Nammo på ville veier

Bloodhound 1,000mph car to use Norwegian Nammo rocket

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

 

  The Bloodhound car will run on a specially prepared dried-out lake bed in South Africa

The British Bloodhound supersonic car project will use a Norwegian rocket in its bid to drive beyond 1,000mph (1,610km/h).

The Nammo company, based in Raufoss, will supply "hybrid" motors and technical support to the World Land Speed Record attempt.
Currently under construction, the car should be ready to run in 2015.
Bloodhound will need both a rocket and a jet engine to raise the current record of 763mph (1,228km/h).
Nammo is a world-renowned name in propulsion technology.
Its motors are found in military missiles, and are used also to separate the stages on the European Space Agency's (Esa) big Ariane 5 rocket.
The Bloodhound team had been developing its own hybrid power unit in collaboration with Manchester-based Falcon Project Ltd, and gave this rocket its first UK test firing in October 2012.
And although this demonstration was deemed a success at the time, it became clear that considerable sums of money and time would be needed to perfect the design.
A decision was therefore made to go with Nammo, which is also developing hybrid technology, but which has the extra resources and dedicated test facilities to bring its concept to fruition much faster.
"It's a perfect match, a perfect opportunity," said Bloodhound's chief engineer, Mark Chapman.
"It was almost uncanny when we started looking at the power requirements, the duration of burn, the scale and size - to find Nammo was already working on something very close to what we wanted."

The car's chassis will have to accommodate a jet engine and a rocket

In rocketry, "hybrid" means a mixture of solid and liquid propellants.
In this case, the Norwegian motors will be burning a combination of a solid, rubber-like fuel (HTPB, or hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene) and a liquid oxidiser (high-test peroxide, HTP).
Nammo's proposal is for a unit of similar thrust to the Falcon rocket but one that has a quite different configuration.
Instead of one large combustion chamber, Nammo's design calls for a cluster of perhaps four or five smaller motors.

This is a concept the Raufoss company has been advancing in studies conducted jointly with Esa.