h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Thrust2 - A87814731
Author: Bluebottle - U43530

I'll be honest, I'm not impressed or interested with speed itself. 'Man puts foot on accelerator and goes fast' - my reaction:

'Man with nothing but a dream meets man with nothing but paper and pencil, and together create something extraordinary' - now That's a story! Especially if both the paper and the pencil are on the Isle of Wight.

So here is the story of 'Thrust2', the fastest Isle of Wight-built car - in the world!

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Fascinating story, well done.

It's a bit long, and you might want to split it into two parts at some judicious point.

The content is fine, but there is a lot of minor repetition, especially in the opening sections. We know he's trying to break the world land speed record, for example, but just count how many times you mention it.

You also mention some engineers' names, but it's not clear why, particularly. If you're going to bring new names into the story, I think you should justify their inclusion, otherwise it makes it a little more difficult to read.

Thanks for popping by – I've trimmed and tidied, and hopefully removed some of the repetition.

I do indeed mention engineer's names – in Noble's autobiography, he frequently stresses how much Thrust2's success was due to his team, but only really writes about what he was doing. Ackroyd writes far more schematically, rather than about who did what. So I wish to respect Noble's intentions that Thrust2 owed its success to who built it, but I don't actually know the exact details. I have tried to add a bit more (to an extent we don't need to know the exact details anyway, as this is a general overview of the car's story) which hopefully justifies their inclusion.

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It's had a bit of a re-write, especially at the start, to make it a bit shorter and easier to get into.

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I quite like cars and speed, but I generally do like more variety in relation to driving, rather than just going in a straight line. I enjoyed the Entry, especially as Beaulieu gets a mention

I'm reading through again, and mentioning points as I go along...

"In practice the second car, Thrust2" - I think it would be better to say something like "As it happened," because the Practice Car had already been mentioned, but Thrust 2 was the Demonstration Car

In the Thrust1 section, I think it is worth stating after Tomorrow's World that he decided to attempt the record "in the practice car" - ack, no - I see it is the *British* record that he was attempting - I got confused there and wondered why the Gary Gabelich record wasn't mentioned... If you say that the "British record was still 174.883mph", that will help to emphasise the difference. (I see it was also mentioned in Footnote 4 but I missed that on first readthrough...) Perhaps moving the footnote earlier would help, I don't know - see what you think

I wondered why Noble specifically asked for a 650mph car designer - is 650mph Mach 2? No. Ah - I see that the Gary Gabelich record was more than 536mph, so the record speed had moved on considerably since Bluebird CN7...

Ranalagh Works is mentioned twice in the Constructing the Car section - was a site there rented before or after the kitchen was rented, or was one site rented and then another?

" This, combined with the use of the testing the afterburner, allowed the car to reach a speed of 447mph " Something missing from this sentence?

Of course I mentioned Beaulieu - I'm very fond of Beaulieu – I went there for my birthday. Actually it wasn't my birthday, I went there in March, but it was a sort of delayed birthday treat when the weather was warmer, as it had snowed on my actual birthday.

So, I've made a few changes to answer all the questions and points you've raised

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I was in Beaulieu in April this year as my post-birthday treat (no snow, but it was still ridiculously cold then... )

Excellent changes, thank you

Did you see the A87784564 while you were there?

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I certainly did

An excellent entry, seems a good length to me

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