The Rocket Racing League® is an aerospace sports and entertainment organisation that combines the competition of racing with the excitement of rocketry. The RRL was established by X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis and two-time Indianapolis 500 champion team partner Granger Whitelaw to advance the technology and increase public awareness of space travel. The NASCAR-style racing league features rocket-powered aircraft that will be flown by top pilots through a ‘three-dimensional track way’ at venues throughout the world. With millions of fans who enjoy racing and air shows, and an even wider audience enthralled with humanity’s next step into space, rocket racing is destined to become the future of racing!

There are six teams already. If I was a test pilot, I would apply today. Head to Flight Global for an exclusive interview with Granger Whitelaw, CEO of Rocket Racing, explaining what the whole thing is about. If you are going to be at the show, go on Friday or Saturday, when they will fly it again. [Rocket Racing League and Flight Global]

In fact, security broke down on a number of levels—including areas where nuclear weapons are stored. To put this baffling stupidity in perspective, consider this: after Col. Joel Westa took command of the 5th Bomb Wing post-nuke debacle, he was quoted as saying that this inspection was going to be the “most scrutinised inspection in the history of time.” And the most terrifying part is that the wing will keep its certification to handle nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future. I feel safe…how about you? [Air Force Times via Wired]

“This year we have 125 partipants,” show organiser Frank Tiano told us, “with 40 hobby vendors and coverage from 35 magazines from all over the world.” In a good weather day, Top Gun gets 10,000 drooling spectators.

Looking at the detail and size of these beasts, we can understand exactly why.

Frank also confirmed to us that the A-10 featured in Popsci.com was going to participate in the competition, as well as many other new entries. So if you are around, it’s a complete must, Maverick’s glasses not required (but recommended.) [Top Gun—photos by Palmer Johnson, DVD video available from Wildberry Productions]

On August 31, 2007 an Air Force crew accidentally loaded six live nuclear warheads into a B-52 Stratofortress—stationed in the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota—believing they were conventional cruise missiles. The weapons were missing, without anyone noticing it, for 36 hours until the B-52 landed in Louisiana.

According to the Pentagon, this happened because the nuclear weapons were stored right next to conventional ones, with just an “8.5 x 11-inch sheet of printed paper to differentiate between the two types.” I guess the paper was ignored by the ground crew. I also guess that the paper said something like “Maybe this is bad. Really. No touchy! Noooo touchy!” instead of “NUCLEAR WARHEAD INSIDE. DON’T TOUCH UNLESS INSTRUCTED BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF, YOU MORON” because, otherwise, I just can’t understand their mistake.

The report goes on saying that “part” of the problem is that nobody really has absolute control of the nuclear weapons in the US arsenal after the demise of Strategic Air Command. After the fall of the Soviet Union, SAC was split in 1992 into three different commands: the Air Force Space Command (which grabbed ICBM control,) the Air Combat Command (in charge of the bombers themselves) and the Air Mobility Command, which “provides airlift, special missions, aerial refueling, and aeromedical evacuation for U.S. troops.” Furthermore, the Air Force nuclear capability is also under the control of the USSTRATCOM, along with the Navy’s submarine nuclear ballistic missiles.

The report, however, then says that this “near disaster” was a “human error” because there are tight rules in place that weren’t followed. Col. West Anderson, second in charge of the 2nd Bomb Wing at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, added that they “handle weapons safely and ensure the highest possible standards of individual reliability and professional competence.” I guess that means that the crew at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota are a bunch of incompetent monkeys, but his guys are A-OK. However, it all seems that they are just glad that nothing bad happened, so they can get away saving their asses.

Despite this “human error” excuse, their explanation leaves me with the impression that nobody has a real, definitive grasp of where every nuke is except probably Matthew Broderick and the WOPR. Their conclusion doesn’t help either: the Air Force treats nukes the same as disarmed missiles when verifying armament, and there’s “no written directive that specifically described the required identifying means” to make the distinction before loading the weapons into the bombers.

In other words: there are rules which are not followed, but they need more rules in writing. Perhaps they just need to stop playing Warhawk in their PlayStation 3 and start printing clearer warning signs. [Military.com, Wikipedia]

We will have to wait until its released to see how it works into a humble PC, but I can’t wait to turn my three-metre-wide projection screen into the bridge of the Enterprise. [TED]

Located in the atrium of the 5-star Radisson SAS Hotel in Berlin Mitte, the US$18.8 million aquarium is 11 metres in diameter and sits on a 9-metre-tall concrete foundation. Without a doubt, the most impressive thing about the aquarium from an engineering point of view is the glass surface. Built by Reynolds Polymer Technology, it required 41 R-Cast panels, 26 for the outside cylinder and 15 panels for the inside, plus 16 on-site bonds. The precision of the work, required to hold that water volume and pressure, it’s amazing. Reynolds is specialised in creating this kind of aquarium, among other things, which other jewels like the AB Baltic Mega Mall Aquarium, which holds 43,000 gallons of water but has reef sharks, or the aquariums of the famous the Burj-Al-Arab tower, in Dubai.

It was built in 2003, but we just came across it as we prepare our trips to CeBIT 2008, which is going to happen in Hannover on March but will serve as a perfect excuse to jump to Berlin in order to see friends for the weekend.

Needless to say, the Radisson SAS Hotel Berlin is going to be one of our destinations, hopefully staying in one of the rooms that overlook this awesome piece of engineering. And I will get my diving computer, just in case we can convince the pair of full-time divers that clean and feed the fish every day to let us dive for 30 minutes. [Flickr, Radisson SAS Hotel Berlin, Reynolds Polymer and Wikipedia via Below the clouds]