perfidy

Peter Diamandis - the saint-like personage responsible for both the X-Prize and the vast inflation of the hopes of space geeks everywhere - looks like he is within reach of forming an honest to God rocket racing league. Combining the best aspects of current day NASCAR racing and the golden age of aircraft racing, the Rocket Racing League's competitors will fly modified versions of XCOR Aerospace's EZ-Rocket design over complex three dimensional courses, combining gliding with strategically-timed rocket burns to achieve the best time.

F-16 pilots Robert “Bobaloo” Rickard and Don “Dagger” Grantham paid their $100,000 deposit to the league yesterday, to become the first of what the League hopes will be ten teams in the 2007 inaugural season. The hundred grand will go to the expected million-dollar-plus cost of their Mark-1 X-Racer. Operating costs for the rocket and the race team will easily be on the order of a million dollars a year. But hey, they're racing rockets.

I will certainly be glued to the tv when this all comes together. And if it leads to the development of better rocket technology, well that'll just be pure gravy.