Rocket Racing Gets Its First Team

quad4b writes to tell us Wired is reporting that the Rocket Racing League (RRL), launched last October by Granger Whitelaw and Peter Diamandis of Ansari X Prize fame, has its first official team. "Leading Edge Rocket Racing" was launched by entrepreneurs and former F-16 pilots Don "Dagger" Grantham and Robert "Bobaloo" Rickard who see this as the "next great flying experience."

Comments

But "Team Rocket"?

[Anonymous Coward]

They weren't even that good at catching Pokemon.

Get in on the action

[thebear05]

"Fans on the ground will see the virtual track superimposed over the action on giant TV screens as well as on specially developed handheld units. A video game also in development by the RRL will pit fans at home against actual pilots during races." their are alot of gamers out there who i think would love the oportunity to take on actual f-16 pilots

Re:Not going to work

[Reality Master 101]

I don't very much care how popular something is. Why do you?

The point isn't whether YOU personally care about the sport, the question is whether enough people care to make it economically viable. Assuming you want it to work, you should care how popular it is.

Yeah, because the popular sporting events are MUCH better.

Not all popular sports are good (soccer, for example, is really a pretty damn bad sport from the standpoint of offensive/defense balance; it's far too heavily biased toward the defense), but that doesn't mean all unpopular sports are somehow more noble.

Again, there's a reason airplane racing has never "taken off" (so to speak). It sounds good on paper (machines blazing through the air at hundreds of miles per hour!! Wow!!), but in practice there's not much to watch, and it's too much like a boat race. The first one to get the upper hand will almost always win. There are not enough variables to introduce strategy during the race. A rocket race will be worse -- they're not even as maneuverable as an airplane. It'll be more like a drag race, except they'll be gone so fast you can't see anything.

And the nominations for the Darwin Awards are....

[TheNoxx]

TFA.

Re:Not going to work

[TubeSteak]

no popular "airplane racing" sport to speak of

Define popular.

http://www.airrace.org/racingClasses.php

Those nutjobs go out and fly anywhere from 200~500 mph around a course. And they have fans.

Re:Not going to work

[evilviper]

The fact that there is no popular "airplane racing" sport to speak of should tell these people something.

Yes, that nobody has even tried it yet.

It's hard to watch and boring.

I'd say watching cars drive around a tiny circular course is far more boring than FRICKIN' ROCKETS.

Besides, I seem to recall airshows being very near the top of the list of most popular spectator sports, worldwide.

PopMech...

[Kadin2048]

Not that I think this is a gimmick, but just because something makes the cover of PopMech doesn't mean it actually exists, ever will exist, or is even remotely practical. It's a pretty low bar.

Not to say that the stuff they have on there isn't usually very cool, it just has a tendency to fail to materialize later. (Examples off the top of my head ... 1:1 reproduction of the Titanic, giant 'floating island' aircraft carrier, 747-sized gyroplanes, supersonic Skycars...).

These are the same people who were saying in 1955 that there'd be a big lump of plutonium in everyone's water-heater in 20 years, and last time I checked, mine's not sheathed in lead. I wouldn't use it to back up any claims of possibility.