What’s even more staggering is that the record was set on October 15, 1997 – 50 years and one day after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier flying the experimental Bell X-1 – and it hasn’t been broken since. That’s 16 years and, despite rumours of attempts by US and Australian teams, Thrust SSC’s record remains intact. In a fast-paced world of ever more condensed computing power, material technology and advanced aerodynamic studies, humans have still not gone faster – on land at least.
As technical achievements go, it was up there with Concorde, man landing on the moon and the mass production of the microchip. It capped off a run of land and water speed records set by British speed fanatics that started with Malcolm Campbell in the 1920s, his son Donald during the 1950s and 1960s and culminated in the Thrust 2 (1983) and Thrust SSC projects headed by entrepreneur Richard Noble.
Noble and Green are a formidable team, and they’re now behind a project to smash their own record. And while land-speed records generate a huge amount of interest, they’ve taken a different approach to the project this time. Bloodhound SSCs (supersonic cars) target is the 1,000mph (1,609kph mark) – but the impetus behind the project isn’t simply to achieve another certificate to hang on the wall. It’s to get young school children interested in science and technology again.
Why? The UK is in desperate need of engineers, technicians and scientists. At the moment there are more university students learning psychology than engineering, and Green says the UK is simply not producing enough professionals in the technical sciences to cope with future demand. It was a problem highlighted by Paul Drayson, the UK minister for state defence equipment and support, during a meeting with Noble and Green seven years ago.
source: www.thenational.ae
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