British team aims to break own land speed record by going beyond 1,000 mph

London, November 24 (ANI): Reports indicate that the UK team aiming to smash its own land speed record by driving a car beyond 1,000 mph (1,610km/h) has settled on a final design for the vehicle.

According to a report by BBC News, the final design calls for a major re-configuration of the vehicle's two power units, with a Eurofighter jet engine now being positioned above a hybrid rocket.

The car, known as Bloodhound, will be built in Bristol's docklands.

The team expects to start running the vehicle on the Hakskeen Pan, Northern Cape Province, South Africa, in 2011.

Andy Green set the current World Land Speed Record in 1997 when he drove the Thrust SSC jet-powered vehicle at 763mph (1,228km/h).

The RAF pilot is now returning for a crack at his own mark in a project led by his old team principal, Richard Noble, himself a former land speed record holder.

Many of the original Thrust design and engineering staff are also involved.

The Bloodhound group hopes the quest to take a car through 1,000mph will be an inspirational venture, in particular to young children thinking of pursuing careers in science and technology.

The project was launched into the public domain in October 2008.

Since then, intensive efforts have been under way to finalise the car's design - one that maximizes the vehicle's performance and stability.

The original plan was to position a small (200kg) rocket above a heavier (1,000kg) EJ200 Eurofighter Typhoon engine loaned to the team by Britain's Ministry of Defence.

However, as the design staff worked through the modelling, it became clear that additional thrust was going to be needed to overcome the aerodynamic drag.

This called for a bigger (400kg) rocket.

This in turn introduced instabilities that could only be solved by flipping the positions of the two power units.

"We have switched the architecture of the rocket and the jet engine and the reason for that was we were seeing some quite high lift loads at the rear end of the car," explained chief designer John Piper.

"The change, though, has had some beneficial side-effects," he added.

"We can now get a good chassis structure across the top which means we can now have a really good mounting for a single fin, whereas before with the rocket on top it was right in the way of where the fin would go," he said.

"That meant we were going to have to have two fins, one on each side; and they were occupying the space where ideally we'd like to put in parachute cans," he added. (ANI)