Building bloodhound: the fastest car in the world

In a suburb of Bristol, in western England, not far from the Welsh border, a band of engineers are building a machine that they hope will make the biggest jump in the century long history of the official world land-speed record, taking it from a smidgen above the speed of sound to 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) per hour. That's roughly the cruising speed of a fighter aircraft, but it's considerably harder to achieve at ground level, where the atmosphere is far thicker. And there's the not-insignificant danger that the vehicle will end up plowing into the ground.