Bloodhound SSC project director Professor Richard Noble gives a lecture to students in Doha.
University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) has displayed a 2m scale model of the Bloodhound Super Sonic Car (SSC) to students in Doha as part of British Festival 2014.
The Bloodhound SSC is a jet- and rocket-powered car designed to travel at 1,000mph. Weighing over seven tonnes, its engines produce over 135,000 horsepower, more than six times the power of all Formula One cars on a starting grid, combined.
The students were told that the car was a hybrid of automotive and aircraft technology, with a carbon fibre monocoque in the front and metallic framework and paneling at the back. Its slender body of approximately 14m length contains two front wheels within the body and two rear wheels mounted externally within wheel fairings.
The UWE Bristol team displayed a 2m scale model of the car to invited students from a number of schools in Qatar, who attended a lecture on the ground-breaking project by Professor Richard Noble, project director for Bloodhound SSC.
The lecture explored the challenges the team had encountered and overcome so far and shared some of the ways in which UWE Bristol students participated in Bloodhound SSC while studying.
Dr John Lanham, associate dean (Partnerships) at UWE Bristol, said: “As one of the five founder sponsors of the Bloodhound SSC project, UWE Bristol is very proud to be partnering with Richard and the team on this project.
“The core aim of Bloodhound SSC is to encourage more youngsters to engage and study STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Not because we need people to design fast cars – but because the skills, technology and capabilities used to design Bloodhound are the skills required to develop low-energy, sustainable, resource-efficient solutions to the challenges we all face in these early years of the 21st century.”
