A British team is developing the Bloodhound SuperSonic Car (SSC), which they hope will reach speeds of 1610km/h – mind officially blown. The car will be powered by a rocket bolted to a Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine. Because when you want to go really fast, you strap a rocket to a jet engine.

The car will run on the Haskseen Pan in the Northern Cape (yep, our Northern Cape) in 2013 or 2014.

Current land speed record holder and pilot of the Bloodhound, Wing Commander Andy Green thought building a car to sustain speeds of over 1600 km/h would be easy:

I thought it would be fairly simple: decide how big the fin needs to be (we’ve done that), design and stress the internal structure to make sure it will be strong enough (we’ve done that as well) and then just build it.

But, of course it’s not.

Read the full article discussing all the detailed work of engineers, fin comparison, breaks and the rest of the aerodynamic details.

[Source: BBC News]