Bad weather forced Craig Breedlove's Spirit of America crew to make a dramatic exit off the Black Rock Desert's playa on Saturday, and the team has abandoned all hope of breaking the world land speed record this year.
"I am extremely disappointed; it has been the summer from hell!" said Breedlove, the car's driver, as he packed to leave the Nevada site. "Our plans are to get home, store everything for the winter, and get back out here as soon as the weather and the Bureau of Land Management permit, and then resume running next summer."
The Spirit of America crew left the playa early Saturday afternoon as a heavy rain storm loomed on the horizon. The crew loaded up what it could and raced across the desert as the rain quickly turned the landscape into an impassable mud bath. Spirit of America was left at the compound until it could be pulled off the desert floor later in the evening, as the ground froze. Then it was loaded into its transporter and sent back to its winter home in Rio Vista, California.
"There won't be any major changes to the car this winter. It was never any more ready to go than it was the other day," said crew chief Dezso Molnar. "We are just waiting for the desert now."
Though the team has been plagued with problems over the past two years, Breedlove and his crew are sure that they can take the record back from Richard Noble's British team and its ThrustSSC car, which last month rocketed to a speed of 763 miles per hour, smashing the record and the sound barrier.
Last year Breedlove's car reached a speed of 675 mph before he lost control and the car arced off the course, making a 180 degree U-turn. Breedlove walked away from the crash unharmed, but the car wasn't running anywhere except back to the shop. With the installation of a second engine and other improvements to the car, Breedlove believes it's capable of speeds up to (and over) 800 mph. Since ThrustSSC has reached its maximum speed, and there are no other major contenders in the wings, Breedlove hopes to take the record and keep it in the US for at least another decade.
ThrustSSC and Spirit of America are completely different in their approach to design and aerodynamics. The English team took a brute-force approach: ThrustSSC has twin jet propulsion engines, and is absolutely huge, weighing in at about 10 tons. Some of the Spirit of America crew have likened it to a locomotive, and one engineer said, "That car goes against everything I've ever learned about building land-speed cars." When they transported it back to England they called in a Russian Antonov cargo plane, the largest plane in the world.
Spirit of America, by contrast, runs on a single jet propulsion engine, and with its sleeker design, Breedlove says it has the advantage over ThrustSSC. "Our car has the potential to be faster due to lower drag. The drag is exponential. The penalty comes from higher drag, not less power. So in this respect SOA has the edge." Drag is the friction caused by a shape traveling through the atmosphere, meaning the faster you go, the more air is condensed. The more frontal area on the car, then, the more drag that is created. Spirit of America's aerodynamics should be able to avoid drag because of the car's very low frontal section. The main problem with that, however, is stability - if the car comes off the ground, the driver loses control. And at these speeds, that's a hazardous proposition.
What makes last weekend's evacuation more disappointing is that after more than a month of modifications and improvements, Breedlove was able to carry out a low-speed run on Friday. But even then, he expressed concerns about the playa's surface, which has become unsuitable for high speeds due to a rising water table. During the dry season the crust of the playa is a fine powder, but as the rainy season approaches, the surface becomes a hard crust. At low speeds of 200 mph, the crust was affecting the car's ability to steer properly.
"It's ultimately disappointing, but when you do something like the world land speed record it takes a lot of research, a lot of work, and a lot of guts," said Bill Breedlove, general manager of the project. "But it also takes a lot of luck, which is something we just didn't have this year."
