A few things might come to mind if you envisioned ‘the loudest sound’. Fire alarm? Rocket launch? What is the sound your stomach produces in a silent room? There are a good few.
Surprisingly, there are just a few things capable of ‘breaking the sound barrier’ in the entire globe, with an automobile being one of them.
Twenty-six years ago, one car broke the sound barrier, and it has never been done since.
Thrust SSC, or ‘Thrust SuperSonic Car’, broke the world speed record on October 15, 1997, in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, reaching 1,228 km/h (763 mph).
Andrew Green, a pilot with the British Royal Air Force, drove the specially constructed automobile.
In a YouTube video of the Thrust SSC taking off, Green described the conditions on the day: “When there’s a car going at 700 mph, the car moves around more the faster you go, the wheels skim across the surface, there’s gusts of crosswind, and the wheels are sliding around all over the track.”
He went on to say, “I had to accelerate the car without it sucking up chunks of desert into the intakes.”
“As I’m accelerating quicker through the 80, 90 miles per hour mark, I then had really strong airflow into the engines.”
According to Guinness World Records, Green described Thrust SSC at 500-700 mph as ‘a big handful, bordering on unmanageable’.
“The two huge booms that rang out over the site during Andy’s outward and return run sent his crew into spontaneous cheers – though because he was actually inside the vehicle that caused those sonic booms, he couldn’t hear them himself,” the Guinness World Records website went on to say.
“Green had the fastest driving record in history. Furthermore, his record-breaking journey occurred 50 years and one day after Chuck Yeager (USA) initially broke the sound barrier in a rocket plane, the Bell X-1.
The Thrust SSC, the only automobile to ever breach the sound barrier, is today regarded a piece of history and is on exhibit at the Coventry Transport Museum in Coventry, England, where it may be seen by both sports and scientific enthusiasts.
Although the car was genuinely unique, and it’s unlikely that such speeds will ever be achieved again, other supersonic projects are underway, such as the revolutionary submarine being developed by the US Navy.
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