If the EZ-Rocket — which has made 20+ suborbital flights for the United States Air Force "with its liquid oxygen and kerosene eating engine" — is successful, a half dozen such planes could follow a mile into the sky, Wired's underwire blog is reporting.

"Then they'll hurtle around a giant virtual racetrack in the sky at speeds approaching 320 miles per hour, separated from one another by just a few hundred feet," as Business Week explains it.

The project, formed in October 2005 by X-Prize founder Peter H. Diamandis and venture capitalist (and Indy car team owner) Granger B. Whitelaw, is basically NASCAR in the sky. Each plane will make five short pit stops over the course of the 90-minute race.

Because rocket racing will rely on a course defined by data, not by pylons or oval tracks, it has two advantages over the motor sports of Reno and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, according to Air & Space Magazine:

First, a computer-designed course allows for experimentation and refinement without costly surveying and marking. Second, a much larger audience than the fans in the grandstands can watch — and play. While 12 racers will be alternately roaring and gliding in the real sky, the viewer at home will be looking at 13 rocketplanes. The extra competitor will be the fan's own entry, controlled by a joystick on a game console: He or she will fly a virtual racer, create a strategy, and experience everything in the race except the G forces and the smell of the cockpit.

For those of us on the ground, like NASCAR racing, these events will be broadcast on television, computers, and JumboTrons for audiences not attending down below. During the race, the simulated racetrack will be displayed electronically on pilots' heads-up displays. Gamers watching via their consoles or computers will be able to see everything the pilots see, as well as real-time feeds of GPS information and can race their own virtual planes on the same tracks as the actual flying pilots. Footage will be shot via racing planes, helicopters and blimps.

"NASA blast-offs are once-in-a-lifetime for some people," Diamandis told Business Week. "We want to give them [audiences] those experiences dozens of times in an afternoon."

The league is looking forward to the first flight of its X-racer this fall — hopefully this month. Three independent teams — and two more owned by the RRL — have each paid the $100,000 ante to race, a down payment on the $1.2 million rocketplane. Annual operating costs and racing fees could run each team owner another $500k. The league expects to offer a purse starting at $1 million.

There had been four independent teams: the first to sign on, Leading Edge Rocket Racing, withdrew last May because it and the league had "incompatible business practices and communication standards," according to Air & Space Magazine, which reports:

Team owners Don Grantham Jr. and Robert Rickard, business partners in Phoenix, Arizona, and F-16 pilots with the Air Force Reserve, had expected a handsome return on their investment. "We looked at the closest comparison we could, which is NASCAR," Grantham said last November, "and compared it to the potential we have with RRL. It took 40 years to progress from racing on the sand in Florida to the spectacle it is today. Title sponsorship is worth about $20 million to top teams, and the NASCAR merchandising business as a whole generates $1.5 billion annually." That earning potential, though, depends on the development of a racing airplane.

It's definitely a cool concept, but you think this sport will ever take off?

Check out the concept images and photos below, courtesy of the Rocket Racing League, as well as our previous coverage of this forthcoming sport.