Let's hope that this isn't the beginning of a trend:

"After working with [the] Rocket Racing League for the past 17 months, we have concluded that our vision, business practices, and communications standards are incompatible with those of the league," Robert Rickard, Leading Edge president and CEO, said in a statement. "We had very high hopes for this enterprise and tried very hard to find a common way forward."

Or if it is, that the RRL makes whatever changes are necessary to keep things together. I should note that I've no idea what the creative differences are, so I have no opinions as to who is in the right and wrong here. With this drop out, though, it would be nice to get some more teams signed up to provide confidence in the future viability. Comments from people who know more is welcome. Uninformed speculation is less so.

I never got the appeal of RRL.
Seems less than compelling from the very first telling.

Carmack's Verticle Drag Racing concept makes a lot more sense than RRL, but I guess the XPC heavies felt a leisurely, subsonic pace with winged vehicles that can't compete with real airplanes was the way to go, for some cosmically inexplicable reason.

I hope to be proven wrong in my skepticism, but their glacial pace of progress, and now a significant setback to boot, make that seem unlikely. Also, based on the incredible rarity of RRL website updates, I'd have to say if they don't make it to this year's XPC it'll start to become a laughingstock of Da Vinci Project proportions. In fact, even if they do make it, based on the descriptions of what they intend, they'll have to work very hard not to make the "race" tedious and pathetic.

Which "real airplanes" will be faster around a RRL course than the RRL rocket planes? And how many times more do they cost? There aren't too many capable of doing sustained vertical climbs, especially if you put a speed-limiting chicane before the climb.

I'm sure a Harrier would win hands-down, if allowed to compete, just as Mercury had more performance than SpaceShip One. But costs count too.

My guess is that anything Patty Wagstaff uses for her shows would kick ass over the RRL.

Vertical climbs, higher redline and 5 to 10 times the strength to pull Gees, with the RRL velocity the plane will fail before pilot, with patty's extra its the other way around.

A nutty choice for aircraft for a nutty idea.

Paul

Bruce: "There aren't too many capable of doing sustained vertical climbs, especially if you put a speed-limiting chicane before the climb."

But just how sustained are we talking about? The most exciting part of a rocket race would be a long vertical stretch where racers would be visible in the same frame, assuming they're allowed to compete at the same time rather than with staggered takeoff.

If the plan is still to scale this up to space racing, the vertical stretch will be the most important to shaping the technology, so it should feature most prominently and be scaleable given the racer design. But if, on the other hand, they take the NASCAR analogy too far and focus on maneuverability, regular old air shows can provide a far superior display. Moreover, RRL fails to realize that a very large component of the attraction to auto racing is the frequency of spectacular crashes, whereas the FAA will never allow them to accept similar odds. Really, when you get down to it, all they have is the vertical, and everything else is just an inferior copy of either an air show or an auto race. I hope they realize this.