It's A Tough Business, This Rocket Biz...

The first team to join the Rocket Racing League™, Leading Edge Rocket Racing™ LLC., announced late Friday that it is officially leaving the league effective immediately. 

President and CEO of Leading Edge, Robert Rickard, along with COO Don Grantham, will formally notify the league in a letter to be delivered to the RRL Board of Directors on Monday morning.

"After working with Rocket Racing League for the past 17 months, we have concluded that our vision, business practices, and communication standards are incompatible with those of the league," said Rickard. "We had very high hopes for this enterprise and tried very hard to find a common way forward."

There was no communication between the league and Leading Edge during the decision making process and no specific event contributed to its timing.

"There hasn't been a working relationship between our company and the RRL for some time now.  This announcement makes it official so we can move on." said Grantham. "It's time to focus our resources on something more compatible with Leading Edge's goal of being the premiere operators of high performance rocket powered aircraft."

Note: In the interest of proper and full disclosure; ANN Editor-In-Chief, Jim Campbell, is one of the four "founding" test/demo pilots selected to fly this new generation of rocketplanes and remains in that role. He is also on the Advisory Board for that program, as are a number of other aviation luminaries. The story above contains the complete and unedited statements sent to ANN by Leading Edge Rocket Racing.

FMI: www.leadingedgerocketracing.com, www.rocketracingleague.com