FYI,

"Rocket Racing League Adds 3 Teams"
Antelope Valley Press
http://www.avpress.com/n/29/1029_s14.hts

: A fledgling rocket plane racing league has announced the addition
: of three more teams, bringing its total to six.

: The Rocket Racing League, which will fly aircraft built in Mojave,
: announced the additions of Rocket Star Racing, Team Extreme Rocket
: Racing and Canada-based Beyond Gravity Rocket Racing. They join
: existing teams Bridenstine Rocket Racing, Santa Fe Racing and
: Thunderhawk Rocket Racing.

: "Our goal has been to bring diverse international teams to the
: league with highly skilled world-class pilots and flight crews
: coming from both civilian and military backgrounds," said Granger
: Whitelaw, company co-founder and chief executive officer.

: Rocket Star Racing is led by Todd White, a former Navy test pilot
: who has logged 3,000-plus flight hours in 30 different types of
: aircraft, including the F-4, F-15, F-16 and F-18, Team Extreme
: Rocket Racing is being led by an active duty Navy pilot, Lt. Bryan
: Schwartz, who has logged more than 1,600 flight hours and has made
: more than 120 aircraft carrier landings.

: Beyond Gravity Rocket Racing is led by Canadian team owner Brian
: Feeney, perhaps best known to aerospace enthusiasts as one of the
: competitors in the Ansari X Prize competition. Feeney runs a
: business called DreamSpace Group, which is geared toward manned
: spaceflight technology development, space tourism and rocket-based
: sports and entertainment events.

: The league has contracted with XCOR Aerospace of Mojave and
: Velocity, a Sebastian, Fla., company, to design and build the first
: racing planes. XCOR will base the design of the first racers on its
: EZ-Rocket plane, a Long-EZ experimental aircraft modified to carry
: two rocket engines. XCOR will build the racers with airframes
: provided by Velocity.

: Each of the rocket planes is expected to have a top speed of about
: 320 mph. Each of the airplanes will be powered by a single engine
: which should create a bright, 20-foot-long plume that will be
: visible to onlookers on the ground.

: Race courses will probably be two miles long and one mile wide at
: an altitude of about 5,000 feet. Each pilot will have an individual
: three-dimensional "track" in order to avoid collisions, league
: organizers said. Race organizers envision spectators tracking the
: progress of the racers by viewing each plane's bright engine flame
: and by watching large-screen televisions. Organizers also envision
: having spectators watch the races with handheld devices with live
: video streams from cockpit cameras.

Mark Reiff