Rocket car arrives in South Africa

December 2019 News

The Bloodhound LSR car has arrived at Hakskeenpan, the dry salt lake bed in South Africa’s northern Cape province, where over the next month a 25-strong crew will run tests that may see it exceed 800 km/h.

Within 12 to 18 months the team behind the project plans to beat the world record and then attempt to top 1000 mph, said Jules Tipler, a spokesman for the UK-backed project.

The high-speed testing will be conducted using the car’s Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet engine, usually found in a Eurofighter plane, producing a thrust equivalent to the power produced by

360 standard-sized cars.

The world record is currently held by Thrust SSC, a British-built jet-powered car that became the first land vehicle to break the sound barrier in 1997 at Black Rock Desert in Nevada.

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