The February Popular Science has just hit the stands with my cover story on the Rocket Racing League. The RRL and the folks at XCOR, the RRL’s builder, say they’re happy with it, which makes me happy.
Lots of great photos by Mike Massee, who shoots for both XCOR and Scaled Composites, as well as some very cool conceptual art by Nick Kaloterakis.
PopSci editor in chief Mark Jannot devotes his editor’s letter to the story. Opening line: “Peter Diamandis is a visionary.” Indeed.
I’ll track XCOR’s and the RRL’s progress as they build the first of the League’s rocket powered race planes, the X-Racer, which is scheduled to debut at this year’s X Prize Cup in October. The X-Racer’s development is great timing for my book on commercial spaceflight, which I have through this year to write.
The XCOR/RRL story is a perfect example of the entrepreneurial companies I’ll cover in the book: small company in the desert building revolutionary machines by hand, a new business founded by the man who made the idea of private spaceflight mainstream, a former space shuttle commander staking his career on the private sector and his faith in it getting him back to space…great stuff.
More details on the book coming up….
Michael,
Do you know why the Popular Science website has the August 2005 issues as the “current issue?” Did they stop updating? Just curious. They didn’t have the issues at Walmart yet, so will drop by the bookstore tommorrow. Great stuff, as always.
I didn’t notice that, Dan; that’s not good! I’ll drop a line to my editors, find out what’s up with that. Video to accompany the RRL story should appear at this URL any day now, according to a footer in the print version: popsci.com/rocketplane. I would expect the full text of the print story to appear there as well. Thanks for the plug on Space Pragmatism, by the way!
I wonder if the curse of Popular Science will
apply to RRL and XCOR
Nice article. I say that not just as an XCOR investor and potential advertiser. I see people queueing up like for star tours to take a 15 minute suborbital ride with an airline-style ground crew doing fast lox transfer that started here.
Hi Michael,
Nice Pop Sci article! Keep up the good work.
Stuart