You may know John Carmack, co-founder of id Software and lead programmer of Doom, keeps busy building space rockets with his Armadillo Aerospace team. But rockets arenāt all they do.
They also do rocket planes
The last youāve probably heard of a rocket plane was a pair of German fighters from the Second World War, the Komet and Natter, that were both more of a danger to their pilots than the enemy.
Not to be dissuaded by their ultimate failure (or, well, the success of Bellās X-1), Carmack and the team at Armadillo have been working on getting their rockets installed and working in light aircraft of a safer, more contemporary design.
Why would you need to put a rocket in an aircraft? Why, to race them in the Rocket Racing League, of course. Which is a real thing, one I am deeply saddened to be only learning about for the first time here.
The RRL is a start-up venture, new to 2010, and Armadillo will be supplying the rocket engines for the teams involved, using craft like the one in the clip above.
While the Rocket Racing league waits on the tarmac for the green light, you can get the leagueās official racing game (sadly not developed by Carmackās id) on iPhone and iPod Touch here
