Richard Noble Water Speed Record
Discussion
He's clinging to the tradition of building crude, overweight dinosaurs, then? Nearly 3 times the weight of Bluebird K7, and even that was a bit of a dinosaur.
He's going to be limited to running on Loch Ness, 'cos there's nowhere else long enough, in the UK.
All assuming there's anyone out there willing to support the cost of such an over-complicated monster, which, judging by the fact that Nigel MacKnight has been promoting Quicksinker (another old-fashioned, overweight monster) for decades now without much success, probably isn't going to happen, with the country heading into economic meltdown.
Still, if it keeps him occupied...
He's going to be limited to running on Loch Ness, 'cos there's nowhere else long enough, in the UK.
All assuming there's anyone out there willing to support the cost of such an over-complicated monster, which, judging by the fact that Nigel MacKnight has been promoting Quicksinker (another old-fashioned, overweight monster) for decades now without much success, probably isn't going to happen, with the country heading into economic meltdown.
Still, if it keeps him occupied...
Edited by Equus on Saturday 28th May 23:06
CallMeLegend said:
Good luck to him but he really should take note of the life expectancy of WSR hopefuls.Equus said:
Negative stuff
Seems you don't like the man then?What vessel would you use for the attempt? Seems to me that something with some heft is less likely to 'do a Donald'.
Olivergt said:
I wish them luck, but fear this will go the same way as the LSR.
Mach 1 you mean?Go for it Richard, Britain needs more men like you.
Simpo Two said:
Equus said:
Negative stuff
Seems you don't like the man then?In terms of cars, the McLaren Maverick illustrated the difference in approach quite well: 1/3rd the weight and thrust of Thrust SSC, for similar target performance.
Simpo Two said:
What vessel would you use for the attempt? Seems to me that something with some heft is less likely to 'do a Donald'.
Short answer: something similar to Spirit of Australia II, which Warby pretty much has ready-to-run already, but I'd pay more attention to minimising the frontal area (something that Warby, surprisingly, doesn't seem to have felt the need to be particularly obsessive about, so far). Or possibly something analogous to Lee Taylor's US Discovery II, with the known faults designed out (everybody but Taylor, it seems, knew that the sponson design was wrong on that one)..The numbers make an interesting comparison, though. Pay particular attention to the differences in weight and thrust if you want to see why I look upon Thrust WSH as a lumbering dinosaur:
Crusader K6
Weight: 3,048kg approx. (mainly due to the relatively crude and bulky centrifugal compressor 'Ghost' jet engine)
Thrust: 22.2kN
Length: 9.4m.
Speed: 230mph+
Cost: Quite a lot (but comparatively a lot cheaper than K7 - funded mainly out of Cobb's own - admittedly deep - pockets)
Bluebird K7 (final form with Orpheus engine):
Weight: 2,540kg approx.
Thrust: 20kN approx.
Length: 8.026m
Speed: 300mph
Cost: s
tloads: heavily backed by the cream of British industry at the time)Spirit of Australia (the current record holder)
Weight: 1524kg. (note: much less than Bluebird or Crusader)
Thrust: 13.35kN, approx (note: much less than Bluebird or Crusader, despite being much faster)
Length: 8.23m.
317mph+ (peaked at over 340mph)
Cost: Buttons, constructed in Ken Warby's back yard.
Spirit of Australia II
Weight: Similar to SoA
Thrust: 22.2kN (from a slightly uprated version of the Bristol Orpheus used in K7 - capable of having an afterburner added if required)
Length: Similar to SoA
Speed: TBC
Cost: Cheap enough for Warby to have built, largely with his own resources, in a shed.
Thrust WSH
Weight: 7,000kg (
!!!) Thrust: 111kN
Length: 12.2m
Speed: TBC
Cost: several multiples of s
tloads, no doubt, if it ever gets built.Nigel MacKnight's Quicksinker is similar in specification to Thrust WSH (figures for the current design haven't been published, but it uses the same Spey engine, is roughly the same length, and therefore likely to be similar displacement).
If you know anything about hydroplanes, you'll know that weight is absolutely critical, both to hydrodynamic drag and to the point impact forces that the hull has to sustain.
'Doing a Donald' as you put it, is mainly due to having a centre of lift ahead of the centre of gravity, for which reason there's good sense in reverse three-pointers like Crusader (which failed due to critical structural flaws, but was probably the most stable WWSR craft we've yet seen) or US Discovery II, if you can get the design right, which pretty much automatically have the CL behind the CG.
Equus said:
Nothing to do with the man (I don't know him well enough to either like or dislike the man, though he comes across as personable enough in interviews), but the knuckle-dragging brute-force-and-bloody-ignorance approach to engineering that he has always adopted belongs to the early part of last century... it's very much Reid Railton/Parry Thomas rather than Colin Chapman/Gordon Murray.
Care to elaborate on that beyond the list of lighter, less powerful boats that don't achieve the speeds intended for this one? Surely the size and mass of the Thrust vehicles has been a product of the size and strength of a structure required to carry the powerplant required to achieve the required performance, and engineered to ensure it doesn't unexpectedly take off or snap in half.Simpo Two said:
Equus said:
Negative stuff
Seems you don't like the man then?What vessel would you use for the attempt? Seems to me that something with some heft is less likely to 'do a Donald'.
Olivergt said:
I wish them luck, but fear this will go the same way as the LSR.
Mach 1 you mean?Go for it Richard, Britain needs more men like you.
Didn't Ken Warby say something along the lines of "I don't want to set the record too high in case one of my kids wants to break it"?
donkmeister said:
Care to elaborate on that beyond the list of lighter, less powerful boats that don't achieve the speeds intended for this one?
We're told on the Thrust WSH website that 'The only hard point (ie. the only constraint imposed upon the designer) for the design was the use of one of the 25,000lb thrust Spey jet engines still in storage from the ThrustSSC supersonic land speed record car.'The designer, Lorne Campbell, is an experienced designer of planing craft (albeit almost exclusively offshore powerboats with a top speed of less than 100mph... I'd have been more impressed by an experienced designer of 3-point hydroplanes or drag boats, but still...).
I can probably do no better than quote directly from his own website:
which said:
1. All successful projects are the result of good teamwork.
All links in the chain have to be strong – one weak link and it all falls apart. This runs right through from the draughtsman to the owner. It cannot be overstated how important it is to have an owner or owner’s representative, who comprehends what he or she has actually started. If the person in charge does not understand it makes every stage one which has to be explained and justified before it can proceed. This is a protracted process and ruins continuity.
2. If you haven’t got a plan you can’t change it.
If you don’t have a plan, you have no control because you don’t know who is doing what when. You don’t have to be the controller of the plan yourself, but somebody has to be. This, of course, is project management. Once you have a plan it becomes obvious at some stage – often towards the beginning– that parts of it are not going to work in the originally expected fashion. The plan may then be updated to accommodate these changes. Things remain under control. No plan, no control; the time and cost goes sky high and disasters happen because essential things get forgotten.
3. Killer Grams
This sign – in large letters - was on the design office wall in one of the companies I worked for before setting up on my own. It always astonishes me how little emphasis is given to the weight of high speed craft – often by those who work within the industry. Nobody expects an aeroplane to take to the skies if it is overweight; possibly this is because our baggage is always weighed before taking a flight. The same principle applies to fast planing craft; too heavy and they won’t get up and plane on the water surface, or will struggle to do so. The vertical rise of a planing craft is much less than for an aircraft (and there is less distance to fall), but planing is different from just floating just as flying is different from standing on the runway. Weight is the by far the largest factor in planing boat performance and too much weight in the wrong place is the biggest cause of design disasters.
(my bold and underline)All links in the chain have to be strong – one weak link and it all falls apart. This runs right through from the draughtsman to the owner. It cannot be overstated how important it is to have an owner or owner’s representative, who comprehends what he or she has actually started. If the person in charge does not understand it makes every stage one which has to be explained and justified before it can proceed. This is a protracted process and ruins continuity.
2. If you haven’t got a plan you can’t change it.
If you don’t have a plan, you have no control because you don’t know who is doing what when. You don’t have to be the controller of the plan yourself, but somebody has to be. This, of course, is project management. Once you have a plan it becomes obvious at some stage – often towards the beginning– that parts of it are not going to work in the originally expected fashion. The plan may then be updated to accommodate these changes. Things remain under control. No plan, no control; the time and cost goes sky high and disasters happen because essential things get forgotten.
3. Killer Grams
This sign – in large letters - was on the design office wall in one of the companies I worked for before setting up on my own. It always astonishes me how little emphasis is given to the weight of high speed craft – often by those who work within the industry. Nobody expects an aeroplane to take to the skies if it is overweight; possibly this is because our baggage is always weighed before taking a flight. The same principle applies to fast planing craft; too heavy and they won’t get up and plane on the water surface, or will struggle to do so. The vertical rise of a planing craft is much less than for an aircraft (and there is less distance to fall), but planing is different from just floating just as flying is different from standing on the runway. Weight is the by far the largest factor in planing boat performance and too much weight in the wrong place is the biggest cause of design disasters.
Obviously, Lorne Campbell cannot be held responsible for what Noble himself has said was the one fixed constraint in the brief, but by his (Campbell's) own cardinal rules, the project seems doomed from the start by ill-conception.
By his own rule (2), when you reach a point when your predicted performance is such that only the longest course in the UK (to run in the UK being another stated project objective) is long enough, and that course is known to present unacceptable risks to the running of very high speed craft (Loch Ness is prone to washes reflecting off its steep sides - apart from frequently being mistaken for Nessie, these are what destroyed Crusader), it comes time to change the plan.
Whilst I agree that using a naff-off big jet engine does constitute brute force, what you have quoted there really just points to a pro-active approach to engineering and project management.
Knuckle dragging/bloody ignorance would be something akin to the "let's take the wings off an F104 and put wheels on it" approach, ignore all the realities of that approach and to then carrying on until someone gets killed. Richard Noble's projects are renowned for getting actual, proper engineers involved from the outset and spending a lot of time and money on modelling and testing.
Knuckle dragging/bloody ignorance would be something akin to the "let's take the wings off an F104 and put wheels on it" approach, ignore all the realities of that approach and to then carrying on until someone gets killed. Richard Noble's projects are renowned for getting actual, proper engineers involved from the outset and spending a lot of time and money on modelling and testing.
I simply can't see this happening in the current economic climate....Bloodhound seems destined to remain a museum piece now, and that is already built! There just isn't the money for this kind of thing any more and like it or not, not enough people are interested. The Aussies have the right idea- another essentially home-built boat- and that is already clocking up some good speeds as they crawl towards an actual attempt. There's a bloke in the UK building what seems to be a copy of a Warby boat in his garage, to be powered by two old Viper engines! But again, at least it is cheaper and quicker to put on the water.
Edited by PinkTornado on Sunday 29th May 13:25
donkmeister said:
Richard Noble's projects are renowned for getting actual, proper engineers involved from the outset and spending a lot of time and money on modelling and testing.
Yes, of course. How silly of me - I forgot all about the exemplary engineering that was Thrust 1:&width=645)
Thrust II was basically a copy of Art Arfons' Green Monster (Arfons himself being famous even among LSR enthusiasts for his 'junkyard' engineering). Big engine; 4 wheels; very basic aerodynamics. Nothing much to see there.
Thrust SSC was just plain weird, with twin engines (the two biggest, f
k Off engines he could lay his hands on) such that you'd get asymmetric thrust if one failed, and rear wheel steering: a blind alley that they turned their back on completely with Bloodhound. Nobody has been forming queues to copy that one, you'll notice... I think most of us are still trying to figure out what the Engineers had been smoking.Bloodhound was probably the most competent and coherrent design, though even that had crude features (the fuel pump driven by a car engine; the vertically stacked engines)... but we all know how successful that project was.
As I said above: if you want to see how the best professional Motorsport Engineers that money can buy approached the problem, you have only to look at the McLaren Maverick (which use of jet engine aside, bears striking similarities to Bluebird CN8).
donkmeister said:
Knuckle dragging/bloody ignorance would be something akin to the "let's take the wings off an F104 and put wheels on it" approach...
What would the 'lets use four times the power, four times the weight and ten times the cost we need to get the job done' approach be, then?Edited by Equus on Sunday 29th May 14:12
Equus said:
Thrust SSC was just plain weird, with twin engines (the two biggest, fk Off engines he could lay his hands on) such that you'd get asymmetric thrust if one failed, and rear wheel steering: a blind alley that they turned their back on completely with Bloodhound. Nobody has been forming queues to copy that one, you'll notice... I think most of us are still trying to figure out what the Engineers had been smoking.
I think you have an opinion, which is fine, but are trying to find justifications after forming that opinion. What are the actual, engineering reasons you have against Noble's projects? Not opinions, reasons.k Off engines he could lay his hands on) such that you'd get asymmetric thrust if one failed, and rear wheel steering: a blind alley that they turned their back on completely with Bloodhound. Nobody has been forming queues to copy that one, you'll notice... I think most of us are still trying to figure out what the Engineers had been smoking.Bloodhound has the benefit of 2000s CFD in the design... looking superficially like other designs doesn't mean it is equivalent to other designs, nor that it behaves like other designs at 1,000mph.
If any CFD was used during the design of Thrust SSC (I doubt it was) it would have been primitive due to the lack of computing power back then. However, the design was tested and optimised using a lot of rocket sled testing.
The asymmetric rear wheel steering was a product of two things: 1) the rule that the car must have four wheels, 2) the packaging limitations around the tested, validated shape. It would have been easier to go with three wheels, but the rules don't allow that. It's a design that is comparable to a tail rudder in terms of the forces applied, and I doubt you point and laugh at the tail every time an Airbus flies over.
The two big f
k off engines are because those were the best engines available at the time for the endeavour. EJ200 prototypes had been run at the time that Thrust was being constructed, but production engines simply didn't exist.Comparing Thrust SSC and Bloodhound SSC is rather like comparing the F117A Vs the F22; the shape and stealth capabilities of the F117A are limited by the engineering knowledge and computing power of the day, whereas the F22 has the benefit of the knowledge gained from F117A plus years of additional engineering knowledge, research for CFD and RCS management, and massively greater computing power to do the design analysis.
Also I'm trying to remember when the McLaren design first went supersonic... Can you remind us please?
donkmeister said:
What are the actual, engineering reasons you have against Noble's projects? Not opinions, reasons.
I've already stated them very clearly - you're just avoiding acknowleding them: the project's own performance predictions result in the need for course length that cannot be safely delivered in the UK (which is one of their stated objectives).The WWSR is very dangerous (that's statistically evidenced, not opinion) and the longer the boat needs to run, the more risk you're exposing the driver to.
The 'overkill' on the design costs money. Any design that costs more to design, build and operate than it needs to is a bad one, in engineering terms. If it comes to it, it's the single design flaw that leads to the failure of these sorts of projects more often than any other... Unfortunately, too many Engineers spend so much time trying to be clever that they forget this: to finish first, first you've got to finish.
donkmeister said:
Also I'm trying to remember when the McLaren design first went supersonic... Can you remind us please?
The McLaren, as I'm sure you well know, was cancelled when Thrust SSC was announced, as McLaren knew that there was no benefit to them competing against and beating a blatant amateur on another UK-based project: the PR would have worked against them. Put simply: they pulled the plug on it to avoid humiliating Noble's team.If you think it's not a project that a company like McLaren couldn't turn round within a few months whenever they wanted to, you're kidding yourself (that's not intended as a criticism of Thrust SSC/Bloodhound engineers, by the way, just a simple reflection of the design and manufacturing resources they have available to them).
CFD did exist, by the way, and the McLaren had already been through that process before it was announced (discussed in the video I linked above). You are correct in stating that it was beyond the Thrust SSC team's capabilities, though (as was the design of a proper turbopump for Bloodhound's rocket - something we'd managed with nothing more than sliderules half a century earlier).
Edited by Equus on Sunday 29th May 15:05
Equus said:
donkmeister said:
What are the actual, engineering reasons you have against Noble's projects? Not opinions, reasons.
I've already stated them very clearly You are approaching this from an assumption that small and lightweight is better because motorsport. Even in motorsport things are bigger and heavier than the engineers would like, because they too have to deal with pesky things like rules and physics. Just look at the infamous cardboard roll cage to save some weight whilst risking lives. Engineering is about meeting the challenges with what is possible within the state of the art and the rules applicable.
Now, how qualified are motorsports engineers for an LSR vehicle? Some of them I bet would be very good however motorsport engineering itself does not have a lot of valid read-across to vehicles intended to travel at 700-1,000mph. Before you even consider aero and propulsion, how much 200mph engineering carries over to a 1,000mph car?
Equus said:
CFD did exist, by the way
I didn't say it didn't. However the computing capabilities to do much with it in the 90s weren't where they are now. 2020s aerospace grads don't know they're born 
CFD of course, IS a brute force approach that requires knuckle dragging cluster computing. Why can't they do it with an iPhone?!
donkmeister said:
You haven't though... Saying "this is big and heavy" is not a valid criticism.
like I said:
you're just avoiding acknowledging them
Viability, safety and cost (which are all outcomes of 'big and heavy' in this case) are perfectly valid criticisms. You're just (metaphorically) sticking your fingers in your ears and singing 'la, la, la, I'm not listening'. Looks fascinating, saw this yesterday and signed up to all the stuff of course. Very briefly met the great man many years ago at Coventry, saw the cars, they leave a fabulous feeling with you, such a shame also that Bloodhound has just fallen away.
This record though has stood for a very long time and taken the lives of a few, it is possibly even harder to do 350ish on water than it was to break the sound barrier on land, and I say that advisedly, nothing can be used as a base for design whereas at least with a car you have some sort of data from models, this is a tough one.
Boat looks like a Thrust 2 boat, and they are of course using the education program again, which was such a driving force of Bloodhound.
Be fascinating to think where they are going to test and set times, no idea really, I would hope UK but weather probably says no, but again this is early stages, a lot of money etc to be found yet. Wonder if Green might also do this?
And Equuus, read the book please you embarrass yourself, Maverick never got much beyond concept, Breedlove made fatal flaws with his car, it might have looked elegant, but this was new frontier stuff, heavy works when you have NO IDEA what will happen at 700mph on a desert playa under the car, and when they got the data back, they STILL didn't not understand a lot of what was going on. Such as the front wheels doing about 200 mph les than the rears, they were literally skipping over the alkali, respect is due please.
I think you could do yourself some credit by acknowledging the engineering achievement of doing 770mph on an alkali lake or are you maybe American and still think Budweiser Rocket broke the sound barrier?
This record though has stood for a very long time and taken the lives of a few, it is possibly even harder to do 350ish on water than it was to break the sound barrier on land, and I say that advisedly, nothing can be used as a base for design whereas at least with a car you have some sort of data from models, this is a tough one.
Boat looks like a Thrust 2 boat, and they are of course using the education program again, which was such a driving force of Bloodhound.
Be fascinating to think where they are going to test and set times, no idea really, I would hope UK but weather probably says no, but again this is early stages, a lot of money etc to be found yet. Wonder if Green might also do this?
And Equuus, read the book please you embarrass yourself, Maverick never got much beyond concept, Breedlove made fatal flaws with his car, it might have looked elegant, but this was new frontier stuff, heavy works when you have NO IDEA what will happen at 700mph on a desert playa under the car, and when they got the data back, they STILL didn't not understand a lot of what was going on. Such as the front wheels doing about 200 mph les than the rears, they were literally skipping over the alkali, respect is due please.
I think you could do yourself some credit by acknowledging the engineering achievement of doing 770mph on an alkali lake or are you maybe American and still think Budweiser Rocket broke the sound barrier?
Edited by LukeBrown66 on Sunday 29th May 15:32
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