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Rockets To Race Over Wisconsin Skies
Iron Condor writes with a reminder that that the first race of the Rocket Racing League (last mentioned here in April, after its 2005 founding) is set to take place later this month at Oshkosh AirVenture 08. This race, says Iron Condor,
"is exactly what it sounds like: NASCAR 1000m above ground in rocket-propelled airplanes. Created by X-prize founder/CEO Peter Diamandis, this is 'the next evolution of racing' (at least according to the promo video, which is definitely worth watching)..."
I just moved from Wisconsin. Who knew there was a reason to stay,
NASA should look into what these people are doing and perhaps use their ideas to create a better and more durable rocket. As posted on Slashdot earlier, they are having shuttle replacement issues.
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Rednecks racing rocket's 'round a ringed raceway! Radically refreshing!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"Now *that's* what I call *pod-racing*!"
Now all we need is some Sand People to shoot at the racers, and we're all set!
I can see where if this sort of thing really took off, the X-Prize interests would dovetail perfectly. If private racing could eventually hold races in low earth orbit, beating governments to the technology, the interest and funding for space could really take off. It's just another way to skin the cat, making money while advancing reasonable interests.
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Amazing how they can make giant glowing polygons float in the sky for the planes to fly through.
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a video I can watch because it's not Flash.
That said, these don't look like rockets but are simply jets. Still interesting but not true rocket racing.
If they really wanted to make it interesting, they should have the competitors fly through the canyon they show in the video.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I was on the fence about whether to go to the EAA fly-in this year. When I had heard of the RRL race, I immediately notified my boss of the upcoming vacation day. That was a month ago. =)
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Yes, the trailer, er I mean promo video, is cool, but since when were there canyons in Wisconsin? Oh, they'll be racing in empty sky over flat terrain? Somehow that doesn't seem as thrilling.
.... before Wile E Coyote (Super Genius) merged with NASCAR.
I predict similar spectacular failures to occur, and I think I will enjoy it just as much as I used to do when I was five years old :)
...does that include NASCAR's amazing ability to make something that should be fantastically awesome in theory and make it something incredibly boring in practice?
The laws of probability forbid it!
Until they start bumping each other at >Mach2 it can't be the the rocket equivalent of NASCAR. BTW Are these vehicles real rockets or are they jets. If they are rockets (a rocket carries it own O2, a jet gathers it oxygen from the atmosphere) then they will have to be relatively short lived races, won't they ?
-mike
furrowing their brows in a vane attempt to understand how men dare defy the laws imposed by God!
We have been watching Farve do it for years!
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Rocket racing really needs to take the same road as the old-style European racing leagues, perhaps even taking that kind of idealistic "it's not the winning that counts" attitude even further. Anyone can make a fast rocket, but does it have style? Is it fast out of brute-force or because the design is the coolest hack ever? Award points for place, yes, but also for style. Why encourage crap designs and crap driving?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Subject says it all...
Wouldn't this be more like drag racing in the air?
-Pete
They're using children as fuel? What a brilliant way out of our present oil crisis!
...if all the cars in the Daytona ran the entire race one at a time and they all just compared time afterward. Thrilling!
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Uhhh... does anyone care about the massive waste of rocket fuel that this is? I mean, that's the number one reason I hate NASCAR. It's just downright wasteful. We could be using that gas, instead of burning it to drive in a circle 500 times.
This whole auto-racing thing is an artifact of a world where energy is plentiful and can be freely squandered.
I wonder how closely the actual racing will resemble the video renders. Because while the video renders look awesome, they seem a bit fantastical.
Either way, here's a less likely to be slashdotted video mirror.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Towards the end of the promo video, there is a short clip from inside one of the planes (one can see "Castrol" on the canard wing and the plane is flying above a river) -- in the front, one can clearly see a propellor. WTF?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
...and that is for the crashes.
Whooosh!
The trailer looks cool, but there are tons of problems. This isn't going to look anywhere nearly as exciting in reality.
First of all, they expect people to go there to watch the action on huge TVs? WTF? Why do that when you can stay at home and see it on TV? This is essentially a virtual sport, there's hardly anything to see in the real world (other than the take-off and the unavoidable fly-by).
But the reason this isn't going to be anywhere near what the video shows is safety. These planes will have to keep a significant safety distance so they don't crash into each other. So no high-powered chases or planes flying through overlapping polygons. The other planes will only be tiny specks somewhere in the distance.
Also, do you know how far the safety distance is behind a commercial plane? That's miles of airspace that can't be used due to turbulence in the plane's wake. Now imagine what the wake of a rocket plane is like!
And finally, one word: smoke! These engines don't burn nearly as clean as the nice CGI suggests, ever seen a Shuttle launch? There will be tons of smoke, making it hard to see much, and increasing the safety distances even further.
So apart from this being a hugely wasteful kind of sport (undoubtedly the most wasteful ever), it's also going to be boring as hell. Call me a nay-sayer, but I can't see this take off (no pun intended, haha).
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1. Wikipedia says they use kerosene/liquid oxygen rockets.
2. Pit stops. Land, get more fuel/O2, and get back in the blue. The races are planned to be about an hour long.
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They only carry 40 gallons of Kero or Alcohol and 700lbs of LOX..
Average fuel cost for a race is $1000 or so.. Thats for Kero, LOX and Liquid Nitrogen to pressurise the fuel tank.
You'll spend more just getting the plane to the race.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Looking at the videos, does anyone notice the racers resemble the Swordfish II from Cowboy Bebop? (Follow the link below if you don't know wtf i'm talking about)
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/PetarB/Sideup.jpg
Maybe it's not a 100% match, but it's sort of interesting how the designers of Bebop knew that a rocket propelled plane would have to have a mid cantelliver wing design, with the wings being mounted to the rear of the craft with little to no delta sweeping.
NASCAR is 50/60's tech pushrod/carburetor muscle car racing on ovals.
As for using it in the comparison, seems like you would want to use a more modern racing series with cooler tech.
They resemble the Ruthan VariEze
In this video, the FAA sees this project as a preview of "citizen suborbital spaceflight."
Wow... my hometown of Oshkosh made some headlines! But man, this is going to suck! The annual EAA convention is always loud and crazy, sonic booms every couple of hours and planes screeching overhead. But this year? I'm gettin' out of town! Any chance I can catch one of those rockets down to Chicago for the week?
Its almost certainly a impeller to drive a generator for on board electrical systems. Big battery banks weigh too much, and there's no spinning shaft like in a jet to leach power from. More efficient to stick a propeller on the outside.
The US Navy's (old?) electronic warfare (EA-6 Prowler), could carry additional jamming pods, each one which was powered by their own little propeller.
Yes, a great way to "think of the children", and just imagine -- if we manage to use them all up, we'll get our newsgroups back!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
What TV stations will this be on? Will it be streaming anywhere online?
When my son was little and would not want to go down for his nap I would just find a NASCAR round and round type race on the sports channel and in a few minutes he would be sound asleep. I don't know whether it was the constant drone of the engines of the monotony of the cars just going around and around but whatever it was it worked.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
They're real rockets, they carry LOX as well as fuel. The idea spun off of XCOR's demo's using a rocket-propelled Rutan design (veri-eze or long-eze, I think).
It's not just a speed race -- the rockets could drive the planes way past redline. They're rocket-gliders, you kick in the rocket for a while, then glide to stretch out the time between refuelling stops. One of the features that XCOR has developed is a way to refuel (and reLOX) these things a lot faster than the older methods, and the rocket can be restarted multiple times in mid-flight.
-- Alastair
For those of you who didn't have the pleasure of playing Rocket Jockey on PC back in the day...
This is another air race, quite interesting to watch. http://www.redbullairrace.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_Air_Race
I assumed it was a shot from a Red Bull Air Race cockpit - this plane perhaps? http://planeimages.smugmug.com/gallery/2152033_hLHrx/1/111595356_mmhZF#111595356_mmhZF
You can tell because they're flying around a river in a city - that's where all of their races happen. Quite interesting racing to watch.
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Yeah, they do it with a display mounted on the HUD of the plane, I believe. It could be the helmet too, I RMTTFA (read more than the frackin' article) yesterday. I thought that was cheesy too, til I read more and found out that is, supposedly, exactly how there will be a "race track" that's more interesting than flying around in a circle.
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There is no such thing as a good young cheese in the US, since they can only be made with pasteurized milk... Aged cheeses, however, don't have that limitation, and there are plenty of good aged cheeses available here. They're expensive, so you won't find them unless you're looking.
You can find some aged Vermont cheddars (usually marked "special reserve", that will rival good English cheddar in quality and taste.
You're right though. The stupid USDA regulations on what you can and can't do with milk mean that the cheese selection in Europe and Canada is much better than what you can get here. Only the aged cheeses have the chance at being good. And that goes for the imported cheeses too...