – once we get to grips with operating the BLOODHOUND SSC, we’ll all be able to make a judgement. My guess is that it will turn out to be a lot harder - and the decision making in years 2010 and 2011 will be very difficult indeed - but that’s pioneering for you.

We are going to find out the hard way …….

R&D

BLOODHOUND is going to be very different to ThrustSSC. With ThrustSSC we were restricted to 30-year-old prime technology and we seldom had budgets to create new solutions. Our innovation had to be very simple and practical. With BLOODHOUND we have the objective of creating an iconic project and that means using the most advanced technology available – otherwise we are not inspiring the engineers.  This means that a great number of advances are likely to be made on the way and will be made available to our internet followers as they happen. Already during the research programme we are beginning to develop new technologies which are of great interest to the MOD.

In short, whilst ThrustSSC was unlikely to develop much in the way of new technology because of its reliance on older technology – BLOODHOUND SSC is likely to develop plenty.

What happens to the car after the project?

All depends on how well we do. Failure means that there won’t be a ready home for the car. It’s a big beast and it need a lot of cleaning so it’s not something you can stick in a garage at home.

The car will belong to the team and my guess is that it will end up in a museum like Thrust2 and ThrustSSC.