Here in Las Cruces, New Mexico lots of news items rocketing around associated with the Wirefly X Prize Cup.

This Friday, the Rocket Racing League (RRL) is unveiling the winning name of its first X-Racer – with Michael Higgins and son Connor spotlighted as prize winners in the X-Racer naming competition.The RRL is a new form of competitive air racing utilizing specially designed rocket-powered airframes. For more details go to here.

Another Cup event to be held is the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. The challenge requires a vehicle to simulate a trip between the Moon’s surface to lunar orbit, and back to the lunar surface. NASA is bankrolling the competition with $2 million.A leader in this competition is Armadillo Aerospace, led by John Carmack, wealthy computer gaming guru. But getting his rocketry to fly at the Cup has been a saga of gravity-fed Federal paperwork, demanded by the Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial space office to assure publicly safe rocket runs. Word here is that a pre-Cup demo flight should allay the issue with Carmack and his Texas-based team then green-lighted to fly at the actual Wirefly X Prize Cup. But as this reporter went to sleep last night, Armadillo’s transport of rocket gear ran into snags at the state border crossing.

Yes, it may be tough to shoot for the Moon…but wheeling rockets across state lines appears to be even harder.

Read more about the Wirefly X Prize Cup.