Rocket Racing League Ready To Launch 79
capnkr sends us to Wired for the story of the long-delayed Rocket Racing League, which we discussed when it launched in 2005. It seems the league is finally ready to get off the ground. At a press conference at the Yale Club in New York, RRL CEO Granger Whitelaw said rocket-powered planes will fly their first exhibition race in August at the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with at least three more races to follow in 2008. "The Rocket Racing League on Monday detailed plans to move from a sci-fi fantasy to a full-fledged commercial enterprise — including 'vertical drag races' using rockets."
I'm a yachtie... (Score:5, Insightful)
...and I see plenty of coin being tossed about, both here in New Zealand, and especially in the U.S. and Europe circuits. For these guys $5-10m a year is nothing to throw away on their favourite pastime. This surely has to top them all for finding ways to part overgrown rich boys and their money!
What, Darwin isn't working fast enough? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Experimental aviation (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the magic word, "certification". Experimental aircraft are just that...and they are not certified. This does not necessarily mean they are dangerous. The words, "experimental" must be visibly placard and all passengers must be notified of aircraft's experimental status.
It can take years and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars just to break through all the legal red tape. In fact, I hear these expenditures dwarf that of R&D and material costs combined for a small company. Let's not forget that it also takes years just to pass certification on new designs.
And that is exactly why certified generation aviation is so far behind modern technology. This is also why an engine designed in the 1950s or perhaps the 1960s costs $25,000 - $75,000 to replace. If it were not for the FAA's certification process and scummy lawyers in general who literally double the cost of all things aviation related, that same engine would cost $10,000 - $30,000 and be far more safe and reliable. And keep in mind, with these engines, the pilot must still manually control basic things like air/fuel mixture. Heck, just fuel injection is still considered a big step up in economy and performance. If you want electronic control (FADEC), expect to add an extra $40,000 - $80,000 to the cost of your engine; if it is even available for your engine/aircraft combination.
Once you step outside of the certified arena, suddenly a whole new gambit of newer, better, and safer level of modern technology becomes available. Yet the vast majority of this technology is strictly prohibited in a certified aircraft.
As an example, thanks to the FAA, instrument rated aircraft must purchase certified clocks. This made sense forty years ago when reliable, electro-mechanical clocks were hard to find. These days, $100-$400 dollars buys you a clock which may lose seconds to minutes in a day, assuming it stays running for the entire flight. Yes, that very expensive and unreliable clock the FAA requires is actually less reliable and less accurate than the average, cheap watch people wear today. Yet, non-certified aircraft get the pleasure of a modern, highly reliable, highly precise clock for $20-$100; depending on the number of cool extras (timers, count down/up) thrown in. And if you wonder how important a clock is, watch "Hunt for Red October" and take note of them maneuvering the sub by stop-watch. It is the same for planes flying by instruments.
Don't forget, the FAA's moto is, "We're not happy until you're not happy." Even worse is, in the last decade, the FAA was been working hard to actually endanger the skies (recent inspections in the news is the tip of the iceberg) rather than actually improve public safety. The FAA is working hard to avoid Congressional oversight would allows them to publicly be seen in bed with the airlines. For the last decade, they've been forced to meet in cheap motel rooms.
If it were not for inspectors breaking the news, the public would have continued to fly un-inspected and dangerous aircraft, with the FAA's unofficial wink and nod.
Lastly, don't think that plane owners are rich, wealthy men with top hats and cigars. The majority of pilots make less than $40,000 a year. You can actually own a nice, certified plane, for less than the price of a new SUV or less. Granted, this will be a used aircraft, but it is important to remember, aircraft are maintained far better than cars and in most cases, better than homes. The older aircraft fleet's safety record is on par with newer aircraft.
Re:What I really wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
You, like so many supposedly "rational" people, have fallen into the aerodynamics trap. Yes, 90% of bolt-on aftermarket aerodynamic devices are useless crap. On the other hand, the simple truth is that 1: almost everyone overestimates how fast you have to go to generate meaningful force from a well-designed wing, and 2: almost everyone overestimates how much force is needed to be meaningful.
Wings can produce significant downforce at speeds significantly less than 120 MPH. How do I know this? Basic real-world examples. Rally cars rarely top 100 mph, and yet feature prominent wings and other aero devices (it's worth noting that the sort of bizarre crap they stick all over rally cars also most closely resembles the exact sorts of modifications people criticize most on road cars--the difference of course being that rally teams know what they're doing and the crap actually works). If they didn't work, the teams wouldn't use them. Even Formula 1 cars spend most of their cornering time, when aero devices are most needed, at sub 120 mph speeds. In fact, a modern F1 car generates its own weight in downforce at around a mere 80 mph.
You say that wings have to produce many hundreds or even thousands of pounds of force to be meaningful. This is ridiculous. "Thousands of pounds of force" are only generated by the most extremely tuned cars--most common racing cars (nascar, rally cars, touring cars) produce far less. Yes, a F1 car can generate perhaps 3000 pounds of downforce at its highest speeds. However, ANY amount of downforce is valuable, even the 200 pounds you say Porsches can't handle more than. On a typical car, that's an extra 7%+ relative to the real weight of the car, a small but not trivial amount.
Besides, a wing doesn't have to produce net downforce to be useful. It can shape the airflow over the car to reduce or eliminate aerodynamic lift, a problem that plagues most production cars. A prime example is the older Audi TT, a car that was notorious for generating so much rear lift at freeway speeds that it was potentially unsafe. Later versions all came with a small spoiler that fixed this issue, before the car was totally redesigned. These changes don't have to be huge and dramatic to work--compare a Nissan 350z with the zero-lift package to the standard model. It's also worth noting that the zero-lift Nissan also has less aerodynamic drag than the normal model, which raises another point--aerodynamic devices aren't just for producing downforce, but can in some cases actually make the car more aerodynamic.
Re: the 200 mph club, the problem is not so much a matter of aerodynamic stability as it is just one of drag and horsepower. Yes, it is important to have a reasonably stable car at those speeds, but just look at a Bentley Flying Spur, which has no outwardly obvious aerodynamic devices at all (okay, so it "only" goes 195). The reason it doesn't go any faster is not because it's unstable--it's because the poor Bentley's "mere" 552 Hp can't push it any faster. Many older Le mans cars could top 200 mph, but they actually generated lift at those speeds (drivers had balls of titanium in those days). Stability is good, but it's not why 200 mph is uncommon, it's because you need a honking huge engine and few cars have that.
Dragsters are such an extreme example that they basically don't even matter to the argument. A vehicle that can reach speeds in excess of 300 mph within 400 meters, and which can accelerate at over 5.5 Gs, is not a reasonable comparison to anything one might consider a normal car. Yes, they raise their wings high up into the clean air to get maximum effectiveness, and this principle universally applies, but this doesn't mean that any wing that isn't ludicrously tall is useless. It just means that normal cars don't have the same ultra-extreme requirements of dragsters.
Okay, I'm done now.