Description
Author: John Ackroyd, Hardbound, 287 Pges, ISBN: 9780954435783, 1st Edition, 2007
John Ackroyd, design engineer extraordinaire, has been a key man in a mad mix of land speed and long distance balloon record attempts, including the first supersonic land speed record. Whenever a record was broken, behind the jubilation and celebration John was there, a vital member of the delighted but exhausted crew whose creative expertise helped to make it happen. Whenever the attempt failed or bailed out, he was there too, with the chase crew or the search and rescue operation.
John's book gives a fantastic insight into the frustrations, tragedies and triumphs of record breaking. He describes battles against the odds, the whims of the weather, the constraints of time and money and the often strange intervention of fate.
Project Thrust, Virgin Atlantic, Pacific and Global balloons, Earthwinds, Thrust SSC, Spirit of America, rocket motorcycle, rocket dragster, wheel-driven record breakers and waterspeed attempts are all here. The personalities and places are brought to life by intimate and dramatic photographs which capture the mishaps, the dashed dreams, the determination and the moments of glory.
The story is told by the man who, armed with nothing more than a sharp pencil, a huge drawing board and a sense of adventure, provided solutions, innovations, design answers and real problem solving which were major contributions to the record breaking achievements on land, sea and air in the last quarter of the 20th Century.
