Bloodhound is go! After years of development, a complex manufacturing programme and a series of financial hurdles, this 135,000 horsepower supersonic car has begun its high speed testing and already ranks as one of the fastest machines ever to travel on land. And as it spears across the desert surface of the Hakskeen Pan in South Africa, the very first thing that comes into contact with the air stream is a piece of 3D printed titanium at the tip of Bloodhound’s nose. That’s just one of dozens of areas where additive manufacturing has played a key role in getting the car ready for its mission to break the World Land Speed Record.

The numbers involved are staggering. For the desert runs, Bloodhound is using wheels machined from solid aluminium – each weighing 91 kg. For the first batch of test runs the team is working its way up through the subsonic region in 50 mph (80 kph) increments, carefully analysing the data at each stage.

The plan is then to return to South Africa – potentially in late 2020 – for an attempt to break current record set by Thrust SSC at 763 mph (1,228 kph). Just how fast Bloodhound might go remains to be seen, but the original calculations for the project assumed a theoretical top speed of 1,000 mph (1,609 kph). By that point, those giant aluminium wheels would be spinning at 10,200 rpm and their outer rims would be subject to some 50,000 radial G.

This is the extreme world in which Bloodhound’s additive components will also have to survive. At that speed, the car would be subject to more than 20,000 kg of skin drag. The pressure on the 3D printed nose tip alone could be as much as 12,000 kg/m². It’s a dramatic demonstration of just how far additive manufacturing has come in recent years…