Fri, May 04, 2007
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.
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