Rocket racing revving up
Posted: Thursday, October 26, 2006 12:51 PM by Alan Boyle
Rocket science has become a common way to refer to anything that's difficult to do - but turning rocket science into a marketable entertainment event is almost as difficult as the science itself. Many have tried, including Mark Burnett, the mastermind behind such reality-TV blockbusters as "Survivor" and "The Apprentice." Now the folks behind the Rocket Racing League are piecing together their own entertainment puzzle, in hopes of producing a watchable, profitable package by next summer.
Rocket Racing League |
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The Rocket Racing League would use a virtual
"racetrack in the sky" like the one shown here to
indicate where the racing planes are going. Click on
the image to watch a video demonstration from the
Wirefly X Prize Cup, using a conventional private jet.
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It may be taking longer than they thought. When the league's creation was announced last year, chief executive officer Granger Whitelaw hoped to have four flame-throwing rocket planes ready to race against each other in a demonstration fly-off by now. Instead, the first X-Racer is still under development at California-based XCOR Aerospace.
But the pieces are still fitting together: At this year's Wirefly X Prize Cup, Whitelaw announced that a third team, Santa Fe Racing, had signed up for a $1.4 million sponsorship package. Still more teams are being organized under the league's support - and Whitelaw, a venture capitalist who's also a veteran of the Indy car circuit, told me the first race could take place next August.
Among the venues being considered are New York and Las Vegas, with the X Prize Cup in New Mexico serving as the racing season's capper.
Whitelaw's goal is to turn the rocket plane races into the flying equivalent of NASCAR auto racing - something that can be sold to the masses, not the classes.
"This is not rocket science," Whitelaw told me. "You've got to take the rocket science out of it."
By that, he simply means that the races should be more like the America's Cup, the Indy 500 or the Olympics - and less like a space shuttle launch or a Mars rover mission. "It's got to be in the entertainment and the sports pages," he explained. "It can't stay on the technology pages."
To that end, the league has made several moves:
- Arthur Smith, the producer behind reality-TV shows ranging from "Hell's Kitchen" to "The Swan" to "Celebrity Duets," has signed on to head up TV production for the Rocket Racing League. "I feel like 'The Jetsons' has arrived," Smith told Variety last week. Whitelaw said A. Smith & Co. was gearing up to make its pitch to a variety of TV networks. "He was our No. 1 choice, and we got him," Whitelaw said of Smith.
- During the X Prize Cup, Whitelaw arranged for a Jumbotron demonstration of the league's virtual "racetrack in the sky" - a technology analogous to the trickery that paints a yellow first-down line on the TV screen while you're watching a football game. In this case, a series of yellow boxes are superimposed on cockpit views, or even from-the-ground views of planes in the air, to show the aerial course that the racers have to follow. The software can even create a synthetic view to track the planes through a virtual-reality version of the course (Watch a video of the X Prize Cup demonstration.)
- Billionaire Bill Koch, a veteran of America's Cup sailing competition, has joined the league's board - and former U.S. Rep. Robert Walker, an expert on space and science policy, has become an adviser to the league.
So although the Rocket Racing League's rockets haven't yet begun the competition, there seems to be plenty of action in the pits. Even Peter Diamandis - who is the co-founder of the racing league as well as other ventures including the X Prize Foundation, Zero Gravity Corp., Space Adventures and the International Space University - marveled at the fast pace.
"Of all the dozen startups I've done, this is the fastest," he told me.
