Thrust SSC (SuperSonic Car)

Thrust SSC (SuperSonic Car) is a British-designed and built jet-propelled car developed by Richard Noble, Glynne Bowsher, Ron Ayers and Jeremy Bliss.[1]
ThrustSSC.
ThrustSSC.

ThrustSSC holds the World Land Speed Record, set on October 15, 1997, when it achieved a speed of 1,228 km/h (763 mph) and became the first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier, not considering the earlier, unsubstantiated claim of the Budweiser Rocket.

The car was driven by Royal Air Force fighter pilot Squadron Leader Andy Green in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, United States. It was powered by two afterburning Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engines, as used in British F-4 Phantom II jet fighters. It is 16.5 m (54 ft) long, 3.7 m (12 ft) wide and weighs 10.5 tons (10.7 t). The twin engines developed a thrust of 223 kN (50,000 lbf) and burned around 4 Imperial gallons per second (18.2 l/s or 4.8 US gallons/s). Transformed into the usual terms for car mileages based on its maximum speed, the fuel consumption was about 5,500 l/100 km or 0.04 mpg U.S.

After the record was set, the World Motor Sport Council released the following message:

The World Motor Sport Council homologated the new world land speed records set by the team ThrustSSC of Richard Noble, driver Andy Green, on 15 October 1997 at Black Rock Desert, Nevada (USA). This is the first time in history that a land vehicle has exceeded the speed of sound. The new records are as follows:

* Flying mile 1227.986 km/h (763.035 mph)
* Flying kilometre 1223.657 km/h (760.343 mph)

In setting the record, the sound barrier was broken in both the north and south runs.

In 1983 Richard Noble had broken the world land speed record with his earlier car Thrust2, which reached a speed of 1,018 km/h (633 mph). Both ThrustSSC and Thrust2 are displayed at the Coventry Transport Museum in Coventry, England.

The date of Andy Green's record came exactly a half century and one day after Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in Earth's atmosphere, with the Bell X-1 research rocket plane on October 14, 1947.

Several teams are competing to break the record, for example the North American Eagle project.