Biting the Dust

Quiet has returned to this vast, desolate playa where Britain’s Andy Green penetrated the sound barrier while driving Richard Noble’s massive Thrust SSC beyond the speed of sound.

The Brits have gone, the Union Jack has been struck from the tiny compound in the middle of the desert 125 miles north of Reno, where Noble came in 1983 to take the land-speed record away from American Gary Gabelich, and returned this year to see his vehicle become the first to achieve Mach 1 on land.

Gone too are Craig Breedlove and his tiny band of engineer-enthusiasts who had hoped to beat Green to the sound barrier, then later had hoped to move the record beyond 800 mph. But before he could get his Spirit of America up to speed, capricious November weather closed in, and after a sudden squall turned the desert basin into a muddy bog, Breedlove returned home to Rio Vista, a tiny delta town on the Sacramento River.

“For the Brits, it was a great summer,” Breedlove said. “For us, it was a summer from hell.”

All that remain here as winter winds whip across the horizon are the footprints of Green’s record runs, ruts in the crusty desert clay made by the aluminum wheels that carried the nine-ton Thrust into the history books when it streaked twice through the measured mile at an average of 763.035 mph, or Mach 1.02.

“I hope those ruts are still there when we come back next year,” said Breedlove, 60. “They’ll be a reminder of what we need to do.”

The Spirit of America is ready to run but must wait until next summer, when Breedlove hopes to get another permit from the Bureau of Land Management, which controls the playa.

Weather was not the only enemy, however. An infusion of cash is needed if he can continue his quest to regain the land-speed record, which he held five times in the 1960s.

“We’re pretty tapped,” Breedlove admitted. “But I think we’ll be OK financially by next summer. We’re always running on the edge. It’s the nature of the project.”

On several occasions, the crew’s pay was delayed for weeks, until Breedlove could scrape up more money from corporate sponsors.

“The people we’ve got are really dedicated,” he said. “We’ve been very fortunate to find talented people skilled in the technical work we need done, but then to ask them to live in a remote area for months at a time, I feel very fortunate.”

Breedlove last held the record after setting it at 600.6 mph on Nov. 15, 1965. Gabelich, later killed in a motorcycle accident in San Pedro, bettered that at 622.41 on Oct. 23, 1970, a mark that Noble moved to 633.47 in 1983 and held for 14 years until Green, Noble’s protege and a Royal Air Force pilot, reached 763 mph on Oct. 15.

“Ultimately, we know we have a faster car, with more capability for speed,” Breedlove said. “It was disappointing to watch them accomplish goals we had set for ourselves, but we were glad to see them achieve what they came for. In the overall perspective, they set the bar higher. That’s what record-breaking is all about.”

Breedlove knows what it’s like to set standards. As a young man from Venice, he was the first driver to exceed 400, 500 and 600 mph in the 1960s, all on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. And he doesn’t lack confidence.

The indicator on the Spirit of America’s oversized speedometer, one of only three gauges in the cramped cockpit, goes from zero to 800.

“Eight hundred has a nice sound to it, doesn’t it?” he said with a broad grin.

The other dials, one for RPMs and one for engine temperature, are used only for starting the single jet engine, modified from an F-4 Phantom Navy fighter plane. Using 92-octane unleaded gasoline, the engine produces 22,500 pounds of thrust, equal to about 48,000 horsepower.

Noble’s Thrust, built more like a freight train than a race car, had two Rolls-Royce Spey 202 turbojet engines capable of producing 110,000 horsepower in tandem.

The astonishing jump in the speed record--from 633 to 763--caught Breedlove by surprise, however. It was a major factor in forcing him to wait until next year to make a serious bid to regain the record.

The day before Green bettered 700 mph, Breedlove had logged a one-way run of 636, the fastest the Spirit of America tested this year.

Last year Breedlove was testing at 677 mph when a crosswind tipped the Spirit on its side and sent it into a four-mile U-turn. It also caused serious damage to the chassis, enough to end the season.

After a $1-million overhaul, Breedlove returned this year prepared to get the record back, only to watch as Noble and Green moved it further away. And in doing so, created a new problem.

“The parameters changed on us, and it was costly,” said Deszo Molnar, the team’s crew chief. “When we got here in September, the mark we were looking at was 633; now it’s 763. That’s fine. We know the British have maxed out, it won’t go any higher, so now it’s our turn.

“But we came here with tires that were guaranteed for only around 700 mph. They would have been strong enough to break Noble’s old record, but when the Thrust went 763 we had to have a new set built.”

While the new wheels were being built, Breedlove lost a month of good weather.

Although crews still call them tires, the wheels--designed by Breedlove--are manufactured of filament carbon fiber and fiberglass, covered with a rubberized epoxy. The Spirit has five of them, three in front and two in the rear, at a cost of $30,000 each.

“The new ones are good up to 1,000 mph,” Breedlove said.

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Under international rules for land-speed record attempts, a car must exceed the existing record by 1%, which means Breedlove must reach 771 to get the record back.

It also must be clocked twice, going opposite directions, with the second run within one hour of the first. The speed is the average of the two runs.

Green actually made four supersonic runs, two on Oct. 13 that were not official because he failed to meet the one-hour time limit by one minute, and the two of 759.333 mph and 766.609 on Oct. 15.

The tread marks of the supersonic runs are easily recognizable.

For the run-up and the run-off, six miles in either direction--and for the lesser speed runs--they are like any ruts in the desert, each wheel making its own mark. But where the Thrust SSC was at supersonic speeds, the path looks as if it had been plowed by a rototiller.

“It just shows what an awesome force of air is being pushed along in front of the car, enough to churn up the ground like that,” Breedlove said. “The Thrust appeared to be very stable through the barrier, but it was an enormously heavy car. We’re still not exactly sure how the Spirit will handle the sonic barrier.”

The Spirit of America looks like a four-ton dart but is 10 feet shorter and 10,000 pounds lighter than the Thrust.

“The cars are so different, it’s like comparing an aircraft carrier in a storm to an ocean racer,” Breedlove said.

The sonic boom, an easily recognizable sound when an airplane breaks through the sound barrier, was missing, or at least muffled, when Green reached supersonic speeds. At the site, that is.

“It was beautiful to watch, but to tell the truth, I was a little disappointed at not hearing much of a sound,” Breedlove said. “The sound was apparently absorbed by the desert floor.”

Not so a few miles away, however.

“We knew he did it when the hangar started rattling like the dickens,” said Bill Breedlove, Craig’s cousin and the team’s operations manager. “We were about five or six miles away and the shack is made of corrugated tin. It really shook.”

In Gerlach, 15 miles away, the boom bounced bottles around at Bruno’s bar, scattered dishes at Bruno’s restaurant, woke up late sleepers at Bruno’s motel and knocked some tiles loose from the ceiling at Gerlach School.

“It was just like an earthquake,” said a bar patron from Southern California.

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On maps of Nevada, the dot that marks Gerlach overstates the case.

A settlement of 350 people, Gerlach has five bars, three restaurants, a gas station, school, post office and Bruno’s Country Club, a combination motel-restaurant-saloon-casino. There is no store.

If you want to get a room in the barracks-like, 42-unit motel, you sign in and get your key from the bartender a block away.

And if you want provisions, the nearest general store is 76 miles south, in Wadsworth, or 92 miles east, in Winnemucca. Northeast of Gerlach is the Black Rock Desert, 86 miles long and 20 miles wide between the Calico Mountains and the Seven Troughs Range.

Gerlach was settled around 1905 when the Western Pacific Railroad, which still rumbles through town without stopping, was built to link San Francisco with Salt Lake City.

John C. Fremont passed through the desolate stretch in 1843 and camped at Boiling Springs, where steam comes floating from the ground on the outskirts of Gerlach, on the narrow road to the Black Rock Desert.

The most significant landmark, other than Bruno’s Country Club, is the Gerlach Water Tower Park, a few square yards of grass under the town’s water supply.

The vast desert area was a naval gunnery range during World War II, and shell casings still litter the area. When the land-speed record teams aren’t around, the space is used for land sailing, experimental rocket launches and the Burning Man festival.

Standing in the playa, looking in any direction, there appears to be a mirage. From a distance, the cars look as if they’re floating on water before disappearing over the Earth’s curvature.

“There’s something surreal about it,” one crewman said.

It is quite likely the ideal place for anyone desiring to drive a car at more than 700 mph.

“I had heard about Black Rock from some friends, but I never saw it until I came here in 1983 to watch Noble get the record,” Breedlove said. “The first time I saw it, looking at the pristine beauty of the place, it took my breath away. This place is incredible, just nature in its purest form.

“It’s much bigger and much more isolated than Bonneville. There is no saline mining operation, like at Bonneville, and no Highway 80 running through it. There’s flat-out nothing here but flat land.”

Before coming here last year, Noble tested his Thrust on the dry salt lakes of Al Jafr in Jordan, but chose Black Rock for a record attempt.

The nine-ton British car was transported in a Russian cargo ship, reportedly the largest in the world. The fuel for the trip from London to Reno, with a stop in Montreal, was said to have cost $250,000--one way.

Breedlove transports his four-ton car here, 270 miles from Rio Vista, in a transporter.

“Everything about the two teams is relative,” he said. “Their car is twice as big as ours, their crew was twice as large as ours, and they spent twice as much money, or more, than we did in getting the record.”

Noble’s budget has been estimated at slightly more than $8 million, Breedlove’s between $2.5 million and $4 million, depending on when the counting began.

Why do they do it?

“The first team that climbed Mt. Everest didn’t get up there just to see what the view was like,” Green said before packing up to return to England. “They could have flown over it in an airplane. They learned a lot about themselves and showed that it could be done.”

Breedlove also uses a historical analogy.

“We do it for the same reason Columbus sailed off to explore an ocean that people told him dropped off at the edge. It’s man’s nature to explore. We’re modern-day explorers.”