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The Bloodhound Will Stay On the Ground At 1,000 mph

Posted by kdawson on from the oscillation-overthruster dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that engineers designing the world's fastest car, the Bloodhound SSC, built to smash the world land speed record of 763 mph set by the Thrust SuperSonic Car in 1997, believe they have a solution to keep the vehicle flat on the ground at 1,000 mph after initial iterations of the car's aerodynamic shape produced dangerous amounts of lift at the vehicle's rear. John Piper, Bloodhound's technical director, said: 'We've had lift as high as 12 tonnes, and when you consider the car is six-and-a-half tonnes at its heaviest — that amount of lift is enough to make the car fly.' The design effort has been aided by project sponsor Intel, who brought immense computing power to bear on the lift problem. Before Intel's intervention, the design team had worked through 11 different 'architectures' in 18 months. The latest modelling work run on Intel's network investigated 55 configurations in eight weeks. By playing with the position and shape of key elements of the car's rear end, the design team found the best way to manage the shockwave passing around and under the vehicle as it goes supersonic. 'At Mach 1.3, we've close to zero lift, which is where we wanted to be,' says Piper. In late 2011, the Bloodhound, powered by a rocket bolted to a Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine, will mount an assault on the land speed record, driving across a dried up lakebed known as Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape of South Africa."

5 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. that's fucking lame... by Adolf+Hitroll · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    What's wrong with Americans? They don't like cinema: they pretend to like it but only absolute turds get to the top of the box office.

    Let's See: Avatar, Alice, ... who could want to see that? Ah yes, it's 3D. Well I've got 2 words for that: "fuck off".
    3d is only a way to polish a turd, it doesn't make it like Ambrosy.

    and the way you pretend to be offended by any allusion to sex whilst putting guns in the hands of kids is disgusting.

    Discuss.

    --
    Smile, don't click...
    1. Re:that's fucking lame... by RockModeNick · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Ok, sure. Avatar is the white guilt fantasy. You not only get to become the oppressed Other, but become the most important and revered member of the Other, effectively gaining full membership but only increasing the privilege you currently receive. I object to call the 3D a polished turd, however. From end to end, it was really well done, and in entirely another class from the "going native good, capitalism bad, sustainable good" mores implicated by the plot. Anti-capitalization and anti-imperialism are good mores, but the idea that they should be lead by a member of the group committing them is sad. Alice, on the other hand, IS a polished turd. The mores are PRO Orientalism and PRO conquest Imperialism, and the 3D effects are shit tier, 3 levels of depth and so many cuts it looks like the MTV shit that spawned it. Try to count the seconds between cuts in most scenes of this movie, or better yet, number of cuts vs number of lines delivered The actors probably didn't even have to remember a single line in advance.

    2. Re:that's fucking lame... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      you're just mad because Europeans have a bad sense of humor...

    3. Re:that's fucking lame... by RockModeNick · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Yea, ok, it's sure as HELL offtopic. But ALL TRUE>

    4. Re:that's fucking lame... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      You only believe that because you yanks are not intelligent or cultured enough to understand real humour.