‘Rocket racing league’ gets its start

Alan Boyle Science editor • Profile • E-mail

The man behind the $10 million X Prize for private spaceflight is joining forces with a venture capitalist who's also an Indy car backer to establish a NASCAR-like racing league for rocket-powered aircraft.

X Prize founder Peter Diamandis and race car capitalist Granger Whitelaw took the wraps off the Rocket Racing League during a Monday news conference, just days before a rocket plane demonstration that could serve as a model for the races.

Next weekend's flights by XCOR Aerospace's EZ-Rocket are to take place as part of the Countdown to the X Prize Cup exposition in Las Cruces, N.M. — the kickoff to an annual rocket festival designed to follow up on the momentum generated by the original prize.

For years, Diamandis has pointed to NASCAR's success as something he wanted to emulate in spaceflight, and he touted the X Prize Cup as a competition that could fill that role. The Rocket Racing League would organize competitions around the United States, with the finals taking place at the X Prize Cup in New Mexico.

"It's bringing 21st-century racing into people's personal living rooms. ... It's really the mix of NASCAR excitement and spaceflight," Diamandis told journalists Monday.

Contestants in the Rocket Racing League would not necessarily pass the 62-mile-high (100-kilometer-high) threshold to outer space, but would vie to go the fastest and the highest in the atmosphere. In that regard, the EZ-Rocket — a rocket plane powered by liquid oxygen and isopropyl alcohol that takes off and lands like an airplane — provides a better model than, say, the air-launched SpaceShipOne rocket plane that won the X Prize almost exactly a year ago.

"For me, it's sort of a remembrance of 'Star Wars' pod racing," Diamandis said.

‘Fire-breathing dragons’
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.

Rocket Racing League Former NASA astronaut Richard Searfoss is to fly the EZ-Rocket, with the Rocket Racing League logo freshly painted on its tail, next weekend during a rocket exposition in Las Cruces, N.M.

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."

MORE FROM THE NEW SPACE RACE

The New Space Race Section Front

Google co-founder aims for space SpaceShipOne tales revealed N.M. spaceport tax wins key vote Orbital wins NASA grant for cargo spaceship First look at SpaceShipTwo Rocketplane adds seats to spaceship Private space race hits bumpy road Bigelow Aerospace does rocket reality check Rocketplane Global still not ready for liftoff New Mexico unveils spaceport design The New Space Race Section Front   Add The New Space Race headlines to your news reader: