LAS CRUCES, New Mexico -- Its official. The Rocket Racing
League announced today that its first Mark-1 X-Racer will be known as the Thunderhawk.
The Rocket
Racing League (RRL) is an aerospace entertainment organization which combines
the competition of racing with the excitement of rocketry.
Unveiling
the Thunderhawk [image]
today at the Wirefly X Prize Cup, RRL officials said
that the moniker beat out names like Banshee and Sky Warrior in an online
contest that generated more than 2,000 submissions from fans around the planet.
The world
headquarters of the Rocket Racing League is based here. The RRL aims to debut
its first NASCAR-style races in late Fall 2007 - a
first-of-its-kind aerospace sports and entertainment league formed by X Prize
founder Peter Diamandis and Granger Whitelaw, a
two-time Indy 500 champion team partner.
[For more
detail on the League's endeavors, read here.]
Bird of
prey
The fan
submitting the winning name is Michael Higgins of New Market, Maryland. He's an engineer and manager
working in the composite pressure vessel industry serving life-support and
aerospace/defense applications.
Higgins outlined
today how he came up with the Thunderhawk moniker.
"The
aircraft, with its rocket propulsion, combines thunderous sound with brilliant
flame and light. So I worked up several names focused on thunder and
light, and tried to connect those with a bird of prey," he explained.
Higgins
said he expected the RRL races will put rocket propulsion technology in front
of thousands of people through thrilling events.
"They
should generate public interest in rockets and space, much like the famous air
races of the 1920s and 1930s did during the golden era of aviation," Higgins
said.
The contest
began January 30 and attracted over 2,000 submissions. The top 1,000 names were
whittled down to ten semi-finalists by a panel of RRL judges. Fans then were able
to vote for their favorite name from the top ten on AOL.
Nearly
20,000 votes were cast via AOL, selecting Thunderhawk the most popular name.
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