...sponsors hope will be the next Nascar

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/sports/othersports/30rocket.html

League Makes Test Run at Several Hundred Feet
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

OSHKOSH, Wis. — A small rocket-powered plane streaked across the sky
Tuesday, trailing a bright yellow plume of flame and kicking off what
its sponsors hope will be the next Nascar — but with its tracks in the
sky.

The demonstration of the first plane at the EAA AirVenture air show
was a debut of sorts for the fledgling Rocket Racing League, which
will fly its racer several times this week. It plans to hold further
demonstrations and the first exhibition races at air shows later this
year in Nevada and in New Mexico.

Competitions should begin next year, said Granger Whitelaw, the chief
executive of the league. Six teams have signed up to participate in
races.

When the races begin, Whitelaw said, the planes will fly laps around a
five-mile “track” at anywhere from 150 feet to 1,500 feet above the
ground. The planes will start side by side, two at a time around the
course.

The league founders are turning the races into a kind of living video
game, with a virtual raceway set out in the sky that spectators will
be able to see on projection screens at each event. Those on the
ground will be able to see the races from the perspective of the
pilots because of cameras in the cockpits and remote cameras in chase
planes.

The airframes for the planes are made by a Florida company, Velocity
Aircraft. The rocket engines are made by Xcor Aerospace of Mojave,
Calif., and Armadillo Aerospace of Mesquite, Tex. The engines will
have three to four minutes of burn time, Whitelaw said. Because they
burn liquid fuels, they can be turned on and off for bursts of speed.
That should allow about 10 minutes of racing, with the pilots using
the rockets to take off and get up to speed, then gliding between
bursts.

Whitelaw said last week that the new rockets were not yet providing
speeds of 340 miles per hour or the burn time that they were hoped to
have, “but it’ll get there.” At the air show, Whitelaw said, “this is
our foundation.”

The plane that flew Tuesday took off under a threat of rain. It was
piloted by a former space shuttle commander, Richard A. Searfoss, and
used the Xcor rocket engine. Searfoss fired the engine for takeoff,
and for the crowd along the flight line, the flame was bright enough
to bring on a squint.

The 1,500 pounds of thrust quickly took the plane to a height of
several hundred feet, and Searfoss turned off the engine. He then
relaxed the plane into a curving glide. He popped the engine a few
more times for several seconds, turning a dark speck in the sky to a
brilliant point of light, before gliding to the airstrip.

That plane is sponsored by DKNY, which signed on as the sport’s first
corporate sponsor to publicize its men’s clothing line. Jim
Bridenstine, the owner and chief pilot for the team that DKNY is
sponsoring, is a former Naval aviator who performed hundreds of
aircraft carrier landings. Since leaving the military, he has been
working at Wyle Laboratories evaluating training systems for the Navy,
but he said that was “not nearly as exciting as this.”

He said he was drawn to the challenge of a new kind of flying and what
he saw as the financial opportunities of being involved with a sport
from its inception.

“It’s a really cool sport,” he said.
.

Quantcast