After nearly five years of waiting, spectators have finally been given a taste of the Rocket Racing League. At an airshow in Tulsa, Oklahoma, two of the racers took to the skies with long flames and loud bursts of rocket power. The pilots demonstrated the impressive capabilities of a lightweight composite airplane paired with a liquid-oxygen rocket motor.

Founded by X-Prize guru Peter Diamandis in 2005, the Rocket Racing League was initially planning on holding a series of races back in 2008. After hitting some of the same financial turbulence felt around the world, Diamandis is hoping to get back to a schedule for races some time next year.

A single rocket racer flew in front of the aviation crazed crowd at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 2008 with its short bursts of rocket power allowing the pilot to climb and maneuver unlike a traditional airplane. As one of the test pilots explains in the video after the jump, it’s full throttle or nothing at all, giving pilots a boost of power that would make Michael Knight envious.

In addition to the first flight of two rocket racers together, showing off the impressive power-to-weight ratio when you have a real rocket booster, the event in Tulsa also included demonstration of how the race will look to spectators on the ground. Using a twin-engine Cessna equipped with the same technology that will be used by the racers, pilots flew through an example of a computer-generated course and spectators were able to “see” the course on giant television screens on the ground (or at home).

Though some have called it NASCAR in the sky, the rocket racers will actually race against the clock. The computer-generated course will be shown on a heads-up display allowing the pilot to see the course from the cockpit, a view that is shown in the video as a series of boxes creating a track to follow. The concept is similar to the highway in the sky that has been developed as a navigation aid to normal, non-rocket-flying pilots. It’s a lot like a videogame where a pilot must fly through a course on a screen, but in this case with liquid oxygen rocket that can be heard for miles.

The videogame connection will be taken even a step further according to race organizers. Viewers at home will be able to fly a computer based rocket racer head-to-head with the real-life pilots, allowing spectators to virtually compete in the Rocket Racing League from the comfort of their couch.

The real rocket racers are derived from an airplane developed by kit-plane manufacturer Velocity Aircraft. The four-place airplane features a canard design derived from a plane originally designed and built by legendary aerospace engineer Burt Rutan. In the future, race organizers expect purpose-built rocket racers to be built as the sport develops.

Images / Video: Rocket Racing League



