THE UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING; MACH 1 AS THE BIG BANG
by Cole Coonce
In the Northwest corner of Nevada, in the shadow of Granite Peak of the
Black Rock Mountain Range there dwells a valley whose innards are the
dessicated bowels of a prehistoric lake bed that stretches nearly 80
miles longitudinally.
One gets the feeling that this here prehistoric lake bed has seen its
share of paradigm shifts--and weathered them all. It is a very cynical
landscape: A cracked, upturned seabed that is mostly gypsum and lithium
and is surrounded by abandoned mining claims etched into gargantuan
lava rock whose elements make up half of the periodic table. It is hard
to fuck with.
And this charred chunk of alkali has a history that resonates both
spiritually and in a secular fashion: 100,000 years ago when the Ice
Age melted into the Stone Age, the condensation yielded the leviathan
Lake Lahontan, a body of water with a mass greater than most sovereign
states in the Northeast of the US of A. This wonder of nature
eventually evaporated into playa dust, not too long before the local
Pauite Injuns' were pulverized by "Superior Caucasian Forces" from
Virginia City, forces who understood that the Black Rock desert was a
strategic fork in the road, both for Bible totin' homesteaders who
could bear right into the Oregon territories and for
till-the-wheels-fall-off 49ers who could hang a louie, follow the
Truckee River into Donner Pass and do some righteous prospectin' in
Gold Country out California way. Parenthetically, this intersection's
dusty tributary is known as Nobles' Trail, named after a golddiggin'
trailbrazer.
All of this went down on a lake bed that is so uninhabitable only
scorpions would call it home. Yet in the presence of all that history
in the American Outback, you get the feeling that time is completely
still--a notion reinforced by the service in the local coffee shop--or
that the universe is expanding at a velocity us mortals can't fathom.
Either way, you realize this is the perfect tableaux for
humanity's attempt at emulating a supernova via traversing land faster
than the speed of sound...
And although ol' Nobles has been picked-over coyote meat for over a
century now, the terrain that bears his name is still a launch pad into
unchartered territory, most recently for two teams of Land Speed Record
crusaders, one from across the pond in the United Kingdom and the other
hailing from the far side of the Donner Pass. The trail these folks set
out to blaze had a mother lode somewhat more esoteric than Nobles'
cache. For the teams of "Thrust SSC" (UK) and the "Spirit of America,"
paydirt was thus: the honor of traveling at the Speed of Sound. Mach 1.
On Land.
Ironically, the point man for the UK operation answers to the name of
Noble, and is an honest-to-goodness Order of the British Knight,
christened by God and the Queen as Richard Noble, OBE. Noble and his
minions were here to make history and, in many ways, they were also
here to observe tradition--the tradition of seizing one's destiny, a
tradition perfected by other folks passing through these parts such as
Nobles, Kit Carson and, more recently, Spencer Tracy.
What all the aforementioned have in common besides the Black Rock
desert is adversity: Nobles had the elements, Carson had the wily
Pauite Indians, and Spencer Tracy had Lee Marvin (cf. "Bad Day at Black
Rock," probably rentable at your local video emporium). Likewise, for
adversity the Thrust SSC and the "Spirit of America" teams not
only had each other, they had to endure a plethora of seemingly
insurmountable elements (floods, lack of venture capital, sandstorms,
lack of venture capital, fod (foreign object damage), lack of venture
capital, etc.).
This is the story of how Richard Noble and a band of compatriots not
only overcame adversity but actually stared it down whilst engaged in a
shootout the likes of which Washoe County, NV hadn't seen since wily
ol' Chief Winnemuca and his scrappy Paiute's nearly staved off
genocide.
*********
In 1983 Richard Noble turned 633 mph at Black Rock and reclaimed the
LSR for Great Britain in his Thrust 2 jet car, taking it away from the
late Gary Gabelich, a California drag racer and Rockwell test pilot who
clocked a 2-way speed average of 622 mph in a hydrogen-peroxide powered
rocket in 1970. Nobles' conquest struck a raw nerve in Craig
Breedlove's craw--and in his sense of patriotism. Breedlove was
the 5-time holder of the LSR in the 1960s, as well as the conqueror of
many barriers--400, 500, and 600 mph--in his Spirit of America jet
cars. As Noble had tea and crumpets with the Queen, Breedlove
immediately began drawing eyelid diagrams of a third-generation Spirit
of America he felt was sleek enough to not only enable him to
procure the LSR but also slip through the last great barrier: Mach 1.
But to sell his dream to America and to his sponsors, Craig needed an
adversary like Ike needed Khrushchev. So he approached the then-LSR
record holder, Noble, and confided in him his aspirations towards
conquering the Sound Barrier. Noble took the bait. Immediately both men
jettisoned their relatively prosaic lives--Breedlove was now a realtor,
Noble was now marketing recreational aircraft--and focused all of
their energies towards their new goal.
A funny thing happened en route to the epochal "Duel In the Desert '97" in the Great American Southwest, however...
You see, both Breedlove and Noble had ambition but were lacking three
other elements critical to his success: 1)Venture capital; 2) A crew;
3) A design for a vehicle that would somehow subvert the laws of
physics and aerodynamics as applied to the turbulence inherent in
supersonic travel--forces which would most likely launch and/or shred
the vehicle and its driver. For in a motorcar traveling at that speed
some of the pressure and shock waves which would envelope the
vehicle would have no way to diffuse themselves as they hit the floor
and then reverberated UNDER the vehicle, acting like a 750 mph
catapult. As Noble himself described it, "At Mach 1, you're either on
the ground or you're ten miles in the air at a force of 40 g's." Blimey.
So, yeah, Noble sets off to meet the esteemed Ken Norris, designer of
both Sir Malcolm Campbell and his kid's Donald Campbell's revolutionary
LSR machines, to explain his plight, i.e. that he had the "want to's"
real bad but no design team nor plan. And in a crucial and profound
stroke of luck, Norris's earlier appointment, Ron Ayers (a retired
guided missile designer from the Brit military-industrial complex who
is as renowned in his field as Noble and Norris are in theirs), is
caught in crosstown traffic and arrives at Norris's digs the same
moment as Noble.
Before the chance encounter with Noble, Ayers had no desire to design a
Mach 1 motorcar (and very little interest in motorsports in general).
"My immediate reaction was to distance myself from the project," is how
the elderly, erudite, avuncular aerodynamicist recalls the moment that
Noble pitched him the project. "To drive at supersonic speeds would
clearly be extremely dangerous, and indeed, it could well be
impossible. I pointed out to Richard that even keeping the car on the
ground would be extraordinarily difficult." But Noble knew fresh meat
when he saw it, and commenced to dog-and-pony-showing his way into
Ayers id and sense of purpose. Suffice it to say, Ayers became the
"Thrust SuperSonic Car's" first conscript--and its prime architect.
Indeed, the next day Ayers went to his garden, got out a pad and pencil
and began free associating..."How can we keep a motorcar stable as it
passes from the transonic to supersonic speeds..." Ayers continued to
sketch and the Thrust began to take shape. "...it will need two jet
engines, not for thrust but for weight, drag and downforce...they will
have to live on either side of the cockpit..." His approach to
cannonballing through the turbulence of Mach 1 was an aerodynamic
application tantamount to the bigger hammer method. "...we will not
finesse this per se, but punch through the sonic barrier...the center
of gravity must be forward, but no so fore that it actually burrows
into the desert floor and resurfaces in Eurasia..." "Everything
that isn't lift is downforce..." The only logical shape this beast
could assume was the bastard, mutant spawn of the Batmobile and
Lockheeds's SR-71 Blackbird spyplane--i.e., the gnarliest, baddest
contraption to attack the jetstream since the Cold War ended. It was
gorgeous.
And for all its designed inefficiency, it was practical. Richard Noble
concurred emphatically with Ayers' take on attacking Mach 1. "The key
thing in this is stability," he told me out on the playa. "Anybody can
stick a jet engine on a chassis and light the fuse. Ron and I sketched
out something and we thought, 'My God, this is really rather good. This
could work very well. Right: twins engines, aluminum wheels' and then
Ken (Norris) says, 'There is no room for steering'--and it started to
build from there."
(You can imagine the conversation amongst the SSC design team: "Yeah,
Ron it's bitchin'--but where do we put the torsion bars?" In an
epiphany, SSC Chief Mechanical Designer Glynne Bowsher--one of a
succession of aerospace hitters hornswoggled by Noble and intrigued by
the notion of breaking the sound barrier on land--concluded that in
order to shoehorn a steering system between the framerails, the SSC
must turn by the two in-line rear wheels. Talk about form follows
function...)
The Thrust SSC was housed and fabricated in a spare hangar in
Farnborough, UK, the locale of the what, in essence, is the British
Skunk Works (in other words, the hangars for her Royal Majesty's
stealth and supersonic aerospace programmes). Suffice it to say, the
bulk of the SSC engineers who became intoxicated with Noble's dream
already knew where Farnsborough's commissary was well before Noble
approached them for help...
As the design came to life at Farnsborough Airfield, Noble canvassed
the breadth of the Jolly 'Ol, banging on boardroom doors for financial
support and hosting seminars at campuses and airshows in order to
recruit a pit crew. Interestingly, his stirring pitches appealed to the
hoi polloi more so than the suits in the corridors of power. The hoi
polloi formed the Mach 1 club--"give us a few quid, drop what you're
doing and come with us to America to break the sound barrier"--and was
another indispensable element to the Thrust SSC's eventual success.
And finally, another crucial element was in place. That is, Nobles'
choice for a shoe: A softspoken-yet-buff, dashing, Royal Air
Force pilot named Andy Green whose physique, psyche, and demeanor were
ideal for the project. Indeed, Andy Green could have been culled
straight outta' Central Casting. The team was in place.
And after some CFD data and rocket-sled testing confirmed Ayers'
theories on supersonic travel, the vehicle was completed. But
before the conquering of Mach 1 in America was to commence, the team
trudged off to an RAF air base in the Al Jafr desert in Jordan during
November of '96 for some shakedown runs, with the blessing of ol' King
Hussein. Testing the synergy of all systems on this technological
marvel commenced: Computerized suspension, telemetry, satellite
uplinks, communications, aluminum wheels, rear wheel steer, twin Spey
202 turbofan engine, support vehicles, etc.
All systems seemed to be speaking to each other, but a full dress
rehearsal for the upcoming mission in the Black Rock desert would have
to wait for then came the prerequisite trial, error, and anguish that,
if you study your motorsports history, seems to accompany all LSR
efforts. In a Middle Eastern desert that is dryer than microwaved kitty
litter, it rained. And rained. And flooded.
Indeed, as Ron Ayers related in retrospect: "According to the weather
statistics, November should have the ideal combination of moderate
temperature, low wind, low precipitation, and few dust storms." It was,
in fact, quite the antithesis. The Thrust SSCer's arrival at this arid
Middle Eastern desert was akin to fording a river: At the air
base where Thrust was stationed the flooding was moving so fast that it
appeared to be pushing stones ahead of it. Finally, Glynne Bowsher
pointed out that the stones were actually floating camel droppings…
Meanwhile: Concurrent to the SSC frantically evacuating the flooded
desert in Jordan, days before a provisional Bureau of Land Management
permit at Black Rock expired, Breedlove caught a crosswind at 675 mph
as his "Spirit of America" streamliner "Wrong Way" Corrigan-ed and
assumed the attitude of a traffic circle. It was the fastest U-turn in
history.
"I didn't know that I had the sidewind," said Breedlove. "I was confused. I wouldn't have run had I known what the wind was."
In fact, it was one of those moments when a bad case of "Go! Fever"
short-circuited logic. With the permit dwindling and bad weather
encroaching, Craig knew his window for making history was finite. As he
was strapped in to the car for his record run, Craig had requested a
wind profile early that ill-fated morning. It came back, "Crosswind
One-point-five mph." When the SOA crew fired the J-79, it developed a
fluid leak and was shut down. As the crew got tightened some fittings
with their wrenches, a cloud cover blew in over the playa, obscuring
Breedlove's vision. He continued to wait, and kept his game face on
still strapped into the cockpit. Finally, the clouds lifted and Craig
could see the 13-mile black stripe that was his sole guidance system
down the course. Finally, four hours after the original time of
departure, all systems were go and Craig requested another wind
profile. The response over the radio was "Crosswind at One-Five mph."
Knowing that the SOA could only withstand a crosswind of 5 mph or less,
in his zeal to go 700 mph Craig inserted a decimal point in the wind
profile...He interpreted the transmission as "1.5" not "15" mph.
When the car tipped up on its side and went into a skid, "I had dirt in
the windshield, and I really couldn't see what was happening," he said.
"I thought I'd probably had it, that this was going to be it."
The next available permit for speed trials would be in September, 1997.
*********
On the eve of the press conferences in Reno which will hail the Mach 1
attempts, I arrive at the Reno Airport after spending the flight
engaging in heavy and heated discourse with a geeky film buff about the
aforementioned Spencer Tracy movie. I am heavily mythologizing not only
the flick, but the actual location of Black Rock itself. He's not
buying it.
"Yeah," I said with authority, "there is a coffee shop called 'Bruno's'
that is right across the street from the train station used in 'Bad Day
at Black Rock.' It has the be the same diner coffee shop where Spencer
Tracy--with his only good arm--karate chopped Ernest Borgnine in the
throat."
"Well that can't be," the geek in the seat next to me sniffs, as he
ramps his bifocals up the bridge of his nose. "I have the laserdisc in
my library and on one of the Second Audio Programs the director, John
Sturges, explains at length how they used these abandoned railroad
tracks they found in Bishop, California for the train scenes. That
fictitious coffee shop was actually a set on a back lot in Burbank."
"I'm telling you they shot this film in Gerlach, Nevada. I've been
there AND I've seen the movie. Spencer Tracy gets off the friggin'
train in Gerlach."
"That sir is empirically impossible," the geek bleats. "The production never set foot in Nevada. Rent the laserdisc."
"Laserdiscs are Satanic."
When the plane lands, en route to scoring a rent-a-car I go to
the Information Booth in hopes of procuring a map of the Gerlach
area--I've been there before, but this is the kind of terrain where you
just don't want to get lost. There is a kindly, slightly senilitic
Chamber of Commerce croater behind the counter who asks me where
I am headed. I tell him, "Black Rock," so he says, "Lovelock, it's
right here, " and he points to the town of Lovelock on the map.
"No," I say, "ummm, Black Rock, out by Gerlach."
"Ohhh; Tomahawk, it's right here, just take I-80 east past..."
"No, no, no," I interrupt and point to my destination on his map, crinkling it a little bit. "Black Rock, out by Gerlach."
"O-h-h-h, Black Rock. That's easy: Just take I-80 east to Fernley and
take 447 north to Gerlach. It'll take you right to the station
where Spencer Tracy got off the train."
"Actually," I pipe up, "that movie was shot in Bishop, California and on a back lot in Burbank."
"You have a nice drive sir."
*********
"Ladies, gentlemen, and members of the press, we are here to go Mach 1.
Getting the record back does not interest us. Going 700 mph does not
interest us. We are here to go Mach 1."
Thus sayeth Richard Noble hisself from the podium at a press conference
in downtown Reno casino a couple of days after Labor Day, 1997. His
audience was a motley mix of motorsports journalists, a couple of local
betacam crews, some curious tourists who strolled away from the keno
girls after gazing through the tinted casino windows at what looked to
be a phallic-shaped 10-ton spaceship that had landed by the valet
parking, and some local street people who were intrigued by commotion
and had sniffed out the prospect of free danishes and coffee.
Noble's "No Sleep 'till Supersonic" gauntlet was throw down just hours
after his exhausted troops had arrived in Nevada on blitzkrieg
rock-and-roll-180 flight from the Farnborough hangar, jet lagged, sleep
deprived and immaculately clad in matching green uniforms.
Cut to: the SOA press conference at a casino across town. Craig
Breedlove was nonplused by Noble's earlier speech and retaliated by
saying, "I spoke to Richard early on in his design process and he'd
said that he'd decided they needed a twin-engine design and that was
where we differed.
"I said, 'Well, I really don't think you need two,' and he said, 'All
land speed record cars have always underperformed.' I said, 'I really
haven't found that to be true--I had a J-47 that I really think I could
have reached 600 mph with. Maybe you experienced a lot higher drag
numbers than I have.' In any case, that was their philosophy: Really
screw the car down, just suck it down with a lot of ground effects.
Just power it through--(and) it's a very stable way to do it." But not
the SOA way.
"The problem I saw at Black Rock early on in this design concept was
Richard was sinking in," Breedlove continued. "I went to Ken Norris and
asked what their (SSC) ground loadings were and he told me they were at
13,000 lbs. (of downforce). I asked how they were distributed and he
said, 'No, that's on the front wheels.' I said, 'Well, you're aware
that you guys are going to have so much rolling drag that you guys are
never going to get the record.' He said they've been discussing that
and the only thing is that Richard is very reluctant to point the car
up any because of the flying problem."
Conversely, for his Mach 1 endeavors, Breedlove in essence
eyeball-aeroed a projectile in the shape of an arrow. Using a hot
rodded J-79 General Electric jet engine from a Navy F-4 Phantom fighter
aircraft for motivation, Craig visualized a sleek, narrow dart that
would partake of the J-79's 22,650 pounds of thrust (45,000 horsepower)
and finesse the shockwaves that emanate when a vehicle climbs
through a transonic slipstream into--BOOM--a supersonic
slipstream.
"When we ran Sonic 1 at 600 mph (1965) we had no weight on the front
end. I'm not saying that's a prudent way to do it, but that's just the
fact of the matter. Somewhere between 13,000 lbs. and zero is the speed
record."
*********
After seven years of research and development as well as
"dancing-as-fast-as-I-can" cajoling of corporations, the match was
finally on: A quintessential California hot rodder arm wrestling a
permutation of the British military industrial complex.
And although the match was on, there were still many obstacles in the
path of both teams, not the least of which was negative cash flow. To
facilitate the arrival of the Brits from Farnsborough into Reno Int'l
Airport--keep in mind it required 250,00 gallons of jet fuel to top off
an Antonov AN-124 Russian cargo plane (the only vehicle in existence
with enough trunk space to transport the Thrust's 80-ton portable
skunkworks)--Noble appealed for alms via the London Daily Telegraph and
the internet. The vox populi responded with a vengeance. Thrust SSC got
its jet fuel.
Ultimately, 20 percent of the funding for the Thrust effort came from Noble shaking the virtual bushes of cyberspace. Amazing.
*********
"My best wishes to all involved in ThrustSSC's attempt to be the first
through the sound barrier on land. This project is a graphic
illustration of British enterprise and engineering at its best.
Good luck. The whole country is behind you."--Tony Blair, British Prime
Minister.
"It's all about beating the British system. If there were any British
government involvement (in Thrust SSC) we would end up with somebody on
our board, okay? And this has to be a little organization that is very
flexible and can dance and weave. The last thing we want is that sort
of person on the board."--Richard Noble.
*********
In May of '97 the Brits had made a return trip to Jordan for more
shakedown runs--they managed to get the SSC up to 540 mph, which was
apparently all that patchy surface could handle--and they were treated
like royalty. Pomp and circumstance is not much in evidence in Gerlach,
NV when the Thrust SSC mates first arrive. The Brits are homeless.
Gerlach is a town of 300--counting the scorpions--and lodging is
sketchy. There is one motel, "Bruno's," which is also the name of the
bar and the coffee shop, all of which are named eponymously for the
town czar, a lanky, bent elderly Italian with the kind of disposition
only slightly surlier than that of Benito Mussolini's. Despite Thrust
SSC scout team undertaking a reconnaissance trip in April to secure the
permits and lodging crucial to their mission, it has all turned to
shit: Bruno double-booked all the available lodging and ultimately
rented his rooms to the highest bidder: the SOA contingent.
Right then, the Brits are boycotting that turncoat Bruno. They
adjourn to the bar next door, The Miners Club, and discuss Plan B.
After enjoining Bev, the barkeep, to "Give us a fag, wouldya' love?"
(Loosely translated, "I'd like to purchase a package of cigarettes"),
the affable Brits begin making friends with the locals, particularly
Bev.
So picture this: Richard Noble and his lads (20 clamoring Brits clad in
matching RAF-green) are hoisting Coors in a dusty, desert
Dew-Do-Drop-Inn (this about as bizarre as it gets, in my book) when one
of Noble's crew members shushes the entire bar. The local teevee news
is reporting on that morning's press conference ("Going 700 mph does
not interest us. We are here to go Mach 1...") at the casino in Reno.
Suddenly the videotape cuts to the chipper studio humanoid broadcaster
who closes the report with this coda, "Noble and his team are taking
Saturday off in observance of Princess Di's funeral."
Simultaneously Richard Noble, OBE does a "say wot??" double take while
his overworked and underpaid entourage cheer and Bev pours more drinks.
They didn't get the day off. Nor did they care, really. All of which
underscores this question: What is it about Noble that inspires his
troops, his lads to persevere in high-desert heat to erect a portable
self-contained military-industrial complex that meets the criteria for
the digital era's standard for data gathering, all on a dry lake bed
that time forgot?
The answer is that is it is not explainable by the notion of
"technological enthusiasm,"a phrase that has recently come to explain
everything from hot rodding to the Apollo moonshot. The answer is
deeper, more atavistic and completely primeval. The answer has roots
which extend into the quintessence of matter: The universe is
expanding. By extrapolation, consciousness is expanding, constantly
encroaching into realms of the unknown. The technological enthusiast
must go THERE, the technological enthusiast will devour and outmanuever
whatever is his or her way: Pauites, the laws of aerodynamics,
Newtonian physics, whatever.
Thus you have some of the finest minds of our lifetime sleeping on
other people's couches, on their hands and knees picking up pebbles off
the desert floor, all so they can have their moonshot.
Nobody exemplifies this "technological enthusiasm" more so than Ron
Ayers. Although retired and in the twilight of his stay here on Planet
Earth, Ayers was as active as any of the fresh-faced Mach 1 Clubbers on
holiday from the university.
Nearly a month after the Thrusters had arrived and were continuing to
creep into the transonic speed range, I eavesdropped on Ayers as he was
explaining his theories on supersonic travel in a motorcar to a
bewildered and besotted patron in the Miner's Club. Ayers was using a
shot glass as a prop that represented the Thrust SSC and was gingerly
gliding it along the surface of the bar to illustrate his theories
about subsonic, transsonic, and supersonic pressure waves and how they
would affect the handing of the Thrust SSC.
The guy at the bar was asking Ayers why don't you Brits just put the hammer down and go Mach 1 and be done with it?
Ayers explained the SSC design teams rationale for chipping away at
ever-increasing speeds: "The aerodynamic forces would be simply
enormous, enough to lift the car and throw it around like an autumn
leaf in a gale," he said. "The crux of the problem is knowing how the
flow would behave underneath the car at sonic speeds and what would
happen to to shockwaves in that region."
The guy on the bar stool next nodded as if he comprehended Ayers' riff.
"The most important thing," he concluded as Bev the bartender
repossesed the shot glass and put it to less theoretical use, "is that
we don't obliterate Andy."
*********
And so it went at Black Rock: It was a month replete with sandstorms,
rain, and incessant fod. Early on, Breedlove had "fodded" his engine
when he sucked a bolt into the combustion chamber. At times it was like
"Waiting for Godot." It was a month of hurry-up-and-wait, hey maybe
tomorrow is the day. It was an exercise in endurance. Occasionally
sandstorms would kick in and nullify the very thorough "de-fodding"
(removing debris from the 13 mile courses) that took place during the
day. In addition to the capricious, recalcitrant weather which made a
mockery of the Mach 1 clubs perpetual de-fodding efforts, the Brits
were plagued with a malfunctioning on-board computer that would sense
non-existence turbulence and kill both engines at 400 mph. The SSC
software phreaks would chase after the jet car at 180 mph in a hot
rodded XJ12 Jaguar and blow some fresh code out off a laptop into
the onboard computer's SCSI port.
Through all of this both Bruno's and the Miner's Club in Gerlach became
like Algonquin Rooms for the LSR maniacs who gathered on the playa in
search of the Big Bang. The conversation was always good. It was during
these nights I engaged Noble in a dialogue about overcoming obstacles.
He insisted that the two forays into Jordan prepared the Thrust team
for any possible catastrophic eventuality.
"The problem with Jordan," he said, "is that we built a car that was
extremely unconventional and very complex. We took it out there with a
very green crew, so we had the problems of sorting out the crew,
sorting out the car and, even worse, sorting out the desert. It
hammered the hell out of the car...(after) we cleared 170 miles of
stone. And a lot of that was on our hands and knees."
Another night I got a similar recollection from Andy Green. "We had
gone out there with a car with a lot of features that people said
couldn't work: rear-wheel steering, twin engines, the computers," he
said. "We went out there and we had a lot of problems with rear-wheel
steer. And the engineering fixed it out there in the desert--we got the
car to work right out there in Jordan. Everything that could have gone
wrong with everything we had did--and we fixed all of it. The only
thing we couldn't fix was the weather."
"The biggest obstacle wasn't the fod or the weather," said Simon
Rogers, one of the Thrust SSC microlight pilots whose job description
was to patrol the desert looking for fod. "Some days we would have to
abandon a run because I would spot camels straggling across the track
or Iranians rampaging across the desert smuggling massive amounts of
petrol in a lorry (tanker truck)."
But perhaps the finest quote I was able to extricate from the Brits
came from Green when I asked him what possessed him to be the first
driver of an automobile to burst through the Sound Barrier. He said,
"Nobody knows what's there because nobody has ever been there."
It was a haiku for the technological enthusiast.
*********
I asked Andy Green to describe the differences in handling a Tornado
fight plane and the Thrust SSC. "The car is a lot more acceleration
than a jet fighter," he said. "It has two jet fighter engine with half
the weight of a jet fighter--tremendous acceleration." He said he
enjoyed his "holiday" from the RAF while he was moonlighting with the
Thrust team. "You only run when the weather is nice, everything is good
for you and the vehicle is perfectly sensible."
*********
Einstein proved that space and time both bend. Empirical confirmation
of this phenomena existed at Black Rock on the day the Brits went
supersonic. There are a parallax of cones which delineate the boundary
of the race course, from the shut down area through the "measured mile"
speed trap all the way to the launch pad. With the human eye, the cones
gradually meld into the floor of the lake bed itself. Off on the
horizon, a puff of dusty exhaust blossoms like Teutonic smoke signals
as the crewmembers spin the Thrust SSC's turbines and purge the
afterburners of its Spey 202s. But this dervish of pyrotechnical
activity transpires approximately 45 degrees off axis of the parallax
view. Space bends. You are witnessing the curvature of the Earth.
"Thrust SSC is rolling," the SSC radio hums. For the first mile of the
record run, the machine is merely cruising at speeds which would not
bat the eye of a highway patrolman in Montana. This is precautionary,
to avoid creating a vacuum in the 202's intake which would suck pebbles
and arrowheads off the lake bed and into the motor. At the Mile 1
marker Green stomps on the loudpedal. Instantaneously, copious amounts
of thrust sock the RAF hero in the solar plexus and he's blazing across
the lake bed, with a roostertail of dust and exhaust in his wake as
tall as Noble's phone bill. The trajectory of the vehicle appears to be
bending on an exponential curve, even though it is straight as a
Southern Baptist. Everything is strangely silent, despite the fact that
the machine must be making prodigious thunder in its wake. (Isn't it?).
Suddenly, the trajectory appears to change and is completely
linear...it is absolutely boogeying...Thrust SSC enters the measured
mile and...silence...a mushroom cloud begins to manifest itself in the
wake of the vehicle and then WHHHOOOOSSSSHHH....fuck that it is loud!
The sound of two fighter plane engines with turbines spinning at warp
speed rattles the playa and the schoolhouse in Gerlach. Time bends.
*********
On October 13, 1997, one day before the 50th anniversary of Chuck
Yeager's supersonic rocket ride in the Bell X-1 aeroplane, Andy Green
broke the sound barrier on land. He recorded speeds of 764.168 and
758.102 mph, at Mach numbers of 1.007 and 1.000. The timekeepers at the
United States Auto Club could not confirm these numbers as an official
FIA record as the prerequisite "back-up" run missed the one-hour window
by 43 seconds. Two day later, Green again performed back-to-back
supersonic runs--this time within the allotted hour--at speed of
759.333 (Mach 1.015) and 766.609 mph (Mach 1.020), with an official
two-way average of 763.035 mph.
As his crew packed up the SSC portable skunkworks, Richard Noble made
no mention of his impending afternoon tea with the Queen of England.
However, he did say, "I'm going to Brazil to hide from the creditors."
The Thrust SSC will be mothballed in a museum, never to run again.
Craig Breedlove is still on the playa, albeit with a new goal: to be
the first man to travel at 800 mph on land. He clocked 636 mph as this
story was filed.
*********
And there you have it: The theoretical work of Ayers, Bowsher, Noble
and the entire entourage of the Thrust SSC--as articulated by Andy
Green's cockpit acumen--has been established. And it confirms this
notion: The universe is expanding. Just ask Mr. Ayers the next time you
see him at the Miner's Club, having a drink with Spencer Tracy.
CLUTCH DUST VAPORIZES INTO THE ETHER: THE COLE COONCE READER