Land speed record bid could make space flight safer

The team that hopes to break the world land speed record in a rocket-assisted jet car could create an important spin-off for the nascent space tourism market: a safer rocket engine.

So says Daniel Jubb, who is the founder of military rocket motor company Falcon Project Limited (FPL), based in Mojave, California, and chief rocket engineer for the Bloodhound SuperSonic Car, which aims to reach a speed of 1600 kilometres per hour (1000 miles per hour) on the salt flats in Hakskeen Pan, South Africa, sometime in 2013. The current record is 1227 km/h, and was set in 1997 by the Bloodhound team's driver Andy Green, in a car called Thrust SSC.