The Rocket
Racing League is teaming up with a private aerospace company and the state of
New Mexico to build a new fleet of suborbital spacecraft designed to give space
tourists a view of the Earth unlike any other.
Passengers
would be surrounded in a clear,
bubble-like shell that gives a panoramic, 360-degree view of Earth and
space, rather than be limited by the round window portals offered by other
private spaceflight efforts, the league announced Friday.
The racing
league accounted the plan with New Mexico and the Mesquite, Texas-based firm
Armadillo Aerospace today during the Northrop Grumman Lunar
Lander Challenge in Las Cruces, NM, where the private space shots would
blast off from Spaceport America.
Under the
joint venture, Armadillo
Aerospace and the racing league would build a fleet of vertical launch and
landing spacecraft capable of flying two passengers on suborbital spaceflights.
Tickets
will cost about $100,000, about half that set for rides on billionaire Sir
Richard Branson's Virgin
Galactic spaceliners, league officials said. Passengers would likely launch
into suborbital space about 62 miles (100 km) above Earth and experience at
least a few minutes of weightlessness before beginning their descent under the plan.
"The
price of space is coming down to Earth," said Granger Whitelaw, Chief
Executive Officer of Rocket Racing Inc., in a statement. "And thanks to
Armadillo's ships and New Mexico's spaceport, human beings will be treated to
the most stellar views in the galaxy."
Led by video
game developer John Carmack, Armadillo Aerospace is one of two teams competing
in the Challenge, which offers up to $2 million in prize money for successful
demonstration of mock moon landers capable of vertical takeoffs and landings.
The X Prize Foundation oversees the Lunar Lander Challenge for NASA's
Centennial Challenges program, which provides the prize money.
The Rocket
Racing League formed in 2005 to offer aerial NASCAR-style rocket races with six
teams currently on its roster. The league held its inaugural demonstration
flights earlier this year. Armadillo Aerospace is one of two firms providing
engines for the league's racers. XCOR Aerospace of Mojave, Calif., also
developed a rocket engine used by the Rocket Racing League.
Other
private suborbital space tourism efforts, such as Virgin Galactic and the Lynx
spacecraft under development by XCOR, offer rides aboard ground- or-
air-launched spaceships that land on runways like an aircraft.
Prototypes for the new
vertical launch and landing spacecraft could be ready by 2009, with initial
manned flight tests slated for 2010, league officials said. In addition to
space tourism jaunts, the new vehicles could also be used to launch
microgravity experiments or serve as a platform for astrophysics,
reconnaissance or high-altitude meteorological observations, they added.
"I am
honored that Rocket Racing, Inc. and Armadillo Aerospace have chosen New Mexico
to set up shop," said New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in a written
statement. "Spaceport America and the state of New Mexico are proud
partners and together we are writing the next chapter of space
transportation."
Click
here for updates from the Lunar Lander Challenge or watch the live webcast:
http://space.xprize.org/webcast
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