The jet was driven by Royal Air Force fighter pilot Wing Commander Andy Green in the Black Rock Desert in the US state of Nevada. It was powered by two afterburning Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engines, as used in the British version of the F-4 Phantom II jet fighter. The twin engines developed a net thrust of 223 kN (50,000 lbf) at the measured record speed of 341 metres per second,3 burning around 18 litres/second (4.0 Imperial gallons/s or 4.8 US gallons/s) of fuel. This was about 4,850 L/100 km (0.06 mpg‑imp; 0.05 mpg‑US).
After the record was set, the World Motor Sport Council released the following message:
The complete run history is available.4[self-published source][non-primary source needed][dead link]
In 1983 Richard Noble had broken the world land speed record with his earlier car Thrust2, which reached a speed of 1,019 km/h (633 mph). The date of Andy Green's record came exactly a half century and one day after Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in Earth's atmosphere, with the Bell X-1 research rocket plane on 14 October 1947.5
Both Thrust SSC and Thrust2 are displayed at the Coventry Transport Museum in Coventry, England. Visitors can ride a 4D motion simulator depicting a computer-generated animation of the record-breaking run from the perspective of Green.6
Several teams are competing to break the record, including the Bloodhound LSR project, launched in 2008,7 and previously the North American Eagle Project, from 2004 until the project's abandonment after a fatal crash in 2019.8
In June 2012, a television advertisement for the Orange San Diego mobile phone, containing an Intel processor, was broadcast on British television and featured a fast car in computer generated imagery. Richard Noble claimed that the car was a representation of Thrust SSC and thus these companies had used his intellectual property without permission, putting the future of the Bloodhound LSR project in doubt. The Advertising Standards Authority rejected the Bloodhound team's complaint, claiming that intellectual property disputes were not in its remit. According to BBC News technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, Intel and Orange responded that their production team had researched different styles of "superfast vehicles" and developed their own Orange-branded land speed car, and that the advertisement and phone were not connected to Noble or Bloodhound LSR.9
ThrustSSC team, archived from the original on 27 April 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180427140909/http://www.thrustssc.com/thrustssc/Team/team.html ↩
Michelle, Walker. "Thrust SSC takes to the road". Retrieved 15 February 2017. https://www.collett.co.uk/thrust-2-and-scc/ ↩
The ThrustSSC Story, archived from the original on 12 May 2000 https://web.archive.org/web/20000512021948/http://www.thrustssc.com/thrustssc/contents-story.html ↩
Thrust SSC Run database, archived from the original on 5 February 2013[self-published source][non-primary source needed] http://www.thrustssc.com/Latest_News/Status-19971015.html ↩
Gill, Kathy. "First supersonic flight in rocket-powered research plane". WiredPen. Retrieved 15 October 2022. https://wiredpen.com/2022/10/14/first-supersonic-flight-in-rocket-powered-research-plane/ ↩
Coventry Transport Museum – Landspeed Gallery https://www.transport-museum.com/visiting/biffa_award_land_speed_record_exhibition.aspx ↩
Noble, Green and Team Target 1,000mph Record. Bloodhound Ssc (23 October 2008). http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/news/noble-green-and-team-target-1000mph-record ↩
Nash, Jim. "Rocket Man: Land-Speed Racer Pushes 1,000 MpH Barrier". Scientific American. Retrieved 9 March 2016. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/1000-mph-car-land-speed-record/ ↩
BBC News – Orange, Intel, and a fast car furore. BBC. (27 June 2012). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18607081 ↩