14 DAY TRIAL // Most vehicles have speed limiters built into them, but there are some cars that come out of the factory without them, and optimized for speed really. They're few, countable on the fingers of a single hand, and have one singular purpose: to enable world records. 3D printing technology is now helping there.
Speed limits are something that humankind has always wanted to beat. Possibly because there are many animals out there who are faster than us in some way, and we just want to be the best.
It's much like the desire to attain flight. We might have not been able to give ourselves bird-like abilities or superhuman capabilities like in comics, but we did build airplanes and helicopters.
Speed, on land, is significantly less easy to attain than in air, though. People still try, however, to reach greater and greater limits, then surpass them and repeat the process.
Right now, British Driver Andy Green holds the land speed record, after having set it in 1997 at 763 miles per hour, or MPH for short.
Now, he is involved in the Bloodhound project, a mission with the goal of shattering the 1,000 MPH limit. It makes you think about the training that astronauts go through before being sent into space.
The Bloodhound car will be able to jump from 0 to 1,000 MPH in 55 seconds. It should be noted that 1,000 MPH is faster than a speeding bullet (from a Magnum 357). Superman, where would the world be without you?
The Bloodhound will be a monster of a vehicle. A rocket on wheels, I suppose you could call it. It will be 44 feet long / 13.41 meters and weigh 17,165 pounds / 7,785 kilos / 8.58 tons.
Kind of amazing that such a monstrous thing is expected to beat a bullet in speed, but it's not like the first car that broke the sound barrier looked any different. Sure, it might not have been quite so large, but it did have big, flaming, smoking exhaust ports like a rocket would. They were bigger than the entire rest of the car, and the Bloodhound is bound to be similar.
But we've spoken and spoken about the Bloodhound and not about why we're covering this in the 3D printing section. The reason is simple: the car will be driven by a 3D printed titanium steering wheel.
It was custom-fitted to Andy Green's hands and has control buttons for the parachutes (that will bring the vehicle to a stop after the record has been set) and, of course, the rocket. There are two built-in trigger switches for it.
