It was recently that Andy Green, the man who will be at the wheel of this supersonic car, was down in Bengaluru to talk to school children about the project. Andy used to be with the Royal Air Force - and being on the ground doesn't seem to have slowed him down much. Andy holds the world land speed record of going over 1200kmph - and he is aiming to go even faster.
Speaking to NDTV he said, "A mere 1228kmph, so it's not only the longest standing record in history, it's 19 years old but it's the only supersonic record in history, that in itself was an achievement nobody has matched in 19 years, it was that difficult! Bloodhound is going to go 30 per cent faster, all in the supersonic region, it is that remarkable."
Project Bloodhound has a bit of India in it too. Andy said, "There are some co-bits of Indian technology in there as well like the 3D printed steering wheel, which are done here. The machining for the suspension components was done with Jaguar Software, an Indian company, the chassis was built using steel from Tata and the list goes on, it's a fantastic, it's really really important. Prime Minister Modi's initiative on Make in India, where there's a lot of our car that reflects Make in India, a lot of exciting technology we can actually share with a global audience. There will be tens of millions of people watching this car, it's a first car of the YouTube generation, so we are streaming the live video, live data from the car, every single time we run. That's never been done before and all the kids here and millions around the world are going to be watching that, watching the world's fastest car, watching the British technology, watching Indian technology, getting excited about the magic of science and engineering.
The plan is to reach 1287kmph next year in South Africa and then shatter a mind-bending 1600kmph in 2018. The 15 million-pound (20 million euro, $23 million) car is a jumble of hi-tech that relates as much to aeronautics and aerospace as to the automotive industry. The car has three power plants - a Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet from a Eurofighter Typhoon, a cluster of Nammo hybrid rockets and a Jaguar V8 engine that drives the rocket oxidiser pump. The cockpit looks like the one on a jet, including the oxygen mask. With the fighter jet engine and rockets, the sleek 135,000-horsepower car is as powerful as 180 Formula One racing cars and will go faster than a bullet.
To get children involved in this project, there's a competition being run around the world in connection with Project Bloodhound. Andy said, "There's involvement of tens of thousands of children in the UK, it's also running overseas, in Brazil, in South Africa and we are trying to get it started in India; where kids can actually, design, build, research and develop and engineer their own very cheap, very simple rocket cars, buy a very cheap rocket to in it. In UK we are hosting a National Competition for hundred thousand children next year and this is turning into a global competition, for kids competing wherever you are in the world, with the same principles, the same rocket motor, you simply buy it through the post and you can build a rocket which can do 100kmph. You can build them at school, science lessons don't get anymore exciting than that."
Ayush, a student of the Stonehill International School, who was among those who met Andy Green, said he definitely wanted to take part in that project. Another student at the school, Shashank, said, "Mr. Green mentioned that a lot of Indian companies have been part taking in the development of the cars. So I think that's a really nice sign and it shows India and England's friendship."
