( CNN ) What has a jet engine , a rocket booster and travels on a set of aluminum wheels ? It 's the Bloodhound SuperSonic Car ( SSC ) and it has plans to hit the world land speed record at 1,000 mph . Made of titanium , carbon fiber and , like superman , is designed to go faster than a speeding bullet , the Bloodhound SSC has been painstakingly put together and tested over the better part of six years . In 2016 , the UK-based team plan to take the 42-foot ( 8.9m ) vehicle to Hakskeen Pan , a dry lake bed in South Africa , for a crack at the record breaking attempt . Former fighter jet pilot Royal Air Force ( RAF ) Wing Commander Andy Green said even designing a car that can hold together at these blistering speeds has been a triumph of the engineer 's art . `` No rubber , '' he told CNN from The Bloodhound Project headquarters in Bristol , UK . `` Beyond about 450mph it 's really , really hard to keep a tire on - they just get flung off . So we have solid aluminum . `` We 've been through a huge evolution of finding something that 's tough enough that would do the job . Basically this car goes faster than a speeding bullet , so anything that hits this is like being shot at from a gun . '' The former jet ace , who has flown combat missions over Iraq , Bosnia and Afghanistan , can lay claim to be the only man to have broken the sound barrier in the air and on land . In 1997 , he hit 763 mph or Mach 1 in the vehicle ThrustSSC to become the first man to break the sound barrier on land . The Bloodhound Project takes the land speed record a step further in a car that is part jet fighter , part Formula 1 racer and part space rocket . `` A thousand miles an hour at ground level is faster than any jet fighter has ever traveled in history , so there are going to be some major challenges , '' Green said . Besides three engines delivering 135,000 horsepower , the Bloodhound is equipped with rocket boosters to deliver the thrust necessary to get it to 1,000 mph . `` ( The jet engines ) on their own will take us to 600mph or thereabouts , but to get a land speed record , at about 350 miles an hour we turn on a rocket engine to take us all the way through to a 1000mph , '' said lead designer Mark Chapman . `` The rocket is the key -- that 's the difference between 750 mph and 1,000 mph . '' The Bloodhound team scoured the globe to find a desert run that could accommodate a vehicle which , at 1,000 mph , is likely to run out of road in a matter of seconds . The requirements were a perfectly flat landscape , at least 12 miles long and two miles wide . They eventually selected Hakskeen Pan , in Northern Cape , South Africa where Bloodhound SSC will cover a mile in 3.6 seconds -- equivalent to 4.5 football pitches laid end to end every second . Having already set the land speed record , Green is in a good place to describe what it is like in the cockpit of the world 's fastest cars . Even so , the new challenges presented by Bloodhound SSC sometimes leave him lost for words . `` The best single description I 've ever heard was from the late , great Art Arfons who set three world records in the 1960s and got up to almost 600 mph . `` Somebody asked him one day what it was like and he said : 'What is it like to drive a land-speed ( record ) ? To drive a jet car to do 600 miles an hour over the ground ? `` And he said : 'It 's a bit like the taste of chocolate . If you 've never had a bar of chocolate I am really going to struggle to explain what it is like ' . '' Ultimately , he said , the cockpit is place of tremendous G forces , heat and vibration . `` In a land-speed car , that 's just a normal day in the office . Uncomfortable , but that 's what it 's like . It 's hugely busy , it 's very hot , it 's very noisy . Apart from all those things , it should be fairly simple . '' While the aim of the project is to crack the magic 1,000 mph mark ( the closest yet has been an American F104 jet fighter which flew just above ground level at 988mph ) , Green said the ultimately the record attempt is about instilling a sense of engineering progress in future generations . `` This about developing technology . This is about finding out new things . This is about exploring , '' he said . `` And the story of engineering exploration is about the failures and the challenges , not just about the successes . ''
The self - propelled Bloodhound SuperSonic ##s aims to be the first car to hit 1,000 mph . The boosters , engineers say , will push car through the sound barrier to world record . The team plans to try in 2016 at Hakskeen Pan , in Northern Cape , South Africa . Driver Andy Green already holds the world land speed record of 763 mph , set in 1997 .