Went to a lecture organised by the Royal Aeronautical Society last night on Bloodhound, presented by Richard Noble (we have the full scale mock up at work at the moment).

Brilliant, inspirational talk, and a great presentation that covered not only some of the engineering challenges of the project, but some real eye opening (and worrying) statistics about engineering in the UK. Got my Thrust SSC book signed, and he also signed poster for my son. He seems a very nice bloke. I'll definitely be attempting to get my son's school involved - somehow.

I'd highly reccommend anyone with even the slightest interest in engineering to attend one of his lectures.

http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/

I went to a similar talk back in 1996 when he was promoting the Thrust SSC project. That was based in Farnborough so was a rather high profile effort in our area. Bloodhound seems to be attracting far less attention from the media.

He was critical of the media, particularly the BBC and the daft programmes they consider to be genuinely 'engineering' based (crap like Top Gear).

Probably due the the high number of arts graduates in the media who assume everyone wants to watch reality TV and cooking programmes. According to Noble, this is absolutely not the case, and his research based on the Thrust websites shows that the general public in fact have a voracious appetite for technology and gadgets. Not sure how he arrived at this conclusion from a technology and gadget based website, but good luck to him anyway.

Unfortunately the tv is all about profit, so they show whatever will attract the crowds of dross, the dregs and orts majority of the tv watching public.

'Any society that focuses on its lowest common denominator is a society that is doomed to be mired in mediocrity'

And that is just what TV does.

Even the non-mainstream auto type programs shown in the USA have to have all sorts of fancy camera work, zooming in quickly, shaking the camera around, weird effects, never staying focused on one subject for more than a second. Bloody annoying, but they seem to think it impresses the viewers.....

I just wish they could run a straightforward program aimed at normal, intelligent, petrol-heads occasionally!

Sorry for the rant.

Or search out what others have created an uploaded already...

http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/bloodhound_tv/

The mindset of expecting good things to come down an ariel or satellile dish is all you need to change

Among other things he showed a graph of - IIRC number of US engineering PhD's from 1900 to 2012. There is a significant peak at the begining af the space programme, then a dip. It was enough to put America at the forefront of technology for many years after. Same over here; the example he gave was kids looking up and seeing amazing aircraft like the Vulcan, Lightning and Concorde, and wanting to become engineers or pilots. His Bloodhound project is aimed at enthusing the younger generation ina similar way.

He talks a great talk, but I have my doubts about whether a niche project like this can really have a significant effect. I will support it the best I can and hope for the best. I also hope he can maintain interest when the current project is over.

FWIW I think we need more high profile engineering projects with a bit of human risk. Whether they are required in practical terms is doubtful, and no practicality probably means no real investment.

I've been out and about with work a bit this week (Rolls-Royce, Airbus), and I can assure you that there is a hell of a lot of engineering excellence in the country. Sometimes we don't shout about it, sometimes we can't, but either way it's there.

The media could definitely help more by projecting a POSITIVE message about engineering, and by doing so it could genuinely help the country out of the crap hole we're currently in.

By all means have a go - and post a link when it's done so we can all see it.

I am tired of the mainstream media more or less abandoning engineering and science. Having said that, I think matters have got better in the last two or three years. Even if Top Gear is essentially a load of old nonsense, James May in his own programmes outside of Top Gear has done his bit to make technology cool and interesting again.

We need some "heroes" or "champions" in the media to start promoting science and technology properly. The ironic thing is that there are plenty of people in the media who are genuinely interested in such matters ( Chris Evans, Jonathan Ross, John Culshaw etc) and some of them are now beginning to creep out into the open and allow the world to see that they are actually enthusiastic about such matters.

For far too long they were afraid to reveal their other "nerdy" interests for fear of being ridiculed.

As I said, the tide is turning - but maybe not fast enough.

I just want to relax and watch something interesting on tv after work, not start a cottage fkin' industry making automobile movies.

I agree it is a niche project but Richard Noble's aim was to get schools engaged in it to get children engaged in engineering. I hope it's working.

He said it was working.

I hope it's working too.