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There are people in Texas smart enough to make/run a robotic unmanned drone?

Carmack for one!

I think that this story was on slashdot last year, I wonder if it's related to this law.

So it looks like some proficiency with rocket science is needed after all.

You forgot Blue Origin (run by Amazon's Jeff Bezos) and the quaintly named but feisty Armadillo Aerospace. Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop Grumman -- I believe those companies have been contracting to NASA and the defense department for years but prefer to suck the government's massive teats by going through NASA, the DOD, and all those other agencies. In fact, Northrop more or less purchased Scaled Composites.

These new companies are fresh faces on the scene that has been dominated by aerospace heavy weights for years. I have great admiration for Elon Musk. That guy rules.

While this may seem a bit far fetched, there is a precedent for a small but determined group of people who I think will eventually be able to get some vehicles above the Kármán line and perhaps even eventually into orbital spaceflight. While not mentioned in the article, these groups have been able to do some impressive things.

The groups I'd compare to this effort include:

• Armadillo Aerospace - a couple of Texans with big dreams and a comparatively small budget (compared to NASA)
• Copenhagen Suborbitals - a bunch of crazy Danes who can't keep still. BTW, check out their submarine they built earlier... gives a whole new meaning to a ballistic missile submarine.
• ARCA - The European continent holds more than a few nut groups. These are the Romanians who have really gone out on a limb to redefine what spaceflight even means.
• Unreasonable Rocket - Just when you've seen it all, along comes a group who does even more with less. And these guys are from California.

My point here is that a small group with limited finances can put stuff together if they care, provided that they make the effort, experiment a whole bunch, and keep working at the issues. The nice thing about all of the above groups is that they've been around for a few years, seem to be pretty stable, and have all flown vehicles of various kinds to prove they are legitimate. These are not groups with pretty power point presentations, but rather folks that have more than a couple smoking craters from experiments gone bad as well as some amazing success stories too. I expect every one of these groups to be above the Kármán line within this next decade, and quite possibly one or two of them could achieve orbit in the next 20-40 years if they stay persistent with their business plans.

I certainly see nothing special about these groups, and it is entirely possible that a group in Uganda could join their ranks in their quest to build a cheap but quality rocket. There are some amazing resources to draw upon as well as a whole bunch of experience. Besides, Uganda doesn't have to deal with ITAR restrictions, so there may even be an advantage for them over some of their competitors.

I mean, if you want a "Spaceport", why not go to where the facilities are the best? The Okla. Spaceport in Burns Flat has longer, wider runways (13,503' x 300' w/1000 overruns versus only 10,000' x 200'), better access to major transportation and major population centers, 50,000 square foot manufacturing facility with loading docks adjacent to main line rail spur, and a golf course on site. BTW, it's where Armadillo Aerospace goes to play

It's possible for monopolies to exist without government intervention.

- without gov't intervention no monopoly can exist, and if there is some dominant business, it's domination is totally temporary.

. Perhaps the business in question is a risky endeavor that no one but a select few wish to take up.

- what does that even mean? Every business is a risky endeavor that only very few are willing to take up. Case in point is private space launches, what can be more risky and time/resource consuming that that? Well, there are things, but this is definitely one of them:

http://www.space.com/11298-spacex-rocket-private-spaceflight-falcon9.html

http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/

http://www.virgingalactic.com/

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home

Perhaps very few people have the money to provide competition towards an already established business

- this wasn't a problem in the beginning of 20th century, before the Fed started printing all that money and IRS started taking people's incomes away, so there were hundreds, even thousands of competitors in phone business, dozens in electrical power generation AND transmission. Of-course this happened before some businesses in those industries started colluding with the government to get monopoly statuses. Same with pharma and medical profession, which always were private enterprises but eventually became monopolies due to government involvement.

Perhaps the majority help create a monopoly themselves by not shopping elsewhere enough

- that's called demand, if one company provides a solution that is so cost effective and provides so much value, that most people do not bother looking for alternatives, then for a while this business will dominate, but the competition arises anyway, just like with the phone and electrical companies that I mentioned. Those are tough businesses, especially due to name recognition, and still the monopolies there only formed after government intervention.

And without regulation, how would anyone stop companies that cooperate with one another (which could happen if they would receive more money by doing so)?

- nobody wants to share their pie with somebody else, who may or may not succeed being a competitor.

If you have a business and I come over and tell you: I am going to take over your market share because I am going to build a business better than yours. So you think you'd just start paying me money only so that I wouldn't do it? How many people would you be willing to support this way, because that's what this amounts to. No no, what you do is you laugh me out of your office and tell me to go do it if I can, and then you concentrate more on your market share because I promised to take it away.

Cartels do not work, it's clear with oil cartels - they don't work. It's because there is no upside for you to keep your promise to only meet your quota at some preset price and not to sell more and not to sell more at lower price, because clearly, if you have to collude with others in your cartel, then the prices are artificially set, and in reality (IRL) you make more money by having more customers who buy more of your product, not by setting artificial barriers to your customers by raising prices too high.

Businesses know that it's better to have as much market penetration as possible, you do this by providing product as cheaply and at highest quality that can, that way you get the most market penetration. The only time cartels work is when government is standing there with a gun - just like in case of big pharma and FDA.

I would like to know what "mountain" in the Marshall Islands you are talking about that would be suitable here? Most of that country is a bunch of coral atolls that are just a few meters above sea-level, and the combined land area of the entire country is about comparable to a small typical mid-western county in America, or one of the smaller counties in the UK. That isn't a whole lot of room to be able to build something on the scale you are talking about here. It is a fine place to launch rockets because there is a whole lot of nothing around at least in terms of people and houses if you decide to launch from the area in a rocket.

You might be able to find some more appropriate mountains in Indonesia, but regardless there are some substantial problems that come from any sort of similar kind of system. By far and away the largest problem is simply the sheer amount of initial capital that would be required to put one of these systems together. Land acquisition costs would be the minor part, where purchasing part of Manhattan and demolishing several acres of buildings would be by comparison cheap.

Sure, you can build demonstrator projects that can show the principles of the system... you've already suggested that has been done repeatedly so the initial statement "why in the hell ANYBODY is using rockets for non live payloads these days" should be painfully obvious: because nobody can afford to build the system necessary to get it to work out. For what is by definition an untried and unproven system (these things don't just scale up to larger sizes) not only are private businesses unwilling to spend money on something that may not bring any sort of financial return, governments are equally unwilling to spend that kind of money on an untried and unproven system too.

Rockets at least can be built in somebody's garage at the price a mere mortal can afford, even if you happen to be an independently wealthy millionaire to start out with. They can make it out into space, and have done so by multiple groups of people in multiple countries around the world. I don't know what a man-rated railgun system that would be capable of putting an astronaut into low-earth orbit would cost right off the top of my head, but it is at least in the hundred billion dollar or larger size budget if I had to guess, possibly trillions of dollars. Even a purely cargo system carrying just fuel or water (which can be turned into fuel when in orbit) would hardly be cheap.

Such a railgun system might be more economically feasible than a space elevator or some other kind of crazy systems that have been proposed, but I would dare argue you don't even know the engineering questions that need to be asked if you build such a system. There are certainly a great many reasons why it hasn't been built, and the Marshall Islands would be in particular a lousy place to build such a system, for a great many reasons.

Id never had as much money as Valve got from HL and CS. They could never have made the investment necessary to create Steam without getting permanent support from a publisher who would have ruined it before it left the cradle out of fear of it destroying them.

Quite so! Everyone knows that a lack of funds is why Carmack could never fulfill his dreams of spaceflight.

Without government regulation, there is nothing stopping corporations and other powerful players from using extra-market forces to skew the market in their favor.

Stop buying from them. Out of control corporations are only a problem when people buy products from these corporations despite knowing that the corporation is a problem. The days of the company store are long gone, no one is forced to spend their money at only one company. Have a problem with Wal-Mart? Document what it is they are doing wrong, and start a viral campaign. Even Wal-mart would go out of business if people stopped shopping there.

Government is not evil.

True, but it is organized force. At the end of the day the government takes your money by force and spends it. This is not theory, there are people in prison right now because the IRS didn't like how they kept their books. Not criminals mind you, people who made an honest mistake. John Carmack wrote about someone he knows personally who is in that situation.

I like John Carmack's analogy: what do you care about strongly enough to feel morally justified making me pay for it by pointing a gun at me? In my opinion, much less than the government is doing now.

Well, they already built something like that a while ago. But they are currently concentrating on suborbital VTVL rockets anyway.

I agree. Why should you have to pay tax dollars on this?

But at the same time, why should you prevent me through silly regulations (hint, ITAR... look it up if you like) and government policies that explicitly keep me from experimenting with or even attempting to build rockets on my own dime. The question isn't that somebody like you needs to be able to pay for me to go into space, but rather that there are people (perhaps you aren't one of them) that explicitly want to keep me down on this rock at gunpoint and will sabotage any efforts I make in regards to getting off of this rock.

Organizations like NASA are quickly becoming a relic of the past, where the money is merely a way to have a bunch of bureaucrats spin their wheels and keep some disenchanted aerospace engineers and munitions workers busy when a war isn't going on. I certainly wouldn't cry too hard if NASA was completely de-funded and disbanded by Congress.... as if they have been making any sort of relevant progress towards cost-effective spaceflight at any time over the past 40 years anyway. Doubling the NASA budget is only going to double the number of bureaucrats working in Houston, Texas. It isn't going to get anybody off of this rock in a meaningful way.

On the other hand, there are many different private spaceflight companies with real hardware that can get people into space. We don't need a government agency to get that accomplished. Yes, government grants are nice, but it isn't needed to get this task accomplished.

For myself, if government is going to get involved at all, I'd rather they simply give a "tax holiday" for all federal taxes (corporate and personal income taxes... and other kinds too) by companies directly engaged in putting equipment into space. It would certainly be far and away more cost effective than doubling the current NASA budget, and perhaps something would actually be flying beyond Low-Earth orbit too. I definitely think that such a move would cause private space investment to roar into life in a manner that has never been seen before. The loss in taxes would be minor, and I could argue that the taxes raised from support industries would by far and away more than make up for any "lost" tax receipts to such companies.... and certainly be quite a bit less than going through the appropriations meat-grinder of the U.S. Congress.

No, Armadillo's current rockets, drogue chute and all, are intended ultimately for suborbital flights here on Earth. These comments from John Carmack regarding parachutes are a few years old now, but they still apply to Armadillo Aerospace's current thinking.

Yep, the actual use-cases are pretty weak. But if you're buying a Volt then the chances are you like gadgets, and find value in this kind of thing.

A certain Mr. Carmack summed it up best, I think, when he wrote:
"Telneting into your rocket is sort of fundamentally cool."

I linked to this is a previous slashdot submission, but for the curious you can see video of some of Armadillo's launches in the past year here:

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/Gallery/Videos

Youtube version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsdpB6UmrAw

There was also a rather cool news update back in January describing in great detail what they've been up to for the prior 8+ months: http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=369

Also, I disagree with the summary/gizmodo's claim that Armadillo has a "real" rocket while SpaceShipTwo isn't a real rocket. Armadillo has a VTVL (vertical take-off, vertical landing) while Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is an air-launched HTVL (horizontal take-off, vertical landing). Both are "real" rockets.

Finally, NASA recently put out a request for proposals for a testbed for lunar lander demonstrations, which I think will be right up Armadillo's alley. They'll probably be competing with companies like Blue Origin, Masten Space Systems (Lunar Lander Challenge winner, currently working on their "Xogdor the Meltinator" vehicle), and Unreasonable Rocket:

http://spaceprizes.blogspot.com/2010/05/shoulda-had-tfftb-prize.html

ETDD is for smaller technology development and demonstration projects. Expected subjects for ETDD include in situ resource utilization, autonomous precision landing, advanced in-space propulsion, closed-loop life support systems, advanced EVA, radiation shielding, human-robotic interfaces, efficient space power systems, EDL (entry, descent, and landing) technologies, high-performance materials and structures, and participatory exploration.

The new ETDD RFI is for several technology demonstrations. The subjects of these demonstrations include:
* In-Situ Resource Utilization: This is to demonstrate a prototype ISRU system in a vacuum chamber that can simulate lunar temperatures and that can contain lunar simulant. Later, there would be a flight demonstration at the lunar surface on a robotic precursor mission. Of course this plan brings to mind several lunar space prizes: the Regolith Excavation Challenge, the MoonROx Challenge, and the Google Lunar X PRIZE.
* High-Power Electric Propulsion System for human spaceflight
* Human Exploration Telerobotics: This involves ISS-to-ground telerobotics, ground-to-ISS telerobotics, and large-scale participatory exploration
* Fission Power Systems Technology
* Autonomous Precision Landing: This involves demonstrations on Earth of autonomous landing and hazard avoidance technologies. The long-range plan is to use the technology on a robotic lander on the Moon or other large body. The technology "Must be capable of flying on a variety of lunar lander precursor missions". The two major parts of this demonstration are the Terrestrial Free Flyer Test Bed and the Hazard Detection System.

The Terrestrial Free Flyer Test Bed deserves special attention. This test bed needs to be able to carry 100 kg of sensor/electronics payload as well as supporting mass for other subsystems, fly up to 1 km, translate horizontally, land at various angles ending in the last 30-50 meters with vertical landing, and fly for at least 210 seconds with the payload. I didn't see anything in the RFI about propulsion, but I imagine rocket-powered vehicles would have a bit of an edge.

I linked to this is a previous slashdot submission, but for the curious you can see video of some of Armadillo's launches in the past year here:

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/Gallery/Videos

Youtube version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsdpB6UmrAw

There was also a rather cool news update back in January describing in great detail what they've been up to for the prior 8+ months: http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=369

Also, I disagree with the summary/gizmodo's claim that Armadillo has a "real" rocket while SpaceShipTwo isn't a real rocket. Armadillo has a VTVL (vertical take-off, vertical landing) while Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is an air-launched HTVL (horizontal take-off, vertical landing). Both are "real" rockets.

Finally, NASA recently put out a request for proposals for a testbed for lunar lander demonstrations, which I think will be right up Armadillo's alley. They'll probably be competing with companies like Blue Origin, Masten Space Systems (Lunar Lander Challenge winner, currently working on their "Xogdor the Meltinator" vehicle), and Unreasonable Rocket:

http://spaceprizes.blogspot.com/2010/05/shoulda-had-tfftb-prize.html

ETDD is for smaller technology development and demonstration projects. Expected subjects for ETDD include in situ resource utilization, autonomous precision landing, advanced in-space propulsion, closed-loop life support systems, advanced EVA, radiation shielding, human-robotic interfaces, efficient space power systems, EDL (entry, descent, and landing) technologies, high-performance materials and structures, and participatory exploration.

The new ETDD RFI is for several technology demonstrations. The subjects of these demonstrations include:
* In-Situ Resource Utilization: This is to demonstrate a prototype ISRU system in a vacuum chamber that can simulate lunar temperatures and that can contain lunar simulant. Later, there would be a flight demonstration at the lunar surface on a robotic precursor mission. Of course this plan brings to mind several lunar space prizes: the Regolith Excavation Challenge, the MoonROx Challenge, and the Google Lunar X PRIZE.
* High-Power Electric Propulsion System for human spaceflight
* Human Exploration Telerobotics: This involves ISS-to-ground telerobotics, ground-to-ISS telerobotics, and large-scale participatory exploration
* Fission Power Systems Technology
* Autonomous Precision Landing: This involves demonstrations on Earth of autonomous landing and hazard avoidance technologies. The long-range plan is to use the technology on a robotic lander on the Moon or other large body. The technology "Must be capable of flying on a variety of lunar lander precursor missions". The two major parts of this demonstration are the Terrestrial Free Flyer Test Bed and the Hazard Detection System.

The Terrestrial Free Flyer Test Bed deserves special attention. This test bed needs to be able to carry 100 kg of sensor/electronics payload as well as supporting mass for other subsystems, fly up to 1 km, translate horizontally, land at various angles ending in the last 30-50 meters with vertical landing, and fly for at least 210 seconds with the payload. I didn't see anything in the RFI about propulsion, but I imagine rocket-powered vehicles would have a bit of an edge.

A country like the one where this manned space program and a few others are currently being built ?

Actually, there is very little evidence that Interorbital has produced any real hardware in the past few years. Plenty of models and drawings, but no actual hardware (let alone flight tests).

(Posted AC because I'm in the industry, and Interorbital has made themselves a pain in the past for people who say this sort of thing about them. But don't take my AC word for it: go try to find evidence they've built or flown something. If they have, there should be plenty of info, right?)

If you want real web sites, check out people like Armadillo, XCOR, Masten, or Unreasonable, for example.

Is this a joke? Your team page shows you have at most four engineers, who are mostly IT geeks, not experts in propulsion, aerospace structures or astrodynamics, with the possible exception of Dr Snyder. You have a fricken artist before having a real engineering team, or anything solid to promote. You guys make Armadillo Aerospace look like Lockheed Martin. At least SpaceX etc. while lacking other things, started with something (usually money), you guys don't have anything. Quit wasting your time.

I'd skimmed that updates page but hadn't found much. I took another look and found a bit more: On this page, for instance, they mention using a simple PD controller for their throttle. That's not too surprising; it's all you need. What I'm more interested in though, and still haven't found, is how they control orientation -- if they're controlling Euler angles individually or doing something fancier on the Lie group of rotations...

It's all software, but I believe it's a PID controller at heart. I know they do things that aren't strictly PID, like dead bands in the roll control, but I don't think it's terribly complicated. If you read through their updates they have a fair bit of information, in varying levels of detail.

I know they've moved more and more to having broader control loops: instead of one loop that sets a thrust level in order to maintain position, and another that tweaks the throttle to hit the target thrust, they just wrap it into one loop that moves the throttle valve in order to maintain altitude.

jet aircraft (each costing millions), runs on jet fuel, not methane

But rockets (and rocket planes) do Carmack and Armadillo Aerospace have been doing just that for NASA.

Tm

Whatever happened to the considerable R&D projects to replace the shuttle with a new model?

Off the top of my head, here's a quick summary of the various serious efforts into creating new manned spacecraft over the past 10-15 years:

• DC-X: A low-cost VTVL prototype built under a $58 million contract, which is still regarded by many as an ideal approach to an orbital vehicle. Plans were to create incrementally larger versions of it which would eventually be able to attain orbit in a cost-effective fashion. Unfortunately, during one of its flight tests a field technician messed up the landing gear, so it fell over when it landed and was destroyed (1996). The company told NASA it'd need $50 million to build a new one, but NASA used the opportunity to cancel the project so it could instead give more funds to the billion-dollar X-33/Venturestar project. Its spiritual successors are John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. In fact, the secretive Blue Origin company has hired several of the former DC-X engineers. One of the Armadillo members has a great write-up of the DC-X here: http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/DCX/
• X-33: Interesting project which would have tested a bunch of fascinating technologies (e.g. composite cryogenic fuel tanks, metallic thermal protection, an aerospike engine, lifting body design). Unfortunately, NASA really should've tried testing those technologies individually first, instead of putting every single one of them in the critical path of a new vehicle design. Oops. I believe the main problem ended up being the composite fuel tank, and when that failed the entire project (which had used up a billion dollars thus far) had to be canceled in 2001.
• Orbital Space Plane: A low-cost vehicle intended to launch on already-existing EELVs, started in 2003 and expected to start carrying crew by 2010. In 2004, this project was transferred to the Crew Exploration Vehicle project.

Now, the currently ongoing projects and contenders:

• Crew Exploration Vehicle: This is a little complicated. Back in 2004, the Crew Exploration Vehicle was announced, and it was assumed it'd be similar to the Orbital Space Plane project it derived from: a low-cost capsule which could be launched on already-existing EELV rockets like the Delta IV Heavy or Atlas V. This went through a number of stages of design studies and competitive flight tests planned, with unmanned tests by 2008 and unmanned tests sometime in the 2010-2014 range. Unfortunately, in 2005 Michael Griffin came in, proclaimed that he had a superior design and tossed out all the prior work. Although he claimed his design was simpler and faster, and commissioned NASA studies to "prove this," history has pretty well proved that his design (now the Ares I) was nowhere near as simple and straightforward as he thought it would be. Instead of the plan to have low-cost CEV launching on existing vehicles it had before, NASA currently has the Ares I which has an ever-increasing cost, currently around $35 billion. The per-launch cost is also expected to be as much as or higher than the space shuttle. Oops.
• DIRECT: A bunch of undercover NASA engineers who didn't believe Ares was the best solution but were afraid of retribution from Griffin, so they anonymously released a plan they thought was superior. Since it's Shuttle-derived it's certainly more expensive than an EELV-based design, but would have a larger payload.
• EELVs: These rockets are already used regularly to launch payloads for NASA and private industry, and most of the final proposals for the pre-Griffi

I just saw this April 2009 video interview with John Carmack this morning, where he mentions that some of their NASA work is up in the air, pending the budget shakeout. Does this mean no more NASA work for Armadillo Aerospace?

It does emphasize one benefit of private research and development: not subject (as in "we kill you right now") to such political money shuffling.

-Malloc

Or John Carmack...

-l

Nedlohs was speculating that the reason to lower the lander to the ground via the winches was because it was too tricky to some to a soft landing.

I was refuting that particular explanation by pointing out that if they can come to a hover close to the ground, which it is designed to do, then it is feasible to come to a computer controlled soft landing from that point, as Armadillo has demonstrated.

re: payload:
Armadillo's lander carries at least a 25kg payload to satisfy the contest rules, and they have noted that they actually carry "quite a bit" more:

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=346

re: relative size:
I'm not sure what you are using as a basis for your 1000 multiple in the mass comparison of the vehicles, but from what I can find Armadillo's vehicle in the example weighs about 200kg. Certainly not as heavy as the Mars lander, but enough for a proof of concept, especially considering the decreased gravity on Mars.

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=347

Nedlohs was speculating that the reason to lower the lander to the ground via the winches was because it was too tricky to some to a soft landing.

I was refuting that particular explanation by pointing out that if they can come to a hover close to the ground, which it is designed to do, then it is feasible to come to a computer controlled soft landing from that point, as Armadillo has demonstrated.

re: payload:
Armadillo's lander carries at least a 25kg payload to satisfy the contest rules, and they have noted that they actually carry "quite a bit" more:

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=346

re: relative size:
I'm not sure what you are using as a basis for your 1000 multiple in the mass comparison of the vehicles, but from what I can find Armadillo's vehicle in the example weighs about 200kg. Certainly not as heavy as the Mars lander, but enough for a proof of concept, especially considering the decreased gravity on Mars.

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=347

I don't buy that. If Armadillo Aerospace can design and build a lander that can go from a hover to a soft controlled rocket landing, in Earth gravity, why can't NASA do the same thing in Mars gravity?

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2007_10_21/modFreeFlight.mpg

A LOX-Alcohol flame should be blue,

The LOX/liquid methane plumes are blue, but LOX/ethanol is faint orange.

as in the XCOR's plane.

XCOR's plane burns LOX/kerosene, which burns bright orange.

Pink is a sign of a cool and imperfect combustion.

In the case of Armadillo's plane, it's actually a sign of "plume seeding," where chemicals are added to the exhaust to make the plume more dramatic and distinct, especially in broad daylight. To the naked eye that "pink" plume is actually brilliant red. But it's so bright that the video overexposes it and it ends up seeming pink.

further the X-cor engine shows the standing-wave bunsen-like effect of optimal tuning,

I assume you're talking about "Mach diamonds," which Armadillo's engines have as well. This page shows that, as well as what the LOX/ethanol plume looks like with and without seeding: http://armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=358

and the ability to start and restart.

Which the Armadillo engines have.

Still going:

http://armadilloaerospace.com/

Regards
elFarto

Smoke won't be a problem for these rockets. The engines are no where near the size of the ones on the shuttle and they use different propellants. As a matter of fact there are plans to add some dyes to the fuel so that the rockets each have different color plumes to make them easier to distinguish from each other in the air.

A couple of links for you:

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2008_04_14/seededPlume.jpg http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2008_05_12/greenPlume.jpg

Also, the size of the turbulent wake left by jets is determined by the size of the plane and the relation isn't linear so airliners have bigger turbulent wakes than pretty much anything else out there. On top of that the reason other planes have to stay out of that wake is not just because its bumpy but also because it disrupts airflow into their engines which can be dangerous but isn't something rocket planes need to worry about as they carry their own oxidizer.

I really hope that the Rocket Racing League does well enough to support itself. It will help pay for the development of better rocket engines which could have the effect of making space exploration cheaper.

Cheers,
Greg

Smoke won't be a problem for these rockets. The engines are no where near the size of the ones on the shuttle and they use different propellants. As a matter of fact there are plans to add some dyes to the fuel so that the rockets each have different color plumes to make them easier to distinguish from each other in the air.

A couple of links for you:

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2008_04_14/seededPlume.jpg http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2008_05_12/greenPlume.jpg

Also, the size of the turbulent wake left by jets is determined by the size of the plane and the relation isn't linear so airliners have bigger turbulent wakes than pretty much anything else out there. On top of that the reason other planes have to stay out of that wake is not just because its bumpy but also because it disrupts airflow into their engines which can be dangerous but isn't something rocket planes need to worry about as they carry their own oxidizer.

I really hope that the Rocket Racing League does well enough to support itself. It will help pay for the development of better rocket engines which could have the effect of making space exploration cheaper.

Cheers,
Greg

They are using rocket engines.
The engines are supplied by Armadillo Aerospace.
John Carmack posted news about the deal a while back: http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=358

Armadillo Aerospace is providing the RRL with rockets for their planes, so yes, they are rockets. http://armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=358

This looks and sounds a lot like what John Carmack is doing at Armadillo. Except Carmack's development has focused a lot on engines and these guys seem to be skipping that step.

I have to wonder how flight software developed around a mock-up using pressurized air is going to fair when migrated to a live system with a conventional rocket engine. Especially the fact that they're developing the software indoors. How will they test/account for wind shear and other weather effects?

In 18 months they've created a frame, put a couple SCUBA tanks in there with a nozzle/valve they can control remotely. I'm sure any mech. engineer student could do the same and in probably less time.

Scan to the bottom of this link, and you'll see the budget:
http://armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=357

$4M for some scuba gear with ambition or $3.5M for the real thing? Hmm...

Where is Armadillo Aerospace? So far they're the only contenders to fly in the contest and they're not even on the list.

Where's John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace? I would think that these guys would jump at a chance like this since they could use some promotion after what happened last year.

Watch these guys:

Armadillo Aerospace
Masten Space Systems

Both are working on smaller vehicles right now, but both have their eyes on orbital space.

Cell phones adventures

March 27th, 2005 | John Carmack

Come on, Netbeans and Java have really amde some progress in the last two and a half years.

Netbeans 6.0 (even in beta) is good. Everyone who isn't married to Eclipse should take some days to test Netbeans again. Performancewise I can't find any major differences between Netbeans and Eclipse.

Bye egghat

There are two levels in the cup, and armadillo has already flown the profile of the level 1 flight at Oklahoma space port. They just have to repeat it at the cup to claim the $350k, but they are doing it with a smaller craft, so that they can enter their larger craft in the level 2.

It's too bad none of the other team are going to give it a go this year. Some of them looked like they might just pull off the level 1 profile. Much less suspenseful this way :P

To answer your questions -- apparently Armadillo will be the only team competing this year. According to last year's wrap up they spent "...six months and about a quarter million dollars in direct pursuit of this...". Of course, more money has been spent since then, but even if they quadrupled the amount they spent, they'd still come out way ahead.

Good news!

Translation: Let's see if we can stall on releasing the video long enough for the bad publicity to blow over and everyone forgets about it.

I didn't want you to forget about this, so I'm replying to your post..

Here's the video, along with even more info ...

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Ho me/News?news_id=349

I'd be the first to admit that studies and analysis can be over done, but to sneer and reject them outright is a sign of ignorance.

You're setting up a straw man. No one has either sneered at, nor rejected analysis "outright". What I have sneered at and rejected is the concept of being so afraid of failure that millions (if not billions) of dollars and millions of pages of analysis are done so that an entirely perfect product can pop out the other end. And more often than not in recent history, NOTHING comes out the other end, because they never get that far. They run out of money.

Say what you want about Carmack, but he has a vehicle that flies, and (untested) hardware capable of reaching 100KM space, and he did it for a miniscule amount of money, even by X-Prize standards. You may not think much of his methods, but his methods have *worked*, at least so far. The fact that he has real, flying hardware puts him ahead of a lot of the others.

Speaking of that, you do know that Armadillo was awarded an Air Force SBIR contract, right? I quote that link:

Somewhat to our surprise, Armadillo was awarded an Air Force SBIR contract. We made a fairly general pitch about the virtues of a modular space launch system built in our current style, and apparently they liked what they saw. The fact that the two awards made for this round were to Armadillo and XCOR seems to make the point that they want to get something that actually flies. While phase I awards are really just for studies, we will be generating a lot of flight and operational data from the module work we were already doing. If they decide to go forward with a phase II contract, we will deliver some vehicles that they can actually USE.

So apparently not everyone considers them the "Keystone Kops" of the Aerospace industry.