Talk:Rocket Racing League

Teams

There have been two more teams added since, perhaps someone should update the article. This is the source about the third team joining, I can't seem to find anything about the second team.

Future plans? Schedule?

While this racing league sounds fun, and there's lots of information devoted to the *potential* events ... I've found no details as to *when* they intend to begin. What's the date of the first race? How many races per year? What locations? If these items have not been fully decided yet, what's the timeline for making these agreements?

They have to get the technology workable first. Can't have any races without planes to race, and they just flew the prototype for the first time a week ago. It has to go through the full flight test program, then they have to build the "production" engines, acquire and modify the airframes, etc etc. Way too early to set an actual schedule. AKRadecki^Speaketh 15:44, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

The first race has now been announced for 2008 Oshkosh. Last year they had that terrible, fatal P-51 collision, this year they will need a whole motorcade of gun carriages to transport the coffins. This article badly needs a criticism section. Rocket planes are one of the most dangerous stuff known to mankind, the nazi Me-163 and Ba-349 Natter killed pilots by the scores, the NASA X-15 exploded with a force of 2 tons of TNT, most rocket fuel is volatile and toxic and lasts so little landing must be glide-only, so there can be no go-around. Fatalities will be so common it's like Nero's arena with gladiators vs beasts.

Otherwise, rocketplane flying promotes evil ideologies, since it was used operationally only by the nazis (the Me-163) and the imperial japanese forces (the Nakajima Kikka kamikaze baka bomb) with shades of self-sacrifice mentality, which we see today in Al-Kaida terror and Iraq rebel tactics. Rocket plane flying glorifies the most desperate methods of late WWII axis aerial warfare. 82.131.210.162 (talk) 08:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing inherently dangerous about rockets or rocket powered vehicles. Rocket Racing specifically uses engines and airframes with high demonstrated reliability and nontoxic propellants. If you want a more useful data point, look at the Dassault Mirage III -- approximately 20,000 rocket-powered flights and no rocket-related accidents, even with a toxic and corrossive oxidizer. (I don't actually know that there weren't any, but I haven't been able to find any evidence that there were, and there's plenty of info of the airplane generally. I also know that XCOR's safety officer has spent a nontrivial amount of effort looking and been unable to find any such reports.) But then, I suppose looking at actual operational vehicles with good safety records wouldn't be very helpful to your rant. Evand (talk) 21:53, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:RRLLogo.jpg

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Historical sources

I noticed today that several of the existing sources now are dead links; I've tagged them. Here are a few good links to three sources from Space.com from the 2005-2007 timeframe, that are still live in late 2009.

• 3 Oct 2005, Rocket Racing: New League Promotes High-Flying Contest , Space.com
• 14 Sep 2006, Rocket Racing League: Spreading Its Wings, Space.com
• 26 Oct 2007, Three More Teams Enter the Rocket Racing League, Space.com

There are only two sources in the RRL article today that are still online-accessible, both are from 2008, and both are reliable sources. Therefore, these older links may be useful for future editors of this article. In the meantime, I'll be looking for more recent sources, from 2009 N2e (talk) 18:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

RRL is adding staff and taking over rocket operations from their supplier

This just appeared on the Armadillo Aerospace website: Rocket Racing League takes full ownership of rocket operations!, 2010-01-27. AA is the rocket technology provider for the RRL. Looks like RRL has hired several full-time rocket operations staff for the two aircraft they currently have. N2e (talk) 11:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

And RRL will apparently be at the Tulsa Air Show in April, 2010, according to this very brief Greater Tulsa Reporter news article, 13 Feb 2010. N2e (talk) 23:12, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

X-Racer specifications

The article now claims, with citations, that the current crop of two X-Racers utilize a "highly modified Velocity XL FG (www.velocityaircraft.com) airframe and a single Armadillo Aerospace (www.armadilloaerospace.com) 2,500 pound thrust liquid oxygen (LOX) and ethanol rocket engine." That's good, as far as it goes. Can anyone find a more complete set of aircraft specs? (e.g., weight in X-Racer/single-pilot/fully-fueled configuration?) I would guess we could incorporate the airframe length, height, width specs from the velocity site (http://www.velocityaircraft.com/airplane-specifications.html) for the XL airframe. What about "gross weight" (as opposed to RRL racing weight)? Would it be fair to assume that gross weight could not safely be more than Velocity rates the basic airframe: 2800 lbs? N2e (talk) 01:35, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

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External links modified (January 2018)

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Additional information

• https://www.vice.com/en/article/gyy4a9/trumps-pick-for-nasas-new-administrator-used-to-own-a-rocket-racing-team (has some good links, too)

• Also, searches on team names, or companies involved, like "Bridenstine Rocket Racing", can identify good sources.

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:54, 11 November 2020 (UTC)