The driver of Bloodhound SSC, Andy Green, is seen here delivering something he truly loves: inspiring a new generation by helping to expose them to new technology while striving to new heights.

If anyone can pull off this amazing engineering feat, these are the men who can do this. While there are thousands of race car drivers the world over, only one man has officially been across the sound barrier on land, and back, and that's Andy Green.

A person may wonder “Do strange things happen when a car breaks the sound barrier?” You bet your ass they do - if you’re driving that is.

When Andy was driving the Thrust SSC car, as the car got up to about 590 mph, plus or minus five mph, the car would suddenly leap 30 to 50 feet to the left. As to whether this was precisely due to pressure waves is not exactly known. It was also at this speed that as the car began to go transonic, Andy would start to hear and feel the strange vibration in the car, a kind of moan it would generate, as the shock waves built up about his canopy.

Andy could not actually hear the sonic boom while driving the car at a supersonic speed, but the shock (pressure) wave that fanned out off the front of the car was doing its thing after exceeding Mach 1 the whole time. And, yes, strange things did happen after Mach 1 during the Thrust SSC performance.

Here's one example of a supersonic abnormality they encountered. When Thrust SSC was going supersonic (faster than the speed of sound) its front wheels were turning slower than the actual known speed of the car.

In reviewing the data, it's assumed that the lower-most lip of the front of the car, where the pressure wave generated from, while facing the desert surface, was fanning out the pressure wave in such a manner that the wave was acting in effect like a high pressure air-hose, blasting away the desert playa surface, clearing a path before the wheels so the front wheels of the car simply did not have full traction at full speed to rotate them in concert with the actual known air-speed.

It's not a bad thing Bloodhound has a real RAF Fighter Pilot in the cockpit of this car!

The build team creating Bloodhound in the shop located in the UK.

Why do this some may ask? Well for the Bloodhound SSC team there are two primary answers that are at the tip of a very large iceberg. The first is this project is an extraordinary engineering adventure that has touched the lives of thousands of people, many school children in the UK, and in South Africa, where the car will make its record runs. The following of the Bloodhound project by school children in the UK, in 2015, saw involvement by more than 100,000 participants and in South Africa, 1200 schools took part in Bloodhound school projects that same year.

People at the core of the Bloodhound project are smart enough to know that children are our future. By involving them in model rocket car building and exploring the science of building this amazing race car, some children are motivated to further explore science. In time, some have advanced on to engineering studies inspired by Bloodhound’s enormity. Overall, this advances society as a whole.

By sharing all of Bloodhound’s data and even CAD drawings through the Bloodhound SSC website, many lives are touched. There’s no telling how far the ramifications of Bloodhound’s global initiatives will reach and how this will impact the lives of many.

Which brings us to the second big reason as to “Why do this?” The Bloodhound Project is not only inspiring a new generation of engineers, but pioneering new technology in a way that there’s no telling how these discoveries will impact the future in motor sports and other areas of endeavor.

For example, the Nammo rocket motor designed for Bloodhound is now under consideration for space exploration use by the UK. The Bloodhound project is not only inspiring a new generation of engineers; it’s very technology is breaking new ground with developments in propulsion. Other engineering requirements for Bloodhound to achieve its objectives may generate new developments in new areas yet to be determined.

The very presence of the Bloodhound Project going to the Hakskeen Pan, in Northern Cape, South Africa, has generated temporary jobs for hundreds of people who would otherwise be without. A new water pipeline is headed into the region to address the legions of people who will flock to the race course when the time comes. A valuable water resource is now in place that would not be there if not for Bloodhound coming into the area. The race course built by the local people in conjunction with Government Resources and the Bloodhound Team, will one day be booking new race teams who seek to utilize the finest, flattest race course in the world. An increased quality of life for the local inhabitants is developing as a result of the project.

In 2017 the car will be fully completed and initial testing will commence in the UK where the car is being built. Once Bloodhound is race ready about 10 containers of equipment will be shipped to South Africa and the car will be flown by Cargo Logic Air to Uppington, SA. The whole lot of it will end up on the HakSkeen Pan in the Northern Cape of South Africa. The exact dates of these important steps are not known at the time of this writing but with Geely Holding Group now firmly on board as the primary sponsor, the project is in high gear.