New: watch the Channel 4 documentary “Building the World’s Fastest Car“.
During October and November 2019, the Bloodhound LSR team successfully completed high speed testing in South Africa, passing the 1,000 km/h mark on its final run. But the team didn’t just work on the car while they were out there. Instead, their visit also included enthusiastic engagement with local schools and communities, making good on the project’s promise to use the venture to inspire students.
Bloodhound breaks the 1,000km/h mark
Bloodhound LSR drove down the desert race track at Hakskeen Pan in South Africa’s Northern Cape for the first time on 27 October on Day 9 of high speed testing. Twenty days later on 16 November, after the team had successfully tackled a variety of engineering challenges, Andy Green drove the car up to a top speed of 628mph (1,010km/h), reaching maximum velocity in just 50 seconds.
This high speed testing stage was crucial to test various aspects of the car, including the three sets of brakes, and to gather data that will now be analysed back in the UK. It also enabled the team to learn how to work optimally in the hot desert conditions.
At Bloodhound Education, we’ll be incorporating a lot of information from Bloodhound LSR’s high speed testing success into our workshops and resources, so watch this space!
Engaging the local community
Understanding and planning around the local environment is vital for any successful project, including Bloodhound. The Mier community who live near Hakskeen Pan has been closely involved with the Bloodhound project from early on to help with this aspect. Over 300 of them helped to clear 16,500 tonnes of rock from over 22 million square metres of dry lakebed in the desert to create the smooth surface that was needed to run the car.
Rietfontein School
Because of this, students from local schools have been aware of Bloodhound for some time. The high speed testing period now offered a brilliant opportunity for them to get engaged with the team.
Firstly, around 20 children from Rietfontein Gekombineerde Skool, whose playground overlooks the Pan, visited the Bloodhound technical camp to see the car up close. They were extremely interested in this amazing project that was going on so close to where they study and asked lots of questions!
Marcus Mbetha Centre
Then on the day before the car’s final run, Bloodhound LSR’s Tony Parraman visited two schools in nearby Upington on a trip organised by Felix Spies of the Split Second Science Education Foundation, which promotes STEM in schools. At the first school, the Marcus Mbetha Sindisa Secure Care Centre, the small but very engaged group of students were very keen to compare Bloodhound with what they already knew about cars, asking questions such as whether it had a gearbox, could it drive in reverse and how many seats it had.
Laerskool Oranje-Noord
Tony then gave a presentation to around 500 pupils at Laerskool Oranje-Noord. Again, they were very enthusiastic and asked great questions. They were particularly interested in environmental issues and many of their questions reflected this.
Loving Bloodhound with Lego
Bloodhound LSR also inspired some fantastic creativity among its young fans in South Africa. We were delighted to hear from Nathan Busse who is a grade 10 student in Johannesburg and comes from a family who are all huge Bloodhound supporters.
Nathan is severely visually impaired: he is blind in one eye and has very limited vision in the other. Nevertheless, he was inspired by his passion for Bloodhound to design and build a replica car from over 200 pieces of Lego. The project took him five days.
Nathan Busse’s Lego model
Nathan has been fascinated by Bloodhound ever since he attended a lecture on the car. His ultimate dream is to meet the team and driver Andy Green, but in the meantime he has paid to have his name on the car and was very pleased when he received his own Bloodhound tailfin certificate: “I felt very proud to be part of this project!”
We love Nathan’s model and we’re very proud to feature it on our website.
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Book us to inspire your students
If you’ve been inspired by Bloodhound’s success and would like one of our team to visit your school or college to give a presentation and/or run one of our brilliant interactive workshops, please get in touch.
Get in touch
We’d also like to hear from you if you or your children/students have created artwork, models or anything else inspired by Bloodhound. Let us know and we may feature your work on our website.