Liberty's Blog

Comming Soon, Rocket Racing

Rocket Plane racing done on the scale of NASCAR. X Prize founder Peter Diamandis and race car capitalist Granger Whitelaw announced a grand scheme to bring Rocketplane racing to race and sapcetech fans alike. Diamandis and Whitlaw seem to have the credentials to pull this off. The x-racers will be fueled by a kerosene-liquid oxygen mixture and will trail a 20 foot flame plume. It all looks to be quite a spectacle, the pit stops in particular. More can be found here:

The first rocket racers would be built by XCOR, with a second generation based on an airframe provided by Velocity Aircraft of Sebastian, Fla., the league said in a statement. Individual teams would own the racers and be able to customize them.

Diamandis said the souped-up racers would burn kerosene fuel rather than alcohol. "These vehicles will literally sport a 20-foot bright brilliant flame out the back," he said.

He asked journalists to imagine "10 of these fire-breathing dragons" racing in competition.

Whitelaw traveled to Mojave last month to watch an EZ-Rocket test flight and said the experience "really blew me away."

"It is nothing like NASCAR or Indy car," he told the journalists. "It is 10 times louder."

In Monday's statement, the Rocket Racing League said the races would operate much like auto races, "with the exception that the 'track' is up in the sky."

"Courses are expected to be approximately two miles long, one mile wide, and about 5,000 feet high, running perpendicularly to spectators," the league said. "The rocket planes, called X-Racers, will take off from a runway both in a staggered fashion and side-by side and fly a course based on the design of a Grand Prix competition, with long straightaways, vertical ascents, and deep banks. Each pilot will follow his or her own virtual 'tunnel' or 'track' of space through which to fly, safely separated from their competitors by a few hundred feet."

Update: Rand Simburg has more: He is gloating a bit over an older prediction. The Comments are pretty interesting,

posted by Liberty @ 3:13 PM