This is hard for me to write, as i’m still in shock at what may have been a worst case scenario for the North American Eagle.
I volunteered as an aerodynamicist for several years. I haven’t been working with the team for a while now, and I have no more information than what the press has released. I can’t imagine what the people that have devoted their lives to this project must be going through - not to mention the tragic loss of Jessi Combs.
It all started for me when Keith and Ed gave a presentation on the North American Eagle and their bid for the land speed record to a chapter of the local Model A Club. After all, no one is more interested in going fast than the Model A Club. One of the members worked at the transonic wind tunnel here in Seattle. He contacted several of us aerodynamicist that regularly tested there and got us involved. Some even bought computers to run CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) on the F-104 car, and several of us worked on the car on weekends.
The current land speed record is owned by Andy Green and the Thrust SSC at 763 MPH. Surprisingly the tail number of the F-104 that Ed and Keith dragged out of a junk yard is 60763.
The ability to go faster than 200 mph is very difficult - I made this chart to show the history of setting the record. Once you get to Mach 0.7, shocks start to dominate the aerodynamics and can be hard to predict - especially for mechanics that are used to building their own cars. I predict that future record holders will be professional teams with large budgets and engineers in addition to mechanics.
It was a once in a life chance for me to help the team test near Gerlach Nevada at the Black Rock Desert many years ago. Several people on here have wondered why they were not at Bonneville. The salt cannot support a vehicle of this size, weight, and type of wheels. They had to find ground hard enough to support the vehicle. The hard playa of Black Rock and Alvord seemed to work well. They have been to Alvord several times, so they know the area well.
As more information is released, we will hopefully learn what happened.