A pencil shaped car that can leave even jet planes behind

Bengaluru: “Driving in a straight line is hardest of all,” said Wing Commander Andy Green, who is in town for the IET Lord Austin lecture.

Green isn’t talking about driving under the influence, he's talking about a car that travels faster than the speed of sound, with a top speed of 1,000 mph. The more you look into Green’s life, the more remarkable it all seems.

India has reason to be proud, said Green. “The steel for the chassis is from Tata Steel and the technology is being designed by Jaguar, also a Tata company.”

Currently the world land speed record holder, Green was a veritable mathematical genius at Oxford and then a fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force.

Green is also working on what can only be described as an engineering marvel - Bloodhound, the supersonic car. The car is part F1, part jet fighter, part rocket, by his own admission.

Bloodhound SSC, which is still being developed, will attempt to break the current land speed record in 2015-16. The event will be streamed live on the internet – “We've been told to prepare for tens of millions of hits,” explained Green.

Simply put, the Bloodhound Project began back in 2006 to inspire Britain’s 10-year-olds to be engineers someday. It was conceptualised by Richard Nobel, a former land speed record holder, who was behind Thurst SSC, the car in which Green set the existing record of 763 mph.

“You need exciting, inspiring things to show the children,” said Green. “Jet fighters are cool, but they're so very secretive about them!”

The pencil shaped car is powered by the best jet engine available in the market and a rocket, too. “This is the only car that can travel faster than a jet,” Green smiled.

“It's been 100 years since flying became faster than driving, it’s time we turned that around!”

There are five main challenges, according to Green. Keeping the car on the road is the first - the automobile is dealing with a pressure of about 12 tonnes per metre.

The smallest disturbance either way could destroy it altogether. Even the world’s best jet engine couldn’t give them the thrust they needed. “So, we use hybrid rockets from a company in Norway,” he explained.

The wheels are another huge challenge. They will rotate at about 177 times per second and experience a force that is 50,000 times that of gravity.

“We use an aerospace grade alloy to make the wheels hold together - regular aluminium is too brittle for this car.” The wheels still need to be tested, though. The car needs to be kept in a straight line, too - every gust of wind needs to be accounted for, the smallest miscalculation can prove catastrophic.

The last challenge was - where do you run a car like this? After location scouting across the world, the Bloodhound Project team decided on South Africa’s Hakskeen Pan, although India's Rann of Kutch came close! “The problem with Kutch was that one half of it falls in Pakistan, which makes it very complicated, politically!” With cooperation from the South African government, 300 people have been working for the past four years to clean the area of pebbles and stones. “They have cleaned the approximate distance between Bengaluru and Delhi!” he said.

The big question, of course, is what is it like to drive a supersonic car? The jet engine is incredibly noisy, but Bloodhound SSC does travel faster than the speed of sound.

“The supersonic airflow is worse,” he said. “Jaguar has designed a completely soundproof unit and I will be using some very sophisticated gear, but the noise is still a problem.”

The body battles it by lowering the blood pressure. The problem, though, isn’t with acceleration – it’s stopping. “Closing the throttle causes a 3G deceleration, so you’re stopping at about 100 km/second.

The blood will rush from my feet to my head, which could lead to a blackout. We have two air brakes and two parachutes as backups as well.”

Despite all the dangers that he will expose himself to, Green shows remarkable fortitude. “If we can inspire kids, it’s worth it! I’m going to retire in a few years, I’d like the kids of today to produce some great engineering feats to make my life comfortable!”