Up in the Sky - It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a Racing Jet Plane League!
Well its been awhile, two years since I first noted it, but it looks like NASCAR will have competition at 5,000 feet altitude. The People’s Commissar of NASCAR Affairs, (PCNA] Brian France won’t be happy.
The Rocket Racing League, a sort of NASCAR in the Sky, has announced its first exhibition rocket-powered aircraft races on August 1-2, 2008, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin at the annual Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture air show.
One of the company’s founders and now CEO is Granger Whitelaw. Whitelaw was the team co-owner of a company that has twice won the Indy 500 (Buddy Lazier in 1996 and Eddie Cheever in 1998). The company backing the Rocket Racing League (RRL) is called Rocket Racing Inc.
The founders of the Rocket Racing League have already purchased an airframe-manufacturing company, partnered with two rocket engine builders, and set up subsidiaries for its sky racing business.
They hope their Rocket Racing League will be parallel with high-performance automobile racing, like NASCAR.
Rocket Racing purchased Velocity Aircraft, based in Sebastian, Florida, in order to build the airframes for the aircraft. The new subsidiary is called Rocket Racing Composites Corporation.
The will use a rocket engine that burns liquid oxygen and kerosene — spouting a bright ten to fifteen foot flame out of its rear. The rocket engines are being manufactured by Xcor Aerospace (Mojave, California) and Armadillo Aerospace.
The exhibitions in Oshkosh will involve two aircraft flying against each other at approximately 340 miles per hour. They will fly around a six-mile course (one mile wide and two miles long) four times, going from as low as 150 feet to as high as 1,500 feet above the surface.
Large projection screens will display three-dimensional videos of the race to the grandstand audience, and spectators will have personal display devices that show views of the cockpit, “on-track,” “side-by-side,” and wing-angle.
Each airplane competes against the clock but will also fly in pairs so each will have to maneuver in relationship to its competitor. Much of the action will be based on NASCAR competitions.
(Really? How do you toss a debris caution in the air? Must be those damn mythical hailstones again! - ed)
So far, six teams have signed up for the Rocket Racing League: Rocket Star Racing, Team Extreme Rocket Racing, Canada-based Beyond Gravity Rocket Racing, Bridenstine Rocket Racing, Santa Fe Racing, and Thunderhawk Rocket Racing.
