Hakskeen Pan flooding a blessing for Bloodhound land speed record attempt

Hakskeen Pan in the Kalahari, the site where the Bloodhound Supersonic Car (SSC) will attempt the land speed record later this year, is flooded. And organisers couldn't be happier about it. 

Hakskeenpan

The Kalahari received some 51mm of rain recently and the pan is flooded to a depth of 25cm.
“Oh, it's great that it’s flooded,” said Dave Rowley, the Bloodhound’s education director in SA. “It means the work that’s been done on the pan is being repaired."

For years, hundreds of locals have been manually picking up stones on the pan. Some 350 men and women from the Mier municipality – which includes Mier, Klein Mier and Rietfontein – have picked up 16 000 tons of stone from the pan. 

“When it dries out all the hard work local people of Mier municipality over the last two years, all that work will be repaired – where they've taken away the stones – and the pan will be even more flat than it was before,” Rowley said. 


This is being done as the record attempt needs a smooth surface. Even a small piece of stone could prove fatal at the high speeds the Bloodhound is expected to reach.

Driver Andy Green will attempt to drive the Bloodhound at a speed of 1 000mph (1 600km/h) to better his current world land speed record of 763mph he set in 1997.