A Journey from 0 to 633mph and Back Again – video

“It upsets your inner ears and gives you the impression that you’re driving vertically straight down into the middle of the earth.”

On the 4th of October, 1983 Richard Noble reached a top speed of 650.88 miles per hour and set a land speed record of 633.468 miles per hour in the Thrust 2. This is how it felt.

The team started the Thrust 2 project in 1979 on a budget of £175. Their first attempt was in 1981, and that’s when they learned everything that they’d done wrong with the car.

They did succeed in clocking a 500 mile-per-hour run, however. No mean feat to for anyone, let alone for a small team that got their start with barely enough money in their pockets for a decent ride in a London cab.

“Three hundred to five fifty is boring. It’s just more of the same but faster. When you start getting up to five fifty and towards six hundred something happens.”

In 1982 they tried again, and hit 615 miles an hour, but were thwarted once again by the weather. At least they knew they were on the right track, and they’d found their location.

It would be 1983 before they achieved their goal. In this video Richard Noble puts an experience that only a handful of people on Earth have had into words, so that we can get an idea of what it’s like to go from stationary, to 633.468 miles per hour and then stop.