spacetoday.net: First rocket racing flights announced

Posted: Wed, Apr 16, 2008, 8:30 AM ET (1230 GMT)
Rocket racers illustration (RRL)

A startup that plans to hold a series of competitions of rocket-powered aircraft announced their first series of exhibition flights this week. The Rocket Racing League will hold a series of exhibition flights this year starting with the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin at the beginning of August, featuring a pair of rocket racers. Flights are planned later this year at three other events, including the X Prize Cup in New Mexico, with actual competitive flights to begin in 2009. The league also announced that it had acquired Velocity Aircraft, which builds the aircraft used in the competitions, and that had also reached an agreement with Armadillo Aerospace to use that company's rocket engines in its vehicles, in addition to an engine developed by XCOR Aerospace. The leagues hopes that the development and operation of the vehicles, which will fly a three-dimensional "raceway in the sky", will spur innovations that can be used in both commercial aviation and spaceflight.