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Rocket Racing League Showcases New X-Racers

Posted by kdawson on from the participatory-spectator-sport dept.

FleaPlus writes "The Rocket Racing League demonstrated two of their new 'Mark III' X-Racer rocketplanes at an air show in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Besides making for a fun show, the League also pushes the boundaries for reusable and easily maintainable rocket engines. (The X-Racer's liquid oxygen and ethanol rocket engine was made by John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace, which recently released a video showcasing some of the rockets they've launched and landed in the past year.)"

4 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting.... by BJ_Covert_Action · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In other words, the Rocket Racing league found a way to make the most common form of space propulsion marketable to the general public: entertainment. Well played. If this rocket racing league takes off, it will certainly spurn advances in chemical based propulsion and reusable rocket engines since entertainment seems to be a great way to generate R&D money for technology (see NASCAR). I'm impressed.

    --
    Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
    1. Re:Interesting.... by FleaPlus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      > Except we've been waiting for this 'Rocket Racing League' to [i]take off[/i], pun or not, for the last [b]six years[/b]. It is the Duke Nukem Forever of motor^H^H^H^Hsports.

      Yup, the financial crash sucked for a lot of things, especially high-risk ventures like the Rocket Racing League seeking cash from investors. It looks like they've managed to get enough funding to design and build the first two race vehicles though, so hopefully the odds are now quite good of seeing races in the near future.

  2. Re:The video was really cool. And more interesting by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's called the Lunar Lander Challenge. Does that tell you anything?

  3. Re:The video was really cool. And more interesting by FleaPlus · · Score: 3, Informative

    > What is the purpose of the contract for the hovering rockets? Is NASA planning landers that will have to hover somewhere - like Mars - or something?

    There's a few markets for VTVL hovering rockets, being pursued by companies like Armadillo Aerospace (mentioned in the summary), Masten Space Systems, and Blue Origin:

    * suborbital atmospheric science payloads: relatively little is known about the upper atmosphere, and this allows much cheaper and more frequent atmospheric sampling compared to current methods (weather balloons, million-dollar sounding rockets, etc.)
    * microgravity flights: you can get a 3-4 minutes of microgravity, which is useful for biology experiments, physics experiments, and testing space systems
    * space observing: you can fly instruments above the atmosphere to take some quick photos and other measurements of stellar bodies, as a lower-cost alternative to orbital space telescopes
    * pop-up rockets: using the hovering rocket as a reusable booster for a second-stage which goes into orbit
    * manned flights: for tourism and astronaut training
    * in the future, lunar/Mars landers, for either unmanned or manned missions
    * testing systems to be used on landers. Armadillo has mentioned recently that NASA is using their lander as a testbed for some systems which may be used on the "Project M" mission to land a humanoid robot on the Moon within 1000 days.