0-1000 mph in 22 Seconds

This guy is trying to go over

1000

miles per hour on land. His name is Rosco McGlashan and he has so much passion and guts for motorsports and engineering that I think he could do it. I'm Rosco McGlashan and I'm going to be the fastest. man on earth I spoke to him to understand how he went from a 250 mph rocket-powered kart to designing a 200,000 horsepower vehicle with the potential to exceed 1,000 mph and the engineering behind it, so here we are talking about the land speed record. and that's a record that has been broken many times over the years, so let's take a brief look at how the cars were developed.

The first land speed record was recorded in 1989 in France and I love it, it was only 3 years after the first car. was invented, the car was actually powered by an electric motor and completed a flying kilometer in 57

seconds

, which is equivalent to 39.2 4 mph. The competition quickly became furious and broke down four more times before passing the 60 mph barrier with the first purpose-built vehicle. for this record, Jame's constant Only 4 months later, it took another 5 years to break the 100 m hour barrier in 1904 with this 15 L machine that produced a massive 50 horsepower, but then it took 23 years to break the 200 mph barrier with the beautiful

1000

horsepower Sunbeam, also called a slug, this car had two 22L aircraft engines and although it had 1000 horsepower in its name, it was actually closer to 900, the next milestone was 300mph and things were progressing quickly and this record only took another 8 years to break with Malcolm Campbell at the wheel in 1935, so Malcolm hopes to be the first man to reach a speed of 300mph again.

This is a beautiful car, this time it uses a 37-liter Rolls-Royce V12 that produces 2,300 horsepower, so the next barrier to the top speed of 400 mph in 1963 was 400 mph and that's when we got rid of the internal combustion engine and we turn to the Jets. However, it is worth noting that John Cobb had already surpassed the top speed of 400 mph in 1947. 400 mph on land using a 48 L internal combustion engine, although not in consecutive races, which is required for the official record, but it was Craig Breedlove who was officially the first person to break the 400 mph barrier. Craig Breedlove wants to build and drive the fastest car in the world. car and break the world land speed record Craig was driving the Spirit of America, a turbojet-powered vehicle that reached 407 mph in 1 mile in 1963, but a record that would be broken four more times in 1964, with Craig being the first person to achieve it.

Breaking the 500 mph barrier in the Spirit of America Sonic 1 with a more powerful jet than an F4 Phantom 2 600 mph was surpassed at 197 by the Blue Flame, a rocket-powered vehicle that produced 22,000 thrust pushing it to a maximum speed of just over 650 mph on October 23, 1970 Gary Gabelich once again secured in the cockpit of the Blue Flame a car designed with one purpose in mind to capture the land speed record. He then took another 27 years to break the 700 mph barrier in September 1997 with Andy Green and the Thrust SSC. This video was from just 3 weeks later when the Thrust SSC completed another run and averaged 763 mph over a mile.

So what happened after this? This is actually the last time the land speed record was broken 26 years ago. Is it even possible to exceed 1,000 M per hour? Well, Andy seemed to think so and he was more right with his 1997 production run. 1,000 M's could be built on our car, but I think with the technology and money involved, it would take about 20 years. do it but don't worry the story doesn't end there we have a 1000 mile per hour race and the contenders are the Bloodhound LSR team and Rosco mcglashan with the Aussie Invader 5r who I spoke to on the podcast driver 61 Rosco is He's a guy incredibly interesting so before we get into the engineering let me tell you a little more about him and the crazy machinery he has driven or ridden from a clutchless VA drag bike to a 250mph rocket powered kart and its land speed . record attempts and his attempt to break 1,000 mph, but before I get into Rosco's wild story, I need to tell you about today's sponsor, Babble, and this is something close to my heart.

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I'll be at Paul Ricard in May with our Drive NF1 car contest winners, so I've been brushing up on my French. These lessons are designed by real language teachers and there are several subscriptions for you to choose from to join and get 60% off your subscription, click the link in the description now come back to the video so that Ros story go speed start with a bike called The Crazy Horse, the Crazy Horse was a Chevy V8 powered motorcycle that was used for drag racing with a best time of 9.1

seconds

and a top speed of 172 mph. Now I'm all for going fast in a race car, but anti-drug bikes aren't for me.

I mean, just look at the pilot's position, the engine is so big. In this thing, he has nowhere to put his legs and it didn't even have a clutch, so to start it he had to accelerate it with the rear wheel spinning on the stand, then let it drop, and then deal with any wheel. The bike spun and, according to Rosco, only started to gain traction toward the end of the quarter mile, if that wasn't exciting enough. Rosco then moved on to a rocket-powered bicycle that was so fast it was banned from the Australian tracks he raced on. into hydrogen peroxide rocket fuel, which was initially extremely difficult to obtain before being banned by the Australian government, so in what appears to be an effort to improve safety, Rosco moved to four-wheel protection with a rocket-powered kart.

This would be a little more comfortable to get into than the Crazy Horse, but not by much, this car did the quarter mile in 5.9 seconds and had a top speed of 253 mph. To put that into perspective, the Red Bull rb7 F1 car did the quarter mile in 9.2 seconds. and RCN does it in 8.2 and even the Top Fuel dragster only does it in about 4 seconds, but again that wasn't enough for Rosco, he wanted to go even faster and so he started his journey into jet vehicles, starting with the Aussie Invader. one and there is the man himself Rosco McGlashan and the dragstar jet Aussie Invader, it was a dragster that produced 65,000 thrust and could reach a top speed of over 300 mph and as you can imagine this thing was absolutely wild with lots of smoke from fire. and the noise, let the brakes open, take it directly to the middle of the track, it seems like it's going to be good, a lot of fire, a lot, not even Rosco has gone there with an 874 at 372 kmph, but that was not what Fast enough like Rosco.

What he really wanted was to be the fastest person in the world, so his first attempt at the land speed record was with the Aussie Invader 2. Rosco McGlashan came here putting in 10 years of hard work and millions of dollars in time. and other people's money on the line and this thing was serious, it had an atar 09 C5 jet turbine like the one used in a Mirage fighter plane. The Invader 2 weighed 4,100 kg, 8.5 M long and had 36,000 horsepower. I mean, just look at it, it's not the prettiest machine, but it looks like it's going to get the job done and that's why in 1994 Rosco took the Invader 2 out on Lake Gardner in Australia for context, at which point the last record had been set by Noble pushed in 2 at 634 mph, but had remained undefeated.

For more than a decade, Rosco's initial goal was to become the world's fastest Australian, which he achieved. His wife Cheryl watched anxiously and waited while HED. They would be a beautiful set of numbers and the average speed of the two races was. 81.3 km hour we can bring champagne, so we have it, guys. We got it very impressive, but it's still not enough for Rosco. He still had yet to break the overall land speed record and the title of the fastest person on Earth, so in 1995, the team tried again, although things did not go well at almost 600 mph.

The Invader tube crossed the salt surface and veered off course, colliding with timing equipment which was located 200 meters from the measured mile of the track. A timing marker passed through the engine. this Big Black Plum engine came out the back of the engine and the noise it made was ahe, it's absolutely mind-blowing. I got out of the car. I'm still alive and that was the end of Aussie Invader 2, it was completely cancelled, but even after. accident and fails to break the record Rosco goes straight to Aussie Invader 3, gets down and out for probably about 5 or 10 minutes after a disappointment and then comes back again.

Invader 3 was the reincarnation of the two. so it still had 36,000 horsepower and a Kevlar composite body newly designed and built in Australia, no one could appreciate how many men are going to build this and how much work and to think that this car has been built here in this shed. and that's what I love about these projects: these guys are doing amazing things with a fairly small team, they are driven purely by passion and I think we can all connect with that and one might wonder what's the point of dedicating everything this time, effort and resource and just go faster, but it's just to see if they can do it.

In 1996, Rosco returned to Lake Gardner to attempt to beat Richard Noble at 634 mph in a new faster car, the Aussie Invader 3. However, Rosco recorded 643 mph in 1996, breaking Richard Noble's world record. Requiring a two-way pass to make it official, the team was again defeated by bad weather, however things got even worse for the Australian Invader team in 1997. Andy Green and the British Thrust SSC team raised the bar to 763 mph , the largest increase in speed on land. record ever seen and one that Rosco knew his Invader 3 couldn't reach, it just wasn't designed for that kind of speed, so as usual, Rosco got up and started again with his eyes set on this incredible new spot. reference that happened.

The next 10 years planning and designing a car that could overcome the SSC thrust and potentially break the 1,000 mph barrier and that is what we are currently doing with the Aussie Ina 5. This is a typical suburban street on the northern beaches of Perth. Now people build. his big houses here his big garages look what this guy has in his garage yes Rosco is building a car capable of reaching 1,000 mph in the garage of his house this car has been designed to travel from zero to 1,000 600 km per hour, that It's almost 1 and 1/2 times the speed of sound in just 20 seconds, okay, so let me give you the amazing stats for this part of the video.

I have relied heavily on the interview with Rosco and his book, which again you should check out, is absolutely Brilliant History by Mark Reed, so the car is built with a bi-propellant rocket engine that provides 62,000 thrust equivalent to about 200,000 horsepower of strength. Its size is also large, with a length of 16 m and a weight of 9 tons, which is mainly fuel and, in essence, this. The car is pretty simple, it's basically a huge rocket that burns fuel with exhaust coming out of the back and pushes the car forward. So what will this record attempt be like? Well, the car will take about 3 m and only 22 seconds to accelerate to the end. measured mile this is where the world record attempt and speed measurement begins and hopefully at this point Rosco will be doing the estimated 1,000 mph, once Rosco reaches this marker he will actually reduce power slightly but will maintain speed, otherwise additional speed.

You would literally break the wheels as you will be traveling at 1,000mph the mile will be covered in just 3 and a half seconds after which your only job will be to stop the vehicle as safely as possible the deceleration period will take another 8k which seems like a long time. road, but it's for a good reason, firstly, if I shut down the engines too quickly, Rosco would experience high negative G and would probably pass out, which wouldn't be great, and secondly, the wheels would probably lose traction again, not . what you want in a 1,000 mph braking zone so where do you start when designing a car like this?

Well, you start with the main thing, prevent any car from going any furtherfast in the air before knowing what was needed from the rocket Rosco needed to understand the shape of the vehicle he was going to push through the air and, most importantly, the drag coefficient once he had it, he sent the findings to the expert in rocketry and chief executive of the rocket laboratory, Peter Beck, to understand how much thrust it was going to need, which, as mentioned, was worth £62,000 and is capable of hitting 1,000mph in 22 seconds and, to be honest, I have no idea of what 200,000 horsepower or 62,000 thrust really means or what it would look like, so here's a video of a rocket that makes £54,000 and for a moment, imagine being tied to that.

Now one problem with rocket engines compared to jet engines is that their handling is much less predictable which is not good for drought and you might also wonder what the difference is between a rocket and a jet engine, Well, a jet engine draws in air from the atmosphere to burn fuel depending on oxygen in the air for combustion, while a rocket engine carries its own supply of oxygen to burn that fuel. Now there are many technical challenges, but one. One of the biggest problems to solve is the fact that this rocket travels on the ground and does not fly into space, which means that fueling the rocket is a problem since it moves horizontally and not vertically.

To solve this, the car has seven 6M long ones. aluminum tubes that have pistons to push the propellants towards the engine injector and then when the propellants meet the engine they ignite spontaneously and a thrust charge is created and another reason why these tanks are configured like this with pistons is so that the fluid doesn't slide around the last What you want when you accelerate to 1000 mph is almost 3 tons of fluid moving from side to side and front to back, which is not very good for the handling of a car and what What's amazing is that the Rosco team designed all of this themselves as they apparently couldn't find anything on the market, which isn't really a surprise, so we have enough power, but how do we keep it all together?

The main part of the chassis is 12M long and the complete Invader 5r now measures 16M. that is very long about 1 and a half times the length of a bus and it is that long simply because of the amount of fuel it needs to transport the frame The main part is a high-quality steel tube that is just under a meter in diameter. rolled from a flat piece of 10mm thick steel and seam welded at the joint and this main frame alone weighs 2 and a half tons, which is metal assembled from the main frame, there are two wheels at the rear with a 2.3M track and two placed very close together at the front and these wheels are a truly beautiful piece of engineering.

The front wheels are positioned under the body for aerodynamics and are positioned just 30mm apart. Now the Invader 5r could only use three wheels with one on the front, but that means it wouldn't qualify for the world record, which requires four. Each wheel is made from a very expensive sounding aerospace aluminum and measures 90cm high, almost 20cm wide and weighs 140kg. Everyone now take a moment and think about what the wheel is really doing here. Yes, they are big for the stability and weight of the vehicle, but they also turn incredibly fast at 1,000 mph. They will rotate around 10,000.

The RPM limit puts that into perspective, it's about 10 times the wheel and tire RPM of a road car and that's one of the reasons the Invader 5 doesn't have tires at those speeds, they just disintegrate and the car could accelerate faster but the equipment holding it back due to the integrity of the wheels, if the car accelerates too fast the non-driven wheels would not be able to spin fast enough, this could mean all the wheels spin at different speeds each other and a different speed than the vehicle as a whole, this in turn could cause a loss of traction, which is not what you want, but with the tanks taking up so much space, where exactly does the driver sit and which ones? are the considerations for the cabin?

First, of course, it needs to be as safe as possible so Rosco has a network of thick, strong tubes around it along with all the safety devices you'd find on a race car, but one thing you might not think about is in the potential. Because you can't see exactly where you are going, Rosco will be strapped to a rocket with solid wheels and very limited suspension, the vibration will be huge and if you can't see where you are going then it will be a huge problem, so the seat will be mounted on rubber and the roll cage will be strategically mounted on the main frame to reduce vibration as much as possible and the position of the cabin within the entire car is also important, for example, Spirit of America and Thrust SSC have their cabins and position Drive-In just behind the front wheels, according to Rosco, sitting in that position means you can see and feel what the front of the car is doing, but you have little to no idea what's going on in the back.

So if the rear of the car loses control, the driver may not feel it right away and that's a big problem, but the Invader team realized that the best place for the driver is to sit about 2 /3 of the way from the car, right behind it. In the center of gravity there, Rosco can feel what's happening at the back of the car while still seeing the front, and the team also learned from previous attempts when driving the Sonic Arrow car at 650 mph. Craig Breed was thrown to the side, which in The Spin caused his foot to get stuck on the accelerator pedal, so to protect against this, Team Invader has two accelerator pedals instead of one, if Rosco lifts his foot. of either pedal the engine will shut down avoiding the problem that the race has had, so we have power, we have a chassis and we have a little room for the driver, but how do we keep it all on the ground?

After all, this car is basically a huge rocket and rockets are designed to go in that direction. This is where aerodynamics comes into play. You know, we love aerodynamics on this channel. Aerodynamicists around the world are still understanding and evolving the theory of aerodynamics. It's deliciously complicated. Unfortunately, William didn't join me for this video, but the arrow is still delicious. The main things of the arrow are the nose cone. design the rear fin, the canards which are the spoilers just behind the front wheels and the V-shaped underside of the mainframe. All of these things will help keep the wheels connected to the surface when driving at 1,000 mph.

First, let's talk about the regular Arrow before. We run into the problem of passing through the sand barrier, which is a pretty big problem. In fact, right behind the front wheels we have these canards, they are basically little fins that are right on top of the front wheels and help keep the car stable. It is important to think about how the weight of the car will reduce quickly during the race, as you use its propeller the center of gravity will also change and therefore the balance of the car, the canards are there to compensate for that problem as you the car burns the propellant in the front.

The car part gets lighter and lighter so the canards will add more angle and therefore more load to the front wheels to keep them connected to the surface on the other side of things if they have too much load, which could cause the front end to sink. the surface the canards will help unload now one of the biggest mistake parts of the Invader is the nose cone, as in an F1 car the nose sets the airflow over the rest of the car, but when you go through the barrier of sand, aerodynamics Get a little weird in 1979, St Barett was the first person to cross the sand barrier in the Budweiser rocket, but things went wrong and he was very lucky to survive when a car or plane passes through the speed of the sand, which creates an impact. wave that can really alter airflow and stability, but compared to airplanes, the effect on a car is stronger because the ground bounces that shock wave back to the car, so when the Budweiser rocket created the wave crash lifted its rear wheels off the ground for over 250M, at which point it's pure luck whether you crash or not, luckily Stan doesn't.

Stan had broken the sound barrier as he approached mark one, both of his rear wheels left the ground, he went supersonic and came dangerously close. death, so the invaded team designed the chassis with an unusual V shape. This is for stability when the car's equipment creates the shock wave. The V shape softens the bump a bit and keeps the car more stable. Now controlling the shock wave is one thing but there is more when the car is running subsonic below the speed of sound much of the airflow can be predicted as there is a decent amount of data available on cars They operate at this speed, but the problem arises when traveling at transonic and supersonic speeds.

Now transonic speed is when some parts of the car have subsonic airflow and other parts have supersonic airflow. What exactly does this mean and how does it happen? Well, use an example. Imagine that a car has approximately the speed of sound. You have air flowing over the car, under the car, and around the sides. but the air flowing under the car can move faster in areas than the air flowing over the car, which means you will have some subsonic air and some supersonic air, basically, when the car reaches and passes through the speed of the car. sound, causes complex aerodynamics. around the car with different air pressures and forces acting on it, but all you really need to know is that it ultimately reduces the stability of the car, as you can imagine there is very little real world data on cars supersonics running on land compared to supersonics. planes, so the team has used CFD to design the nose cone and the rest of the car to optimize trans and supersonic speeds, but while it provides good insights, they know they need real-world data, so they plan to perform Preliminary testing and methodical testing to ensure.

They accelerate quite safely knowing that the car won't take off or be disturbed too much by unusual airflows, so imagine that Rosco averaged over 1,000 mph in the mile of timing he's done, that's all great, but now he needs to slow down. speed and ideally following your own instructions and we want to slow down quickly but not too fast, in fact it will take more than 8 miles, but for good reason, if Rosco simply turned off the engine at 1,000 miles per hour, you would experience negative results. 16g, at which point you would pass out and not be ready for the champagne at the end of the race and we want to make sure we're belt and suspenders here so the Invader has five brake systems, engine shutdown, air brakes hydraulic, high speed. parachute, a low-speed parachute and an emergency stop, that sounds like a lot, but after all, he'll go 1,000 mph first, the engine shuts off, basically, Rosco takes his foot off one of the two accelerators and the motor will go into deceleration mode.

Forget that the car is creating so much drag that it will actually decelerate incredibly quickly and then at 800 mph it will deploy the air brakes that are located right behind the driver and continue to slow the car before the high-speed parachute deploys. speed at 600 mph. then the low-speed parachute deploys at 400 mph and finally at 200 mph. The Invader will use high-speed disc brakes to stop the car completely, but what about the emergency brake? Well of course this should only be used if one or more of the other brake systems fail and it's very simple, it's basically a steel hydraulic ram with a flat metal plate on the end, it can be lowered from the bottom of the car and digs into the ground to stop it, probably not the best way to stop it. the car, so let's hope Rosco doesn't need to use it, so the big question: Will Rosco and his team really make this happen?

Well, there's no way around it, technically and financially it's a huge challenge, but having spoken to him on the podcast, I can safely say that he will never give up and I love that courage and determination. I also read his book, which is a wild story that confirms his True Grit and is actually very interesting from an engineering perspective as well. I really recommend reading it. You can find the book at Aussie invader.zim ating Engineering. Check it out here or click here for more information. Thanks for watching and consider subscribing.