Rocket Races

There is a story on Wired about a convention of commercial spaceship manufacturers. By spaceship they mean craft like SpaceShip One that won the Ansari X Prize last year. The other companies attempting are to make similar purpose craft (not all are planes, some are rockets).

Most interestingly the man who set up the Ansari X Prize is talking about holding a rocket race in future.

On Monday, Diamandis plans to unveil a new venture at a press conference in New York: Rocket Racing.

It seems likely that Diamandis wants to promote NASCAR-style rocket races at which crack pilots will compete in tests of raw speed -- perhaps both in the atmosphere and out.

People probably laughed when he set up the X Prize, so when he says he wants rocket races he may just manage it. Who wants boring old Formula 1 when you can have Formula ZeroG :-)