Armadillo Aerospace’s first attempt to win Level 1 of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge was scrubbed Saturday morning. Details right now are scarce, but apparently the team encountered some kind of technical problem with the Mod vehicle at the pad that could not be fixed there. As far as we know they will try […]
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As for the Lunar Lander Challenge, the centerpiece of the X Prize Cup: Armadillo Aerospace will be flying its Mod vehicle for the Level 1 challenge and the larger Pixel vehicle (which flew last year) for Level 2. If all goes well, Mod will fly Saturday morning and Pixel will fly Saturday afternoon; if both […] I’m in the media building at Holloman AFB, having gotten out of a press conference a little while ago about the X Prize Cup and related announcements. A few highlights: Rocketplane Global, as expected, unveiled its new design for the XP suborbital spaceplane. The company is no longer using Learjet hardware for the vehicle, deciding […] At a couple of recent conferences, including the ISDC just over a week ago in Dallas, John Carmack said it would take “very bad luck” for Armadillo Aerospace to not win prize money in this year’s Lunar Lander Challenge. This weekend, Armadillo demonstrated why Carmack has been so confident. On Saturday Armadillo flew a “complete […] John Carmack gave an extensive status report on Armadillo Aerospace at the Space Access conference yesterday. Armadillo’s near-term emphasis is on preparing for the 2007 Lunar Lander Challenge, having made some upgrades to Pixel and Texel, such as stronger landing legs. They are also working on their modular vehicle approach: putting together progressively more capable […] The website for Time magazine has a fairly detailed review article about the emerging space tourism industry. Writer Cathy Booth Thomas talks with a number of the leading companies, including Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace, and Benson Space Company, and also covers the more secretive Blue Origin; there’s also coverage if Bigelow Aerospace and developing spaceports, […] CNET News.com, whose readers generally know John Carmack as the creator of the computer games Doom and Quake, interviews the Armadillo Aerospace founder about his space venture. Carmack talks about Armadillo’s participation in last month’s X Prize Cup, his idea for “vertical drag racing”, and future plans, with an eye in particular for going after […] For this week’s issue of The Space Review I provide a summary of the just-completed X Prize Cup, with a particular emphasis on Armadillo’s attempt to win the Lunar Lander Challenge. If you’ve been reading this blog then you’re familar with most of the details in this article. However, I do try to put the […] Here’s a video from Armadillo Aerospace’s Saturday morning flight of Pixel at the X Prize Cup, when they landed partially off the pad. The video is a little crude and jumpy, but you can see most of the flight until Pixel disappears behind a tent shortly before landing. […] The initial report on Pixel’s crash: Challenge rules prevented Armadillo from repairing the broken leg on the vehicle, so they instead “propped up” the leg and resecured one of the competition-mandated weights on it. However, when the rocket started to lift off the vehicle tilted again; the flight system detected this and initiated an auto […] |
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