This is what it takes to build a 1,600-km/h car

The Bloodhound SSC is the offspring of the Thrust SSC that set the world land speed record in 1997, RAF pilot Andy Green blasting across the desert at 793 miles per hour (1,276 km/h). Whereas Thrust SSC was about going supersonic, though, Bloodhound SSC is about encouraging kids to get into science - it's an education project whose main purpose is to entice students to be the next generation of scientists, and it does that by taking kids on the journey of building a land-based vehicle that aims to go 1,000 mph (1,600 km/h).

And what a vehicle it is, called a mix between a "fast fighter jet, a Formula One car, a spaceship and a boat" by one of its engineers. A few of the intriguing facts: it uses a 600-horsepower race car engine just to turn a pump that sends peroxide to the rocket engine at 1,200 psi; it generates 20 tons of thrust between that rocket and the Eurofighter Typhoon EJ200 engine, needed to overcome the 15 tons of drag it will encounter assuming it gets to 1,050 mph (1,690 km); it takes 15 seconds to get to 100 mph (160 km/h), but another ten seconds - ideally - to reach 1,000 mph (1,600 km/h). Even the numbers away from the Bloodhound are magnificent: the team decided that on safety grounds there couldn't be any pebble larger than a marble on the desert bed in South Africa where the run will take place, so 6,000 tons of rocks have been removed from an area that wants to be known as the Bonneville of the southern hemisphere.