From:  Richard Noble
Sent:  17 July 1996 21:17
To:  Desmond Weller
Subject:  RE: American Eagle's thoughts

Hi Desmond,

	Look I can't speak for the other teams since I just don't know 
what their level of research is and hence their ability to address the 
supersonic issues with credibility.  So I can only respond for us:

We set out to achieve the first ever supersonic car- thats why our car 
is called ThrustSSC and why the logo shows the supersonic shock on the 
nose.  In otherwords we are attempting to achieve the first ever 
supersonic run -and we are not just a land speed record car.

When I drove T2 to the record in 1983,frankly as a team we were damned 
lucky to get away with it.  The car was within 7 mph of takeoff and with 
the huge dynamic pressures involved it would have gone upwards at 40G.

When we learned of Breedloves new car, we decided that this was just the 
sort of competitive impetus we required to enable us fund the supersonic 
car and carry out the 2.5 years of research.  It is important to 
understand that when we started the research phase Ron Ayers (ex Chief 
Aerodynamicist - Guided Weapons - BAC) and I were very concerned that we
might end up building another intuitive and possibly highly dangerous car.
We therefore agreed that unless the the research phase demonstrated that 
car were safe, we would not proceed and if the car became dangerous at 
any time, we would withdraw.  When we started the research , we were 
unable to find anyone with any relevant experience.  We therefore 
created our own using two untried and unproven methods of evaluation.  
The Flite CFD software has been extensively validated for aircraft but 
never for ground based vehicles.  The Pendine rocket test track has been 
used for missile and bomb development- never for supersonic land vehicle 
modelling.  At the start of the programme which would compare identical 
cases on CFD and with the live rocket modelling, Ron made it quite clear 
to me (and I had to pass this on to Castrol) that he believed there was 
only a 10% chance of getting any kind of meaningful correlation between 
results from the two untried and unvalidated methods of test.  If the 
results did not match then,we would not know which to believe (if 
either). If the results did match, they might show an unfavourable and 
hostile airflow. Only if the results matched and showed a favourable 
result would Ron consider continuing with the programme.

The results of the two year programme were extraordinarily conclusive 
and Ron had the results independantly audited by the TI Group who sent
two Dowty aerospace engineers to check and report.  On this basis Ron
felt happy to proceed and in that case so did I.

Whilst we are out on the desert making high speed runs thanks to Kulite
Hughes and the University of Swansea, using Jerry Bliss'tremendous data
acquisition capability, we can measure and record the airflow plot under 
the full scale car for any mach no on any run.  This means we are able 
to use that fullscale data- send it back to Swansea for further CFD on 
their Cray  computer and compare it with the very extensive modelling 
data we have already amassed.  It thus becomes possible to predict the 
airflow under/over the car using the CFD modelling and basing it on our 
research.  For the first time , instead of driving Thrust 2 into the 
blue as I did in 1983, it now becomes possible to evaluate each stage 
of the aerodynamic performance in advance of the run- and to crosscheck 
it after the run.

I'd like you to understand that as a team we are all committed to 
achieving this and enormous effort has gone into the development and 
creation of ThrustSSC because we believe we can do it.  And you can 
follow all this on the net as we start to put the theory into practice.

When we started , we found plenty of highly qualified aerodynamicists 
who told us that a supersonic land vehicle was highly dangerous and 
could never be done in safety.  When we cross examined them we 
inevitably found that their arguement was based on their experience, 
which did not include on the ground supersonic vehicles.  Its a free 
World- there are plenty of Cray 92 computers and rocket test tracks 
around. Anyone can go out and flog through 2.5 years of tough demanding 
and very difficult to finance research.  Only when you have done that 
should you venture to express an opinion and expect any credibility.

Many thanks for your interest and for following ThrustSSC.

Richard Noble.

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