From the "This I gotta see" department comes a story about creation of The Rocket Racing League. The idea, although sounding like a "Tom Swift" title, has a proven pedigree.
It is the brainchild of Peter Diamandis and Granger Whitelaw. Diamandis is the guy who last year presented the $10 million X Prize to Burt Rutan for creating a privately owned and flown spaceship. Whitelaw won the Indianapolis 500 twice as a team owner.
In other words, these are rich guys who are accustomed to completing projects successfully.
Whitelaw told folks at his announcement party in New York last week that the RRL will combine the public's love of racing with mankind's fascination with space.
Charles Bremner, writing from New York for The Times of London, said the X-Rockets will hit 300 mph around a six-mile course in the sky.
GPS locators will be part of the steering to keep the planes from colliding by confining each one to its own 'tunnel' in the air.
Cameras on the ground, as well as in chase planes, balloons and in the cockpits of the racers themselves, will provide video for giant screens for spectators at the race venue and on the Internet.
Former NASA Shuttle commander Richard Searfoss will test-fly one of the X-Racers this weekend in the skies over New Mexico. Bremner says that, by 2007, four planes will be available for demonstrations.
They will burn kerosene and oxygen in a single rocket engine producing 1500 pounds of thrust. Each plane should be able to complete three to four laps in about 15 minutes before having to land and refuel.
The racers would compete in a series of races around the U.S. to earn the right to fly in the championship event in Las Cru-ces, NM.
Here's a mind-bender for you. The RRL plans to also create a "virtual league" linked to the actual race and GPS so folks at home can compete with the rocket pilots in real time.
If it were Spring instead of Fall, I'd suspect this whole story of being an April Fool's Day prank.
Watching NASCAR's offering last Sunday, I was kind of surprised at the naiveté of Mark Martin. After his No. 6 was taken out of the race in the first Big One of the afternoon, he told a TV interviewer that "Only the fans can stop this."
He apparently was referring to the situation created by the racing rules that equalizes the cars' speeds so much that they tear around the track together all afternoon … slow enough to be equal but fast enough (up to 190 mph or so) to be dangerous.
Mark, guess what. The fans are not going to put a stop to it. Fans love it. That's why NASCAR loves it. It's the product the fans demand.
They love to grouse about, anticipate and then watch the Big One … over and over again. It's hard to call it a big One any-more, there's usually Two or Three.
But fans are honest when they say, "I don't want to see anyone get hurt, but …"
That's the problem. You may be old enough and geeky enough to remember a Star Trek episode in which Kirk and Com-pany find themselves on a planet engaged in a long war with a neighboring planet.
The natives had worked out a way to conduct the war without actually going to war. They had a computer on which the cyber-war was conducted. The computer would determine how many and which individuals from each planet would have died in each battle. Those unfortunates then reported for annihilation.
It sanitized war and made it "acceptable."
Kirk fixed things by disabling the computer and explaining to the natives that war must instead not be sanitary or acceptable.
It's the same in racing. The cars are so safe that fans now expect a driver to walk away from an aerial pirouette. But if driv-ers were being killed and maimed and vegetized fans would be turned off instead of on.
The thrill of the Big One would turn to disgust. Or maybe they could use GPS controlled tunnels to keep Jimmy Johnson from running into everybody.