The Fastest Car On Earth

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 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 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. 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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, 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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.

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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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.

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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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,

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 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 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 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

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

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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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, 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, 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

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

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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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

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