The ambitious Bloodhound SSC 100 land speed record effort needs $32 million, fast

The effort has entered the UK’s version of bankruptcy, but it’s not a lost cause yet
behold, the dream or at least a computer rendering of it
Bloodhound project

For about a decade now, the British Bloodhound Supersonic Car (SSC) effort has been working on a rocket-powered car it hopes to use to smash the vehicular land speed record, currently held by the 763-mph Thrust SSC with a 1,000-plus mph run. We’ve followed the program’s progress on and off over the years; one of the recent milestones, for example, was a 200-mph test last October. It was supposed to be the overture to an 800-mph run in 2019 and the big 1,000-mph run on a dry lake bed in South Africa in 2020.

But the ambitious project, which would be propelled by a combination of jet and rocket power, has hit a snag: It’s run out of money and entered administration -- roughly speaking, the U.K.’s version of chapter 11 bankruptcy. This isn’t necessarily the end of the road for the effort, so don’t start searching eBay for scrap parts just yet. But to keep the wheels turning, the organization needs £25 million, or roughly $32.5 million, the sooner the better.

In a statement, Andrew Sheridan, one of the administrators of the Bloodhound SSC operation, said:

“Whilst not an insignificant amount, the £25m Bloodhound requires to break the land speed record is a fraction of the cost of, for example, finishing last in a F1 season or running an Americas Cup team. This is an opportunity for the right investor to leave a lasting legacy. We are already in discussion with a number of potential investors and would encourage any other interested party to contact us without delay.”

$32.5 million is simultaneously both a lot of money and, as Sheridan notes, also not a lot of money when it comes to motorized things that go fast. F1 teams, for example, are vigorously protesting the proposed $150 million “soft budget cap” in part because top teams already spent three times that per season (or more!).

The reality is that, while it’s possible to chase down certain top-speed records -- the wheel-driven land speed record, for example -- on a relatively shoestring budget, going for absolute speed supremacy requires much more cash. It doesn’t scale linearly; after a certain point you are, as that old saying goes, throwing cubic dollars at fractions of a second. Or in this case, more mph. About 500 more mph than the recent Team Vesco effort achieved, in fact.

The perfectly valid question here is, why? The Bloodhound SSC project has always played up its dedication to educational outreach -- the project as a whole, as well as series of programs developed around the car, have been billed as a way to get kids fired up about science and technology education. It’s a noble goal and a valuable side effect of the effort.

But, we’d argue, that’s not the main reason you’d ever do something like this. You chase down a milestone like 1,000 mph on land because it’s there to be done, because cooking up insane-sounding hurdles and then leaping over them is something we, as a species, are just plain hardwired to do. And because there's a car out there that went really fast, and the Bloodhound team feels it's capable of building one that goes substantially faster.

For less than the price of one measley Enzo-era Ferrari, you can help them achieve eternal glory. Maybe they'll let you put your name on the side of the car if you pony up the dough. It's worth asking, at least.

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