Outta the way Ferrari. 0 to 1000mph in X seconds.

Don’t know about you, but I’m always exploring the far reaches of cyberspace to find something out there that speaks to me. Something that makes me wonder and reply, “no freaking way.”

The other day, I came across such a video on innovation. At first I thought… It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s superman! In this particular case, superman happens to be former fighter jet pilot Royal Air Force (RAF) Wing Commander, Andy Green. Made of titanium, carbon fiber and engineered to travel faster than a speeding bullet, the Bloodhound Super Sonic Car has a jet engine, a rocket booster that will propel it through the sound barrier toward the world land speed record. Driver, Andy Green, already holds the world land speed record of 763mph or Mach 1, which he set in 1997.

Every engineer knows that the physics formula for speed is distance over time. But beyond that, it gets a lot more complex. So much so, that the team of engineers behind the Bloodhound Project have been painstakingly putting the car together and testing it over the better part of six years. One big discovery they learned: the car has to be designed with solid aluminum wheels. Turns out that about 450mph it becomes really, really hard to keep a tire on – the rubber just gets flung off the rim.

photo courtesy Flock and Siemens    

So what’s under the hood? The part jet fighter, part Formula 1 racer and part space rocket is powered by three engines delivering 135,000 horsepower. On top of that, the Bloodhound is equipped with rocket boosters to deliver the added thrust necessary to get it to 1000mph. According to the engineering team’s calculations, it will cover a mile in 3.6 seconds – equivalent to 4.5 football pitches laid end to end every second.

Compare that to the fastest Ferrari ever unveiled at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show. A gas-electric hybrid dubbed LaFerrari puts out a combined 963 horsepower, goes 0-60 in less than 3 seconds, or 0-186mph in 15 seconds.

The team plans to make the attempt in 2016 at Hakskeen Pan, in Northern Cape, South Africa, and not the Bonneville Salt Flats most of us picture. The requirements were a perfectly flat landscape, at least 12 miles long and two miles wide. Plus, it gives the team some extra time to master all the physics and engineering that will make this project a go. One thing is certain. It will soon give new meaning to the expression, “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.”

You can learn more about the car and the engineering behind it at: http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/project/car