The Rocket Racing League
Welcome to the Rocket Racing League.
What it is.
The Rocket Racing League in an invention of Peter Diamandis, famed founder of the X-Prize, and Granger Whitelaw, a two-time Indianapolis 500 champion team partner. Pilots will fly rocket powered aircraft, X-Racers, along a three-dimensional track at various world-wide venues.
The Tech.
Each X-Racer is a single pilot vehicle with a take off weight of about 2,000 pounds. Thats 1,000 pounds of aircraft and 1,000 pounds of fuel. Racers will have enough fuel for about 4 minutes if intermittent boost via the rocket engine, and about 10 minutes gliding. This allows for 3-4 laps around the course before a pit stop is needed. Pit stops are expected to take between 5 and 10 minutes.
The first generation of X-Racers will fly at over 320 MPH.
Since the planes will be flying a three dimensional air course, a Heads Up Display (HUD) will show the pilot the correct flight path. Marker points that must be hit along the way will scattered along different points in the course, and all this information will be projected onto the inside of the cockpit. There has been discussion to develop an on-line capable computer game that will allow players to race the real life X-Racers, in real time.
The race will be viewed from a variety of camera angles via balloons, chase planes and in-cockpit cameras.
The First Team.
The first team announced, called Leading Edge, consists of three retired f-16 fighter pilots:
Don A. “Dagger” Grantham Jr., with over 2000 total flying hours, including 99 combat and 500 instructor hours.
Robert N. “Bobaloo” Rickard, with over 2,450 total flying hours, including 107 combat hours and 900 instructor hours.
Korey “Axe” Amundson, with over 1,600 total flying hours combined in F-16s, F-15s, and T-38s. He has logged 600 hours of instruction, evaluation, and combat. Amundson has been selected to be the team’s Chief Pilot.
Leading Edge is currently the only officially announced team, but expect to see several more after the Rocket Racing League’s debut exhibition flight at the X-Prize Cup in New Mexico, October of 2006.
Why it’s cool.
Come on people, it’s rocket racing! It’s like NASCAR in the sky, only with machines that are faster and more dangerous. Heck, I don’t even like NASCAR and I’m excited. I don’t even like sports and I’m excited!
The Rocket Racing League was created to advance the technology of, and public interest in, space travel. Just by watching the races you’ll be making a statement that says: “Yes, I want to go on vacation on the moon before I die.” Please get excited about this people.
