A rocket-powered racer will take the skies
again for the air show crowd at Oshkosh, Wisc. this weekend, fresh from its
public debut on Tuesday.
Veteran pilot Rick Searfoss piloted
the ship — powered by a liquid oxygen and kerosene rocket engine developed
by XCOR Aerospace — through a straightforward flight pattern on Tuesday that
lasted approximately ten minutes from takeoff to landing.
"Everything went exactly as planned,
exactly as practiced," said Granger Whitelaw, co-founder and CEO of the
Rocket Racing League. "It performed exactly as we had laid out for the
flight."
Whitelaw, a veteran of the Indianapolis 500,
joined with Ansari X Prize-founder Peter Diamandis to found
the Rocket Racing League in 2005. The men envisioned combining human
spaceflight with NASCAR-style racing in the sky, and have planned a series of
events this year showcasing the new sport.
The league boasts six teams on its roster
under title sponsor DKNY Men, a New York City-based men's sportswear line that
is also backing the Bridenstine Rocket Racing Team headed by former U.S. Navy
jet pilot Jim Bridenstine.
Perhaps the only hiccup during the first
public flight came from the intentional engine cutoff — a sound that various
observers have described as a burp or bark. The racer lit its engines six times
for 15 to 35 seconds, shutting it down abruptly after each time to glide.
Additional single-ship exhibition flights are
planned for Friday and Saturday at the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh.,
where an expected 700,000 spectators will have the opportunity to photograph
and examine the Bridenstine racer.
"It'll be much closer to a lot of the
fans," Whitelaw told SPACE.com. He added that the rocket plane
would also perform some minor aerobatics ranging from aileron rolls to
Immelmann turns and half loops.
Another racer from a Santa Fe Racing team had
also originally
planned to fly this weekend against the Bridenstine racer, but remains
grounded because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has yet to clear it
for flight. The Santa Fe racer's engine was designed by Mesquite, Tex.-based
Armadillo Aerospace to run on liquid oxygen and ethanol.
Whitelaw said he hopes that the second racer
will get flight approval by September, when the rocket planes are slated to compete
head-to-head at the Reno Air Races in Nevada.
Either way, a new element in the fall will
involve a
three-dimensional track in the sky, which fans could follow on large
television screens that show views from pilot helmet displays. The added
immersion factor could help bring rocket racing one step closer to mainstream
entertainment, organizers said.
"We're planning on having the big
screens at Reno," Whitelaw said.
Rocket racing events after this weekend will
include the Reno National Championship Air Races in Reno, Nev., between
Sept.10-14; X
Prize Cup in Las Cruces, N.M., in late October; and Aviation Nation at
Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nev., on Nov. 8-9.
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