Armadillo Aerospace

xot · 2009-09-13 07:16:14

Space Fellowship wrote:

Armadillo Aerospace have officially won the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Level 2, on a rainy day at Caddo Mills, Texas. Reports came in from various locations during the day and spectators posted videos and images using social networking tools such as Twitter. The Space Fellowship earlier reporting that the team were getting ready to fly.
Level 2 requires the rocket to fly for 180 seconds before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface constructed with craters and boulders. The minimum flight times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform a real descent from lunar orbit down to the surface of the Moon. First place is a prize of $1 million while second is $500,000.

http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/13/a … nt-page-1/

The team leader and founder/funder of Armadillo Aerospace is of course John Carmack, co-founder of id Software. Carmack is the mastermind behind all of id's innovative graphics engines. It is hardly surprising that such a dedicated problem solver is excelling in another risky, high-technology field.

Armadillo's specialty is VTOL rocket flight systems. They are only the third company to successfully demonstrate an unmanned, computer-controlled version of such a system. What's amazing is that Armadillo Aerospace is only a part-time job for everyone on the team. John Carmack can be seen on the far right in this team photo taken as they prepare for their prize winning flight.

Watch the videos, they are truly impressive. Be sure to stick around until the end to get an idea of the true size of this rocket.

Flatlander · 2009-09-13 08:59:31

Yes, very impressive.
I'm surprised those guys at the end were that near to something so (potentially) dangerous.

xot · 2009-09-13 10:41:07

The second flight video has been uploaded. I've embedded it above.

Flatlander wrote:

I'm surprised those guys at the end were that near to something so (potentially) dangerous.

Rand Simberg recently wrote of Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites, the creators of Ansari X PRIZE winner SpaceShipOne:

Rand Simberg, Popular Mechanics wrote:

Aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan said a few years ago that if were not killing people, were not pushing hard enough. That might sound harsh to people outside the aerospace community but, as Rutan knows, test pilots and astronauts are a breed of people that willingly accepts certain risk in order to be part of great endeavors. They're volunteers and they know what they're getting into.

I think there is a lot of truth in that.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science … 30356.html

xot · 2009-10-31 05:23:14

Controversy has just erupted as another team has stripped Armadillo Aerospace of its first place qualification for the $1,000,000 prize! The shocking reversal has Armadillo Aerospace team leader John Carmack fuming. Earlier this week Masten Space Systems was alloted two days to perform their test. On the first day they could not start their rocket. On the second day the could not complete the challenge. Judges then offered them a third attempt. According to NewScientist, this is something that has never been offered any other teams up until this point. On their extra attempt Masten Space Systems not only completed the challenge, they did so with greater apparent precision by landing within 25 cm of the target, compared to Armadillo's 90 cm, placing them squarely in first place.

John Carmack wrote:

The rules have given the judges the discretion to do just about anything up to and including awarding prize money for best effort if they felt it necessary, so there may not be any grounds to challenge this, but I do feel that we have been robbed.

William Pomerantz of the X Prize Foundation wrote:

There is a clear exception in the rules for the judges to make determinations about offering additional time periods. In my opinion, it was not bending or breaking the rules.

Watch Masten Space Systems flight here.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 … nline-news

http://rocketry.wordpress.com/2009/10/3 … -2-of-llc/

xot · 2009-11-03 08:22:37

John Carmack's entire statement:

John Carmack wrote:

For the past couple weeks, as it became clear that Masten had a real shot at completing the level 2 Lunar Lander Challenge and bettering our landing accuracy, I have been kicking myself for not taking the competition more seriously and working on a better landing accuracy. If they pulled it off, I was prepared to congratulate them and give a bit of a sheepish mea culpa. Nobody to be upset at except myself. We could have probably made a second flight in the drizzle on our scheduled days, and once we had the roll thruster issue sorted out, our landing accuracy would have been in the 20cm range. I never thought it was worth investing in differential RTK GPS systems, because it has no bearing on our commercial operations.
The current situation, where Masten was allowed a third active day of competition, after trying and failing on both scheduled days, is different. I don't hold anything against Masten for using an additional time window that has been offered, since we wouldn't have passed it up if we were in their situation, but I do think this was a mistake on the judges part.
I recognize that it is in the best interests of both the NASA Centennial Challenges department and the X-Prize Foundation to award all the prize money this year, and that will likely have indirect benefits for us all in coming years. It is probably also beneficial to the nascent New Space industry to get more money to Masten than Armadillo, since we have other resources to draw upon. Permit me to be petty enough to be upset and bitter about a half million dollars being taken from me and given to my competitor.
The rules have given the judges the discretion to do just about anything up to and including awarding prize money for best effort if they felt it necessary, so there may not be any grounds to challenge this, but I do feel that we have been robbed. I was going to argue that if Masten was allowed to take a window on an unscheduled day with no notice, the judges should come back to Texas on Sunday and let us take our unused second window to try for a better accuracy, but our FAA waiver for the LLC vehicle was only valid for the weekend of our scheduled attempt.
John Carmack

Interestingly, in comments posted at HobbySpace.com responding to the statement, Masten Space's Ben Brockert had this to say:

Ben Brockert wrote:

I ran the show at Masten Space during the competition, and I agree with most of what John Carmack said.
The last attempt was granted to us, it wasn't our idea. Quite frankly I wanted to just go home and sleep for a day, after nine or ten consecutive 80 hour weeks, but it would have been foolish to not go for it. John agrees that he would not have passed it up either.
It was no small feat to go for it, either. There were people working on the rocket continuously from when we got back to until we rolled out the next morning, in shifts. Almost the entire wiring harness was replaced by people who had never touched the vehicle before. We had amazing help from volunteers.
I had dinner with Paul Breed tonight after his level 1 attempt. I can't speak for him, but he knows we did what we had to do, and we're just as much friends as ever.
No one wanted the competition to go exactly this way, but everyone who is actually involved is too busy moving on to their next project to hold a grudge.

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index … emid=16507

xot · 2010-08-17 11:51:25

At QuakeCon 2010 this year, John Carmack and Richard Garriott hosted a session concerning their interests in space flight. I watched the live feed and found it really fascinating. One of the more surprising things Carmack had to say was that rocketry was 1000 times easier than software development. Unfortunately I can't find a video of the session to post here. The best I can do is this WIRED interview with the two:

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/08/c … t-rockets/

During the session Q&A, Carmack told an interesting anecdote. As his rocket sat on the pad, moments before it was set to lift-off, he found a bug in his rocket's program. Without hesitation, he immediately fixed the bug and recompiled the code and was able to launch without delay. The traditional rocketeers observing this had their minds collectively blown by the notion that someone had the balls and ability to do that.

GMLscripts.com

#1 2009-09-13 07:16:14

Armadillo Aerospace

#2 2009-09-13 08:59:31

Re: Armadillo Aerospace

#3 2009-09-13 10:41:07

Re: Armadillo Aerospace

#4 2009-10-31 05:23:14

Re: Armadillo Aerospace

#5 2009-11-03 08:22:37

Re: Armadillo Aerospace

#6 2010-08-17 11:51:25

Re: Armadillo Aerospace

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