Slashdot Mirror
Rocket Racing League Ready To Launch
capnkr sends us to Wired for the story of the long-delayed Rocket Racing League, which we discussed when it launched in 2005. It seems the league is finally ready to get off the ground. At a press conference at the Yale Club in New York, RRL CEO Granger Whitelaw said rocket-powered planes will fly their first exhibition race in August at the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with at least three more races to follow in 2008. "The Rocket Racing League on Monday detailed plans to move from a sci-fi fantasy to a full-fledged commercial enterprise — including 'vertical drag races' using rockets."
As I'm sure you're aware, XCOR Aerospace built both the EZ-Rocket (rocket-powered LongEZ) and the first of the Rocket Racers.
They've been mentioned here recently for the upcoming Lynx spaceplane, as well.
That's exactly what they plan, having worked their table a couple of years ago at the X-Prize Cup. Peter Diamandis (X-Prize Foundation) and the rest of that gang are involved so their ultimate goal is to have a testing bed for new rocket technologies in the same way that Formula 1 and the rest develop automotive technologies.
Of course this is all with the provision that concept works in the first place... but then again I don't understand the popularity of watching car races either, so I can't really judge.
Thats actually the reason why the home-builts and experimentals are so popular. It takes a lot of work to make a new factory-built plane with all the new FAA regulations, thus why you don't see that many new Cessnas around.
However, if you just sell the parts and have the customer build it themselves, and attach a big 'EXPERIMENTAL' tag to the outside those regulations don't apply. Not that I'm arguing that this makes much sense, but from what I understand thats the situation.
(I don't have much firsthand knowledge, I just read up on this a lot a couple of years ago.)
On your typical car, rear wings are completely ineffective unless speeds of 120-150MPH are reached. And at that point, it only starting to exert any significant down pressure. On production sports cars, the effective speed is somewhat lowered to 100-125.
In reality, the rear wing on most any streetable car is there strictly for cosmetics.
What's even more funny are the cars that have wings that pop up and down (some Porches and Crossfire, for example). The mechanism can't support more than 200lbs of downward force yet were supposed to believe it helps the handling of the vehicle. To be effective, these things really need to exert many, many hundreds, if not thousands of lbs of downward force. Remember, it needs to counteract the forces which are attempting to lift the vehicle off the ground. This is one of many reasons why breaking 200mph is so dang hard. It also explains why the 200-club is still so small, even at point in time.
Now, contrast that with wings on dragsters. Make note of where the wings are typically placed and the overall scale of it. Notice it is placed directly into or above the slipstream of the vehicle; which is in stark contrast to most production vehicles, where it is placed well under the slipstream of a vehicle at any legal street speed.
Not that I give a damn about being carbon neutral, but our rocket engines do burn ethanol.
John Carmack