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I spoke for a few minutes a little while ago with John Carmack after Armadillo brought Pixel back to the staging area. The vehicle landed with two legs on the pad and two off the pad, which caused it to tip over. Carmack said the problem is with a sluggish control system that makes it hard for him to steer the vehicle directly over the pad for landing. The vehicle is undamaged and they plan to essentially dust it off and try again in a window that will open around 12:45 pm MDT.  According to X Prize officials, Armadillo Aerospace will try again later today for the Level 1 Lunar Lander Challenge. Pixel suffered only minor damage when it tipped over on landing and Armadillo believes it can be repaired. Also, a small piece of leather wrapped around the base of one of its legs fell off during ascent, but that appears to be a just a minor inconvenience. They plan to bring the vehicle back to the staging area shortly. Armadillo Aerospace’s Pixel vehicle flew the first leg of the Level One Lunar Lander Challenge, but the vehicle landed off the padd and tipped over. There are no fuel leaks reported.  Here’s a video of a pair of Tripoli high-powered amateur rocket launches one minute apart a little over a half-hour ago. The first launch (on the far left of the screen) is about 10 seconds into the video, the second (in left-center) is about a minute later. The large white rocket in the center hasn’t launched yet. Just got word (at 9:15 am MDT) that Armadillo is about 15 minutes away from fully pressurizing their LOX tanks, at which time they’ll be ready to fly. Just after 8:30 am MDT Armadillo started their second attempt to win the Level One Lunar Lander Challenge, trigging a 2.5-hour launch window. They’re in the process of taking Pixel out to the launch site right now.  Otherwise it has been pretty quiet here, with no launches or engine tests so far this morning. That will change in a few minutes with a Tripoli amateur high-powered rocket launch. I talked with Ken Davidian of NASA’s Centennial Challenges program this morning and because of some logistical issues they won’t be able to have any of the microwave-powered climbers operate at the airport. Instead, they’ll head later in the day back to the county fairgrounds, several miles to the west where the qualifying runs took place, to run those climbers. They are going to try and get as many of the solar-powered climbers to run at the Cup this morning, before winds are forecast to pick up this afternoon. This means they may not be able to declare a winner in the beamed power competition before the Cup ends late this afternoon. At about 7:15 am MDT Armadillo Aerospace showed up with a repaired Pixel vehicle, ready to make another attempt later this morning for the Lunar Lander Challenge Level 1. John Carmack said that they made a number of fixes to Pixel overnight, including replacing the landing legs with the ones from Texel, replacing some burned wiring and adding additional insulation to wiring, and making a change to the flight software to lower the descent rate to 1 m/s, all to avoid the hard landing they experienced yesterday. Carmack said they noticed some cracking in the combustion chamber of the engine, so they replaced the chamber with an older one. Should they be successful this morning with Level One, they are not ruling out flying Texel for Level Two this afternoon, or else making a demonstration flight of about 150 seconds to break the DC-X flight duration record.  A quasi-random collection of links to other coverage from Friday’s events:
One of the other events that took place during the day Friday was a press conference where the Rocket Racing League (RRL) unveiled its first X-Racer rocketplane and its name, Thunderhawk. The event got some star power with guest appearances by Buzz Aldrin and Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico:  (Richardson is the second from the left, between Peter Diamandis and RRL’s Granger Whitelaw.) After the announcement, Richardson was asked about how he felt about the RRL, which is setting up shop in New Mexico . To say he was effusive with praise is a minor understatement. “What’s most exciting is the Rocket Racing League,” he said. “You’re going to see, come next year, that Rocket Racing League is going to be as popular as NASCAR.” That’s a little difficult to believe, given both the breadth and depth of interest in NASCAR in the US, but hyperbole comes part and parcel with such events. Asked if he’d like to take a flight on any rocketplane or suborbital vehicle, he responded, “Yeah, eventually, sure I will. I gotta lose a little weight first.” |
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