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This is remarkable because this is only the second craft I know of that Armadillo has lost. They've blown gaskets, blown many engines, done hundreds of engine fire tests, but only lost two craft. The built two of this type of craft just in case they lost one. How many craft are lost normally? These guys are doing great and I'm looking forward to watching a launch some day. Also significant because nobody died. This is a learning experience. There's an old hardware saying, the amount of knowledge gained is directly proportional to the amount of equipment destroyed. If you haven't been out to their website, http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/, it's great. Lots of videos and pictures and descriptions.

This is remarkable because this is only the second craft I know of that Armadillo has lost. They've blown gaskets, blown many engines, done hundreds of engine fire tests, but only lost two craft. The built two of this type of craft just in case they lost one. How many craft are lost normally? These guys are doing great and I'm looking forward to watching a launch some day. Also significant because nobody died. This is a learning experience. There's an old hardware saying, the amount of knowledge gained is directly proportional to the amount of equipment destroyed. If you haven't been out to their website, http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/, it's great. Lots of videos and pictures and descriptions.

You're quite right. Back in June, Armadillo successfully demonstrated the full Lunar Lander Challenge level 1 flight profile at the Oklahoma Spaceport. That impressive feat wasn't deemed worthy of Slashdot (though Firehose showed it was submitted), but crashing a rocket is.

Tm

The high concentrate used as rocket fuel (up to 90% or better, read the early stages of http://armadilloaerospace.com/ when they were playing with this stuff) would ignite the cat on fire almost immediately on contact. Stuff that comes in the brown bottle is 1% or less usually (whitening toothpaste can be around 5%).

Tm

I think Carmack is interested because it is:

1. Fun.
2. A challenge.
3. A way to stick it to the man.

By "the man" I basically mean NASA. Billions of dollars. Thousands of engineers. Metric butt loads of paperwork. That's what you need to get people into space right? Bollocks! If 8 guys, one girl and an armadillo can put people into space using garage grown engineering, and on a part time basis, no less, then anyone can!

As for making a profit, watch 'em.

Armadillo Aerospace

It's a damn shame that a nice launch vehicle also happens to make a nice ICBM, but the progress of getting off this rock is a teenie bit more important that keeping foreign countries from spending less than a few million dollars and a few years of research and development to make their own design. Meanwhile, the much harder problem of making a man rated rocket is being done over and over and over again. Talk about duplication of efforts.

RTFA or go read up on the X-prize cup. Yes, in the USA, and no, this is not the first time they have been launched, and no its not really going to the moon. New Mexico has the US's first private space port down near Whitesands, where Scaled Composites/Virgin Galactic is supposedly going to be launching their commercial flight venture from. Other teams competing in this challenge have already been launching, with Armadillo Aerospace already completing the requirements without a problem (at last year's event they almost won, landing just off the pad a couple times, and flipping over). They should win hands down unless something major changes before this years competition gets underway. They have videos and details of this as well.

Tm

Just not officially, from their latest news;
"Full LLC1 flight
One June 2, we conducted a complete LLC 1 operational profile at the Oklahoma Spaceport. Everything went great. Representatives from AST and the X-Prize Cup were present. This was the first flight under experimental permit rules from a licensed spaceport. Both legs of the flight landed within a meter of the pad center, and our operation time was only an hour and a half."

Read the whole description here. It is full of all manner of technical goodies. In fact I can't wait for their next monthly update.

Perhaps this one? Can't get more kick arse than going to space.

Armadillo Aerospace is considering exactly the same fuel. Some of the advantages are relatively high ISP (lower that LH2, but with a much smaller volume) and the fuel and the oxidizer (LOX) have more or less the same volume which can be a very good thing, depending on your vehicle configuration.

Armadillo Aerospace is considering exactly the same fuel. Some of the advantages are relatively high ISP (lower that LH2, but with a much smaller volume) and the fuel and the oxidizer (LOX) have more or less the same volume which can be a very good thing, depending on your vehicle configuration.

Armadillo Aerospace now refers to this as the "Flying Crayon."

... they just don't have the funds or capabilities of NASA. Yet. They are all backed by "angel investors" from other industries who want to see private companies enter space, hence they started their own companies to try and bring commercial space into fruition:

Armadillo Aerospace (John Carmack)

Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos)

SpaceX (Elon Munsk)

XCOR(various members of RRS and others)

I don't know if anyone noticed that, but the Pixel vehicle seems somewhat unstable with its single engine.

You can see it here http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2006_09_23/Pix elQualification.wmv, later in the hover, when it starts to oscilate the engine thrust vector in order to stabilize the craft. The oscilation seems to be increasing, but it's hard to tell since the hover itself is too short.

I know they _are_ rocket scientists and, no doubt, know about this. But it seems to be a major obstacle to achieve the 180-second hover goal.

I wonder what can be done to improve it without compromising the single-engine simplicity.

I'm not sure they've actually conducted a fullly autonomous test. According to their web site, they've only done very limited tethered tests.

Actually, this post from almost 2 1/2 years ago (June 15, 2004), has a video with one of the more amazing technology demonstrations I've seen in rocketry ever. AIUI, the entire flight shown is autonomous from the time of liftoff to the time of landing. The engine warmup was done manually, but the flight was all done by computer.

...snip...

The flight parameters were set for 1.8 seconds of boost, -4 m/s^2 minimum acceleration (slightly more than negative one half G) during the stabilization phase, 3 m/s^2 acceleration in the landing phase, 1 m/s target touchdown velocity, and a 3 m uncertainty margin for the GPS altitude. I increased the minimum acceleration during stabilization because of concerns about throttling the ball valve at small open fractions and low chamber pressures. This wastes more propellant during the flight, but this vehicle can carry so much more propellant than we can use without our burn time waiver that it doesn't really matter.

The flight was perfect. It went 131 feet high, and landed less than one foot from the launch point.

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2004_06_15/per fectBoostedHop.mpg

...snip...

The auto-land worked perfectly. I had tried several algorithms on the simulator before settling on this one, and it behaved exactly the same in reality, which is always a pleasant surprise.

To date, only one VTVL rocket vehicle has demonstrated fully autonomous takeoff, hover, and landing (John Carmack's vehicle over at Armadillo Aerospace).

WMV or MPG video just posted by John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace's test hover.

WMV or MPG video just posted by John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace's test hover.

Java is still has some issues before it can be used as a game engine. John Carmack had a lot of trouble porting Doom to Java mobile phones. http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/recent %20updates/archive?news_id=295. Carmack said he liked BREW better in http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/Recent %20Updates. Not to mention Java still is not as powerful at the low level native interface such as C or C++ where you can use assembly or connect to compilied native code much easier. Java needs an efficient method to interface with graphics cards and opengl. It would be impossible for Java to support some advanced 3d rendering which is why Maya hasn't been ported to Java.

Java is still has some issues before it can be used as a game engine. John Carmack had a lot of trouble porting Doom to Java mobile phones. http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/recent %20updates/archive?news_id=295. Carmack said he liked BREW better in http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/Recent %20Updates. Not to mention Java still is not as powerful at the low level native interface such as C or C++ where you can use assembly or connect to compilied native code much easier. Java needs an efficient method to interface with graphics cards and opengl. It would be impossible for Java to support some advanced 3d rendering which is why Maya hasn't been ported to Java.

Why? Let's face it - he's piddled away most of what he has spent to date on dead ends. (Or more accurately, on things he's given up on when the going gets tough.)

What you call "piddled away", I call "research". Do you think other companies that have tried to do something that has never been done before (in this case, cheap access to space) never run into dead ends? Do you think the Wright Brothers went from metal bars to airplanes in one step without any dead ends?

The reason Carmack appears to have so many dead ends is because he lets us see them, unlike other companies who don't have that kind of confidence in themselves, and I give Carmack all the respect in the world for it.

He's a dilettante who talks a great game - bur jumps from plan to scheme to gizmo like a frog in a frying pan.

That's EXACTLY what Carmack isn't -- a talker. The world is FULL of rocket people who are all talk, but don't build a damn thing. Have you seen the video on this update? The rocket goes up and down perfectly, like it's on a rail. That is not easy. That's a full-blown world-class guidance system. Note that rocket was a perfect demonstration of an OTRAG module.

(And he's not an engineer - so far as costing etc... goes his comments you quote above are about as valid as those of the average slashdot poster. I.E. not very.)

Yes, and the Wright Bros were "just bicycle mechanics". Carmack may not have a piece of paper, but he's already built -- with his own hands -- more rocket engines and guidance systems than 98% of all supposed rocket engineers. If you follow his posts, it's obvious he's studied the subject and knows what he's talking about.

But don't take my word for it. In this post, Carmack talks about Lutz Kayser, the principle behind the OTRAG project, visiting his shop and talking to Carmack. Not only that, he left some of OTRAG's proprietary hardware for them to look at. He's met with a lot of the principals who are doing good work. You may not take Carmack seriously, but they do.

Apparently you didn't like his post, but he was absolutely right. There is so much talk about "billion dollar this" and "just give 10 billion for that", and it's ALL bullshit. The only other one I give any credit to who actually has built something that flew is Burt Rutan, but I don't trust him because everything looks like an airplane to him. But it's possible he might get to orbit.

Carmack definitely will, and he'll do it for peanuts. The more I watch his process, the more impressed I get.

Why? Let's face it - he's piddled away most of what he has spent to date on dead ends. (Or more accurately, on things he's given up on when the going gets tough.)

What you call "piddled away", I call "research". Do you think other companies that have tried to do something that has never been done before (in this case, cheap access to space) never run into dead ends? Do you think the Wright Brothers went from metal bars to airplanes in one step without any dead ends?

The reason Carmack appears to have so many dead ends is because he lets us see them, unlike other companies who don't have that kind of confidence in themselves, and I give Carmack all the respect in the world for it.

He's a dilettante who talks a great game - bur jumps from plan to scheme to gizmo like a frog in a frying pan.

That's EXACTLY what Carmack isn't -- a talker. The world is FULL of rocket people who are all talk, but don't build a damn thing. Have you seen the video on this update? The rocket goes up and down perfectly, like it's on a rail. That is not easy. That's a full-blown world-class guidance system. Note that rocket was a perfect demonstration of an OTRAG module.

(And he's not an engineer - so far as costing etc... goes his comments you quote above are about as valid as those of the average slashdot poster. I.E. not very.)

Yes, and the Wright Bros were "just bicycle mechanics". Carmack may not have a piece of paper, but he's already built -- with his own hands -- more rocket engines and guidance systems than 98% of all supposed rocket engineers. If you follow his posts, it's obvious he's studied the subject and knows what he's talking about.

But don't take my word for it. In this post, Carmack talks about Lutz Kayser, the principle behind the OTRAG project, visiting his shop and talking to Carmack. Not only that, he left some of OTRAG's proprietary hardware for them to look at. He's met with a lot of the principals who are doing good work. You may not take Carmack seriously, but they do.

Apparently you didn't like his post, but he was absolutely right. There is so much talk about "billion dollar this" and "just give 10 billion for that", and it's ALL bullshit. The only other one I give any credit to who actually has built something that flew is Burt Rutan, but I don't trust him because everything looks like an airplane to him. But it's possible he might get to orbit.

Carmack definitely will, and he'll do it for peanuts. The more I watch his process, the more impressed I get.

Umm .. the article says the "big" money maker is the little known guy making upwards of high 6 figures or low 7 figures. But then it has John Carmack on that list as one of the guys that work for big companies that don't make that much.

Whoever wrote that article isn't too smart. a) John gave away one of his ferraris, how do you think thresh got his start? b) as a hobby .. he builds rockets! That's not a cheap hobby.

read for yourself


"I should say that after Doom II and Quake releases the id Softwareper has been not so poor a company, I could say , that its personnel have been prospering. All of them have had a lot and having been pleasing themselves with some nice things. John Carmack, for example, likes cars very much. That's why he first bought one Ferrari, then another, then ... In short it happened what should have happened : there were no more place in his garage. That's why good old John decided to make a good thing: to give back to the fighting society, that he owns his financial success to, one of his splendid cars asa a competition prize. And then to start filling his garage up with cars all over again."


He had so many ferraris he didn't have space to keep them all! Sounds like he's doing pretty good to me :)
Plus, iD is still a pretty small company .. I remember reading once that everyone that worked there was a millionaire! Maybe urban legend? Who knows.

Anyways .. I'm not saying it's not possible to make big money as an indie game maker .. I'm just saying, you might want to think a little or perhaps research before you make statements like the escapist did. It reduces credibility.

The lunar lander centennial challenge is our top priority this year unless something else pops up. We had a commercial opportunity that was exciting, but it seems to have fallen through. I'm not thrilled about landing on inclined, boulder strewn fields, but the payload and delta-V requirement are easier than we expected. Having two levels and consolation prizes is a good thing.

As soon as we can show that the new engines can make two 90 second burns, the current vehicle should have level one in the bag. We will need software changes and a remote video system, but no other significant modifications. To take the big level two prize we will need a completely different landing gear arrangement, and the total performance may be pushing it a bit. If our new engine Isp is as good as it briefly looked, we may be able to modify this vehicle for level two, but we are expecting to have to use the upcoming 65" diameter vehicle, which will have a better mass ratio.

It is unfortunate that the prizes can only be claimed at the X-Prize Cup, because that will encourage us to sit on the vehicles after they have been proven out, rather than flying them hard and potentially crashing them.

er, that should be http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/

Armadillo Aero has this one nailed. http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/

I'm a big fan of Musk, too, and of private space enterprise in general.

My biggest problem with Musk is the lack of information at his website. If you want to generate a political movement (and that's what he's trying to do -- vying for Air Force contracts is the very definition of politics) you need to have much better publicity.

And his website sucks. While it's kind of pretty, there's almost no content. The news, in particular, is weak --three sentences and movie that won't play on Linux about the most recent static firing.

He has no excuse. He built PayPal! He knows the 'net! He has seen the kind of virtuous circle that can be built up through good communication. I cannot for the life of me understand why SpaceX fails so spectacularly in the communication mission.

And don't say that they are trying to keep their proprietary details secret -- if he's really interested in promoting inexpensive space travel, he'd *want* those secrets out there!

I contrast this with Carmack's spectacular Armadillo Aerospace site. All of his successes, failures, dead ends, oopses -- all presented in more detail than any sane person could ever want. With Carmack, you really feel like you can understand the process as much as you can without picking up a welding torch.

Anyway, I really can't complain. I'm sitting around making movies instead of spaceships -- please treat this rant as constructive criticism.

Thad Beier

It just seems like flight is a lot more difficult on earth because of its atmosphere where you have to worry about things like aerodynamics.

Sure, it might be more difficult, but it's still going to be easy enough that there's probably going to be at least one likely winner. For example, a couple years ago John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace demonstrated the vehicle shown in this video, which climbed to 134 feet and landed back down less than foot away from the landing point. A new vehicle with straightforward improvements should be able to win the prize.

You can see in the video that there's definitely some wind blowing across the vehicle, but the control system is able to account for it. Although his methodology is sometimes haphazard, Carmack's software-based control system is superb and should be able to handle the "atmosphere complications" you mention.

It doesn't mention this in the article submission, but it should be noted that this $2 million prize is an Alliance Challenge in NASA's Centennial Challenges program. Basically, NASA provides the prize money if there's a winning vehicle, while the X Prize Foundation is responsible for actually organizing the event. NASA has stated that they'd like to offer larger-scale competitions and prizes in the future, but they're trying out these smaller ones first.

Also, there's already a couple of groups which look like they'll have a decent chance of winning the lunar lander competition, including John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace (Carmack is the co-founder and lead programmer for id Software). Here's a quote from an article about last year's X Prize Cup Expo, where the ideas for a lunar lander challenge were first being discussed:

John Carmack, who makes his money as a video-game developer and spends some of it as the leader of Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace, said the lunar-lander challenge "certainly sounds like something up our alley." Armadillo is developing a vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket capable of bringing passengers to the edge of outer space.

California-based Masten Space Systems is also working on a vertical-launch craft, and Michael Mealling, vice president of business development, said Masten was interested in both challenges. "It just so happens that the flight plan [for the competitions] matches our development cycle exactly," he told MSNBC.com.

Well... once they get their new engines under control, which from the last update looks like it should be soon, they should be able to do this already: they've already done the vertical liftoff/hover/landing, and they have done countless controlled hovers while driving it around with a joystick. Piloting it up, over, and down shouldn't be much more difficult.

btw, the movie of the liftoff/hover/landing (well, the landing was botched from a single foot landing first with a high cross wind and the engines still on and trying to re-level the ship...but anyway):
armadilloaerospace.com

...and their other "Boosted hop" attempt, which ran out of fuel on the way up:
armadilloaerospace.com

And of course, go to the main page and read more news on what they are doing.

tm

Well... once they get their new engines under control, which from the last update looks like it should be soon, they should be able to do this already: they've already done the vertical liftoff/hover/landing, and they have done countless controlled hovers while driving it around with a joystick. Piloting it up, over, and down shouldn't be much more difficult.

btw, the movie of the liftoff/hover/landing (well, the landing was botched from a single foot landing first with a high cross wind and the engines still on and trying to re-level the ship...but anyway):
armadilloaerospace.com

...and their other "Boosted hop" attempt, which ran out of fuel on the way up:
armadilloaerospace.com

And of course, go to the main page and read more news on what they are doing.

tm

Well... once they get their new engines under control, which from the last update looks like it should be soon, they should be able to do this already: they've already done the vertical liftoff/hover/landing, and they have done countless controlled hovers while driving it around with a joystick. Piloting it up, over, and down shouldn't be much more difficult.

btw, the movie of the liftoff/hover/landing (well, the landing was botched from a single foot landing first with a high cross wind and the engines still on and trying to re-level the ship...but anyway):
armadilloaerospace.com

...and their other "Boosted hop" attempt, which ran out of fuel on the way up:
armadilloaerospace.com

And of course, go to the main page and read more news on what they are doing.

tm

After a series of successful DC-X tests the idiots then in charge at NASA picked the unproven VentureStar design instead, and it turned out that even NASA couldn't afford to buy enough unobtanium to build a working VentureStar.

(The DC-X was destroyed by human error in a test, but the vehicle performed well in all the prior tests. There was no good reason not to pursue the Delta Clipper design, other than that apparently the team didn't give NASA bigwigs enough kickbacks.)

Hmmm... maybe the folks at Armadillo Aerospace can win this one, now that they've completed their new vehicle. Check out the photos, from a distance it looks like something on the cover of a 1940s science fiction magazine. :-)

After a series of successful DC-X tests the idiots then in charge at NASA picked the unproven VentureStar design instead, and it turned out that even NASA couldn't afford to buy enough unobtanium to build a working VentureStar.

(The DC-X was destroyed by human error in a test, but the vehicle performed well in all the prior tests. There was no good reason not to pursue the Delta Clipper design, other than that apparently the team didn't give NASA bigwigs enough kickbacks.)

Hmmm... maybe the folks at Armadillo Aerospace can win this one, now that they've completed their new vehicle. Check out the photos, from a distance it looks like something on the cover of a 1940s science fiction magazine. :-)

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Ho me/News?news_id=272

If they put their mind to it they should be able to fullful this challenge in a number of weeks.

/greger

/greger

I work for a mobile games company. I will tell you that the market is not a mirage.

It's completely unsubstantiated to say that people in this industry are people who could not cut it in the console/PC world. Tell that to:
* Trip Hawkins (a founder of EA)
* John Carmack (from Quake fame)
* All the major publishers who release mobile games along with console counterparts (THQ, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, etc).
* All the major publishers who are re-releasing their famous console games (Konami, Capcom, Namco, etc).

Successful people in the console/PC games market are looking for the best ways to get into the mobile games market evidenced, of course, by EA's huge buyout of Jamdat.

Even giving thought that mobile games are limited to being bad versions of the console counterparts is plain wrong. Look at Yahoo Mobile Games. Yahoo Games has an unbelievably large gaming market that has no interest in playing console games. Many of them (who have computers) also have cell phones, and play those games as time fillers at home would play the same games as time fillers on a bus ride.

I can't stand it when people think of something as a potential "bubble" so they think it's something from which to stay away. There was a dot-com bubble, but the Internet is still here and a growing market. The mobile application industry may be a bubble in the sense that there are some uneducated investors throwing money at half-baked developers, but that does not mean that there are no developers with solid business models and evidence of growing revenue. It is impossible to ignore the numbers. 193 million mobile handsets sold in the US alone in 2004 with a $345 million gaming market. This is doubled from the previous year.

I will say that the industry will change many times in the next few years. Executives at major console publishers will have to learn to change their expectations in capabilities ("Why can't we make Need for Speed Underground on a device with 243 kB of RAM?"). Designers will have to come up with ideas to take advantage of networking/GPS capabilities unique to mobile. Independent developers will all die out without huge venture capital, big-name licenses, or big-name publishers to get carriers to put their games in their catalogs. The industry will think of better ways to sell games instead of "Pay me $5.99 for this game that you may only play once because it sucks," you'll see more of, "Thanks for buying the *INSERT NEXT BIG TOM CRUISE MOVIE* DVD/Theatre ticket, here is your link to download the mobile game! I hope you play it and other people see you playing it and give us more publicity for the movie!" Or in better networking environments, you'll see exactly what Flash game portals do and offer games for free if you look at an advertisement for 3 seconds.

Anyone who thinks the industry is limited has not enough exposure to the industry or is not imaginative enough.

Having other hobbies can help maintain creativity, and Carmack certainly does lots of interesting stuff in his free time.

... you just havent looked hard enough:

xcor

blue origin (Jeff Bezos, Amazon)

spaceX

Armadillo Aerospace (John Carmack)

(Not mentioning the obvious: Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites.)

And don't forget about America's Space Prize a $50 million dollar prize for the development of a reusable vehicle to service http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/">Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space hotel. (Robert Bigelow owns the "Budget Suites of America" hoetl chain). Several contendors for the prize at the moment.

And actually the american government is quite progressive on commercial space travel. They have an office: the office of Commercial Space Transportation. They actually recently put out a 120+ page proposal on regulations for human spaceflight, open for suggestions from the "players". Revisions are being suggested from companies and actually heeded. The system is working quite well.

Just from discussing it with customers of mine (who pay $150,000 for a week in Vegas for 2 people, what's $150,000 to hit space?), I bet there are at least 100,000 people in the world who would pay $50,000 to travel.

I've read studies that have similar numbers of people willing to pay bigger dollar amounts. The market is there; thats why the companies listed, among others, are working on a solution.

For anyone who has done more research than I could, what are the obstacles to private research? There's a market, there's a will, so there must be a way. Who is putting the kibosh on it?

Money. Gotta get those venture capitalists to see the vision. There are safer investments than human space travel. The companies that are most likely to succeed are the ones that are self-funded (see the ones with big names next to them) or the ones that handle both commercial and govenment contracts (for example, Xcor does government research, and spaceX does government launches. It pays the bills and bolsters investor confidence.)

-everphilski-

There were a tremendous number of people on the list that I'd never heard of, which suggests a fair amount of creativity when picking names. Where's John Carmack, who's building rockets? What about Bono, who's helping back elevation? Then there's Gabe Newell, who's work with Steam is slowly changing how game publishing is done.

Perhaps girls who lick PSPs are more interesting, but somehow less important than the above.

As a rocket engine gimbal, this doesn't look promising. It's a rather bulky mechanism; the linkage is much larger than the engine bell. It requires fifteen bearings, not including the three motors. The standard solution, a gimbal ring arrangement, only requires four. The bearings also have to handle off-center loads, never a good thing. Bearings in space are headaches; lubrication is tough and temperature changes can jam them.

The motors are in a weak position from a leverage standpoint; the engine thrust is applied directly to the motor shafts, so they (and their gear trains) must be strong enough to overpower the thruster. In a gimbal ring arrangement, the bearings are usually placed so that the center of thrust is at the center of the gimbal, so that the bearings, not the actuators, take almost all the thrust. Very large engines, like the Space Shuttle and Saturn V main engines, have been successfully gimballed that way.

The three motors don't seem to add redundancy; it looks like they all have to be working.

For comparison, here's a simple gimbal from Amadillo Aerospace, Carmack's rocket program.

In reality, having many fixed reaction thrusters is probably more reliable than have a few steerable ones. Fewer moving parts.

>our only hope is that some of the leaders of our virtual world (Bezos, Carmack, Allen) are also the pioneers of space exploration.

You mean John Carmack is the evolutionary next-step then ;-)
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Ho me

Gamers generally have poor memories of playing over even the highest speed analog modems, but most of the problems are due to having far too many buffers and abstractions between the data producers/consumers and the actual wire interface. If you wrote eight bytes to the device and it went in the next damned frame (instead of the OS buffer, which feeds into a serial FIFO, which goes into another serial FIFO, which goes into a data compressor, which goes into an error corrector, and probably a few other things before getting into a wire frame), life would be quite good.

http://armadilloaerospace.com/

The article didn't have too much info on Zero-G's service, so I thought I'd chime in. Basically, Zero-G sells flights on their modified Boeing 727 at $3,750 each. Each flight has a total of 15 parabolas, which alternate between 1.8 g's and either zero g's, lunar g's, or martian g's; each of the low/zero gravity periods lasts 30 seconds.

John Carmack, of id Software fame, flew with Zero-G last year and wrote down some of his thoughts. He was pretty pleased with it, and got some ideas for his spaceflight company. He also recorded a video of messing around in zero-gravity. Here's an excerpt from his write-up:

The time went by so quickly that you completely forgot half the things you planned on trying. A couple of us were doing low gravity judo throws, and I took a shot at the worlds first flying armbar in zero gravity (didn't work out too well). Most of us that were doing fairly aggressive bouncing around landed on our heads at least once, so I have some concern that they will eventually have someone test the liability waiver. The bottom line is that I highly recommend the experience, and I am almost certainly going to do it again at some point.

The article didn't have too much info on Zero-G's service, so I thought I'd chime in. Basically, Zero-G sells flights on their modified Boeing 727 at $3,750 each. Each flight has a total of 15 parabolas, which alternate between 1.8 g's and either zero g's, lunar g's, or martian g's; each of the low/zero gravity periods lasts 30 seconds.

John Carmack, of id Software fame, flew with Zero-G last year and wrote down some of his thoughts. He was pretty pleased with it, and got some ideas for his spaceflight company. He also recorded a video of messing around in zero-gravity. Here's an excerpt from his write-up:

The time went by so quickly that you completely forgot half the things you planned on trying. A couple of us were doing low gravity judo throws, and I took a shot at the worlds first flying armbar in zero gravity (didn't work out too well). Most of us that were doing fairly aggressive bouncing around landed on our heads at least once, so I have some concern that they will eventually have someone test the liability waiver. The bottom line is that I highly recommend the experience, and I am almost certainly going to do it again at some point.

Jazelle runs something like 90% of the Java instructions, true. So a mobile phone for example does run most Java instructions.

But you still need to support the rest in software. And then you need to get the java libraries, and write the native code that the java libraries end up talking to to touch the screen/filesystem/etc So you still need a JVM, even if most of the instructions run natively. And even if the API is the same, you are still running on a machine with either a tiny screen or none at all, not much CPU power, RAM or disk space and so on. And no hardware floating point, so any FP code will run like molasses. Oh, and the DRAM access is really slow.

So you end up writing applications from scratch - its not as if something like Eclipse or Azureus or any desktop Java app will run on a mobile phone. And if you're going to do that, you might as well write them in C/C++ which is still quicker than Java, even with the Jazelle instructions.

E.g. write some integer code. Look at what comes out of a decent ARM C compiler. It's tiny and it fits in the L1 cache. You can hoist all the CRT calls out of the loop to where they aren't time critical. The compiler can do a great job using the ARM instruction set to keep things quick. Now look at the Java equivalent. It's more instructions and because Java is stack based it needs to do much more loads from memory. And it needs to check all the array accesses, usually with calls into library code. So the footprint of the loop when it runs is too big to fit in the L1 cache.

Plus you need to have flash memory space to store the java libs, native code and so on. If you JIT for performance, you need RAM for the native code and RAM or flash for the java, whereas for C you can run code out of flash. The C code will tend to use smaller libraries too.

If you don't believe me, here's what John Carmack said

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/Recent %20Updates
      The biggest problem is that Java is really slow. On a pure cpu / memory /
      display / communications level, most modern cell phones should be
      considerably better gaming platforms than a Game Boy Advanced. With Java,
      on most phones you are left with about the CPU power of an original 4.77
      mhz IBM PC, and lousy control over everything.