NewSpace Journal » Armadillo Aerospace

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the LLC race

Jeff Foust — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:59:00 +0000

In today’s issue of The Space Review I have a summary article about Saturday’s Level 2 flights by Armadillo, including video of both flights. While that was going on, though, other teams have been making progress on their flights. On Sunday, Masten Space Systems announced via Twitter that they made two 90+second test flightsdespite gusting winds in Mojave. They are scheduled to make a Level 1 flight attempt this week, on September 15-16. The third team registered to compete this year, Unreasonable Rocket, also used Twitter to announce a 106-second tethered flight this weekend. Unreasonable is scheduled to try for both Level 1 and Level 2 at the end of October.

Armadillo Level 2 Flight 1

Jeff Foust — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 05:41:54 +0000

Here’s a video I shot of Armadillo’s first leg of the Level 2 flight on Saturday. This was shot from a distance of about 1,500 feet from the pads, the designated safety boundary. This is considerably closer than the distance the public and media witnessed similar LLC flights in past years.

Photos from Armadillo’s Saturday flights

Jeff Foust — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 05:04:21 +0000

Armadillo managed to beat the weather and any technical gremlins on Saturday with a pair of successful Level 2 flights, ensuring that they at least qualify for the prize. (Because of the nature of the competition, they won’t know until the end of October, when the competition season closes, if in fact they have won first prize in Level 2 of the Lunar Lander Challenge.) Below is a collection of photos with highlights of the day, from the long wait in Armadillo’s hangar for the rain to clear to the flights and the celebration afterwards.

Armadillo versus the weather

Jeff Foust — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:18:58 +0000

I’m in the Dallas area this weekend to (hopefully) see Armadillo Aerospace compete in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge at the Level 2 category. The “hopefully” is less associated with any technical issues–they’ve flown their “Super Mod” vehicle a number of times on the pads they’ve built at the Caddo Mills Municipal Airport northeast of Dallas–than the weather. The forecast this weekend calls for rain, rain, and more rain, with some heavy storms mixed in. It was raining when I arrived in Dallas late last night and is raining again, lightly, this morning. However, the weather radar hints that there may be enough holes in the rain later today to make a flight attempt–maybe.

For some background, MSNBC and New Scientist published articles on the flight attempts by Armadillo (and Masten Space and Unreasonable Rocket, two other NGLLC teams planning Level 1 and Level 2 flight attempts). The setup at the airport is likely to be barebones, but I will be posting updates via Twitter as time and technology permit, as will @NGLLC09, the official Twitter account of the competition.

Armadillo’s Level 2 LLC attempt coming soon?

Jeff Foust — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:38:44 +0000

This year the Lunar Lander Challenge competition that is part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges prize program is being run differently: rather than a single once-a-year event in New Mexico, each team can decide when and where they will compete during a competition window that opened July 20 and runs through October 31. At another Centennial Challenges event, the Tether Strength competition, held as part of the Space Elevator Conference in Redmond, Washington on Friday, Andy Petro, who manages the Centennial Challenges program, said that “at least three” attempts at winning either second prize for Level One or first and second prize for Level Two would be made in September and October.

It looks the first team (or at least one of the first) to make an attempt will be Armadillo Aerospace, who won first prize in Level One last October. According to a post on the “Official Armadillo Q&A thread at The Space Fellowship, John Carmack said at the QuakeCon 2009 convention Thursday that their Level Two attempt is planned for Labor Day weekend, three weekends from now. That development was also picked by a GameSpot article about Carmack’s speech, although not specifically mentioning the Lunar Lander Challenge, only an upcoming “Labor Day launch”. There’s nothing official yet on the Armadillo Aerospace or competition web sites.

A couple of other items: the Space Fellowship post states that Armadillo has also been busy with Rocket Racing League vehicle test flights and that “AA would make a lot more progress in the next year for reasons he couldn’t announce yet.” On the other hand, though, Carmack said that since his gaming company, id Software, was sold this summer, “he feels compelled to produce and deliver, rather than working on fun extracurricular projects like Armadillo Aerospace.”

(As as for the Tether Strength competition: only one team, from Japan, participated this year, and its tether, made of carbon nanotube material, broke almost immediately after force was applied.)

Video interview: John Carmack

Jeff Foust — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 17:24:09 +0000

Below is a brief video interview I conducted with John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace at the end of the Space Access ’09 conference. (This was recorded outdoors at the end of the day, hence the low lighting; you should also turn up your audio.) He talks about their current plans for both the Lunar Lander Challenge as well as suborbital vehicles, as well as how the company is now making money and what lessons he’s learned from the early days of the venture.

Look for a couple more video interviews from the conference to appear here in the coming days.

Rocket racing slowdown

Jeff Foust — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:44:07 +0000

At Space Access ‘09 Armadillo Aerospace’s John Carmack noted that his company’s deal with Rocket Racing for suborbital vehicle development “did not come to fruition”. MSNBC’s Alan Boyle confirms that from the Rocket Racing side: president and CEO Granger Whitelaw said the suborbital vehicle development is “on hold” while the company focuses on its core business, the Rocket Racing League.

Even that, though, appears to have slowed down. Last year the league announced plans for exhibition races at eight sites in 2009 from a list of 20 venues, primarily air shows. However, Whitelaw tells MSNBC that plans call for two rocket racing vehicles to fly at the Reno Air Races in September. Those would be powered by Armadillo’s engines, and Whitelaw said that they are making a number of modifications to the aircraft based on the flight tests performed last fall. Unlike last year, it does not appear that the league will be flying at Oshkosh. The economy, as you might have guess, gets the blame for the slowdown in activity.

Carmack: deal with Rocket Racing fell through

Jeff Foust — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 21:12:59 +0000

At the 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge last October, Rocket Racing and Armadillo Aerospace announced a joint venture to develop vertical takeoff, vertical landing vehicles for suborbital space tourism. However, Armadillo Aerospace founder John Carmark revealed at Space Access ‘09 this morning that this deal—at least, as announced in October—has fallen through. Carmack said that while there are relationships with both Rocket Racing and an unnamed third party, the deal as announced “did not come to fruition”. Carmack added, though, that he anticipates making some announcements in the next month that may be related to any suborbital vehicle work.

Carmack also revealed some details about Armadillo’s plans for Level 2 of the Lunar Lander Challenge. He said they are planning now to be ready to compete for the prize when the “season” opens in early July, the first public reference I’m aware of regarding how the X PRIZE Foundation plans to run the LLC this year in lieu of a once-a-year event in New Mexico. Carmack added that they would be prepared to fly again later in the year if someone else successfully completes Level 2 this year with a higher level of accuracy. Flying early, he said, would allow them to then focus their work on other projects rather than LLC vehicles.

Video: Whitehorn assesses the competition

Jeff Foust — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:25 +0000

Below is a brief snippet of Will Whitehorn’s speech at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference on Friday. In this segment Whitehorn examines some of the other ventures developing suborbital vehicles, including Rocketplane, EADS Astrium, Blue Origin, XCOR, Armadillo Aerospace, and Copenhagen Suborbitals, a little-known Danish firm developing a very minimalist suborbital system. Whitehorn’s theme in this segment is that while some of these ventures may be technically viable, they’re not capable—in his opinion, at least—of expanding to markets beyond tourism.

[Note: the video was shot with a Flip handheld camera, so the quality isn't great, and you'll probably want to crank the sound up.]

Video: John Carmack interview

Jeff Foust — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 16:49:33 +0000

As the 2008 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge was winding down, I was able to sit down and talk with John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace for several minutes. Below is the video from that interview, where Carmack discusses what happened with Pixel on Saturday, his plans for the future (which begin with tracking down and solving the engine problem that doomed Pixel’s Level 2 attempt), and his relief at winning Level 1 after two years of coming up short.