Blast Off With Rocket League Racing

By Chris Howell, NewsOn6.com

TULSA, OK -- Look out NASCAR! There's a new type of race coming to television and it's trying to steal your thunder. It's called the Rocket Racing League, and it's blasting off next year.

Ex-navy pilot Jim Bridenstine is team owner and pilot of the DKNY plane.  It's a prototype of the league's recently-developed rocket planes which achieved world-wide interest when it was flown earlier this year at the Oshkosh Air Show. So what is rocket racing?

"What we're talking about here is a very light aircraft with a whole lot of thrust," explained Jim Bridenstine. "We're not racing cars, we're racing rockets which are airborne. My airplane will have a heads-up display with a series of gates or rings that I'm supposed to fly through."

This virtual race course will allow racers to safely compete in a thrilling air race, and with state of the art television and internet coverage.

"The intent of rocket racing is to created a private sector mechanism to advance rocket science and space technology, using the exact same revenue model as NASCAR, ticket sales, merchandising, television rights and corporate sponsors," said Bridenstine.

The Bridenstine Rocket Racing team is sponsored by DKNY which hopes to cash in by linking their brand with this emerging sport. Jim is hoping to base his operations in Green Country.

"We have big visions, and what we'd like to say is in twenty years we'd like to be racing into sub-orbital space," adds Bridenstine. "The sky is the limit."

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