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Maverick Rocketeers Pursue Space Access
Mad.Scientist writes "This article at Space.com is about mavericks who are trying to lessen the cost of going into space. One of the companies, Armadillo Aerospace, is founded by John Carmack, who is also a founder of Id Software, and the brain behind games such as Doom or Quake. I just have to say, godspeed to all." Carmack is only one of the people mentioned in this story, but see our previous story for more on Carmack's rocketry habit.
the armadillo aerospace site is full of MPG videos.. low and high bandwidth versions.
;)
this will be the fastest slashdotting in history
Then all they would need is booster rockets to put it orbit.
that would be way cheaper than anything NASA is doing.
Heck, NASA should just buy a few of those at 6 mil a pop!
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It's more like a suped up amateur rocketry club.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I knew someone who used to be very into rocketry. For hardcore people you have to go to these planned launches where the airspace over the site is reserved. Otherwise they might damage planes flying overhead.
Very cool if you ask me.
Does it come with a BFG 2000?
"Private Industry should be allowed into space...imagine if the computer industry had worked on space travel---we'd already been to Mars and our space ship wouldn't be as old as my grandfather =)"
Yeah, and all the signposts would be like:
"Venus 200,000m.
Have you got a HOTMAIL ACCOUNT yet?
Presented by Microsoft."
graspee
I can't wait to see the next generation rocket launcher in Doom III. Maybe it will be able to launch rockets into orbit?
It is good to see stories like this. Since the government (and it doesn't matter which party it is) doesn't seem really all that interested in anything other than their "International" Space Station, it will take private sector people to get us where we should be in terms of the advancement of space flight.
;)
And to see that there is at least one geek involved (Mr. Carmack) makes it all the more reassuring. Of course, I suspect that they're all geeks, but I don't know the credentials of anyone else in the story.
libertarianswag.com
Seriously, look at how many "rebels" have made their way into our history and into our hearts: Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi, Ford (the auto-maker, not the president), Darwin. The list goes on. At every major step in mankind's evolution, there has been someone who smacks us in the face and shows us something new.
It's painful.
But where would we be without it?
Maybe Linus, RMS...today's rabblerousers?
Think about it.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
When Doom crashed it was just an inconvienience, but this...
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
This must be why the 'Rocket Launcher' has always been the weapon of choice of multiplayer gamers in quake
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
Wolfenstein 3D, that is ;-)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Whatever happened to that guy who was going to try and launch himself? I remember them talking about moving the launch to Mexico because he might not be able to get permission for the launch from the FAA... unfortunately that's about all I can remember at the moment. :(
Bryan
Game programming, Espescially 3d game programming, is some of the most math intensive coding around, in fact id much rather have a game coder launching rockets, than just your average kernel hacker.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
They will never actually put a man into space.
I dont think anyone is stupid enough to risk their life using the technology of game programmer john carmack!
I mean his quake software was so buggy, it left a backdoor open where anyone could remotely take over someones computer.
Lets not forget carmack knows absolutely nothing about real world physics, his games dont use REAL physics, sure he may know some calculus, but does this make him qualified to produce a rocket to launch a man into space?
First I want to see some simulations of the launch, I want him to find the most aerodynamic design for the craft so it doesnt break up into peices or burn up into dust. I want him to also tell me how hes going to manage to do this in a safe way yet be cheaper than NASA. NASA is expensive for a reason, they DONT make alot of mistakes!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Anyone remember the Rotary Rocket? It was another venture in the same vein, only NASA started giving away the market they were trying to sell to. A real shame, too, because they had some really, really nifty ideas. They even had a test flight before they suddenly found themselves bankrupt.
Googling for Rotary Rocket leads me here, but there is, I'm sure, some better source.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
"Return to castle wolfenstein."
Anyway the other one was funnier. But not as accurate. Sorry John.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Gerald Bull who shot to fame as the inventor of the Iraqi Super Gun did a lot of work on constant pressure launch systems - enormous cannons with explosives positioned along the barrel to keep the pressure behind the projectile constant for the full launch length.
Estimated cost to LEO? $1 per pound.
Because the shock was distributed along the acceleration, maximum G force on the load was 40G: fine for food and fuel and most construction supplies.
You can read more about his work at Federation of American Scientists Supergun pages, [2], and at NASA.
There really is more than one way to do it.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
I always thought this was an interesting idea. Here's a link to some pics of rotary rocket. The rocket uses helicopter-like blades to slow re-entry and thus is it a reusable rocket. Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt beginning of last year. However, I have heard a rumour that someone has bought up the company and plans on reviving the technology.
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
We've lots and lots of reusable liquid fuel rocket videos on our website www.xcor.com as well as a new photo gallery and redesigned engine projects page. Have a look if you haven't been there in a while or been there at all. :) We make reliable rocket hardware and rocket powered aircraft. There's some good video of the EZ-Rocket flying in the Space Access presentation video (the conference that the the space.com article was about) as well.
armack actually thinks hes qualified to do what hes doing?
Well, if i had half a dozen Ferraris, I could probably also afford to hire a Real Scientist!
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Actually, he knows quite a lot about what he is doing, because of extremely studious research and a lot of testing of everything they work on. I have been following their work for the last year, and have been very impressed by what they've accomplished.
They are currently working on two projects, the most impressive of which is a VTVL (vertical takeoff, vertial landing) vehicle, with 4 thrusters on the 4 corners, and a central main lift engine with the cpability to lift one person to really impressive heights.
The coolest thing about it is that all of the fuel they use is (fairly) safe for the environment.
Might I mention that the Nazi's V1 and V2 were largely developed by rocket enthusists (including Von Braun) who, before WWII, were mostly considered crackpots...
http://www.space.edu/projects/book/chapter8.html
"...founded by John Carmack, who is also a founder of Id Software, and the brain behind games such as Doom or Quake."
/. :)
You learn something new every day on
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
For those that don't know, John Carmack has a Slashdot account, and is known to post here occasionally. Check out his user page.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Right, and during your three-day trip to Mars, your space ship would explode five times.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
carmack is not a computer programmer. Programming the computer can not be his goal. This should be clear to anyone who has read his code. I believe Mr. Carmack programs as a means to fulfilling his vision. You will find very little if anything in there that is done for the art of programming or to fulfill anyone's vision of how programming should be done.
What he does, and brilliantly, is bring his vision to reality.
I say he should follow his vision, where ever it goes and regardless what anyone tells him he can and can not do.
And no. I would not put my life in the hands of anyone's vision of a rocket ship. Show me the real rocket and then we can talk.
I should disclaim... I have never met the man, but I have read his code.
I saw this piece on TV about the Ultima
creator living in a medieval castle mockup,
and now it's Cormack, after tuning the
ubergeek Ferrari, trying to fly to space
by himself on a budget...
when the stuff they sold us only keeps us
in a virtual world, replacing all the REAL
things the 60's scifi writers had promised.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
Did Carmack steal your girlfriend or something?
SOmehow we've been conditioned to think that the only people qualified to do something of this caliber are Phds. It's bunk.
It takes desire, attention to detail, and tenacity to not listen to everyone saying they can't do it. If Carmack can lend himself to a project like this and be useful, more power to him and I hope he's successful.
Who was an expert in space exploration 50 years ago? 40? Space exploration has been castrated by the policies of NASA and largely our government. There are risks associated with going into space. Let people who are willing take them.
"Draw them in with the prospect of gain, take them by confusion." Sun Tzu
This article keeps talking about space flight as if it were something that should be cheap, that brilliance is the only thing keeping us out of orbit.
We wish.
Space flight isn't like air flight, where a couple of bicycle repairmen from Ohio could study the basic principles and build a device on their own. Air flight can be done with an ordinary gasoline engine and the right kits. Goddard developed the first successful rockets with a combination of basic physics and lots of chemistry, but those weren't manned or orbital.
On the other hand, sending a man into space for the first time took the combined financial and intellectual resources of an entire superpower. It still does, not because the principles are too advanced but because the raw materials are hideously expensive and because the margin for error is enormous. If you're trying to fly yourself into orbit, you damned well better have your engineering right because after a certain point, even parachutes won't save you from a miscalculation.
About the only thing that could make orbital commutes cost-effective would be a successful space elevator, a tether between a geosynchronous station and the ground along which cargo and people could climb and descend. High-tech planes won't do it, rockets won't do it, all of those take too much money and have too much risk. An elevator would have an initial cost and then be relatively cheap to run and re-run. And once you had one, you could send up parts for a second one again and again.
But I'm not holding out hope for a $200 ticket on a space shuttle anytime soon.
To quote from the website mentioned above:
He lived an unusual life, to be sure, working for various shady governments, mostly in a simple effort to make his vision reality. His work for Iraq, however, apparently cost him his life. He was assasinated in 1990.
Bull's dream of cheap satellite launches was left unfulfilled. And so the world still pushes all that heavy fuel into space.
He was a true hacker.
Read the webpage.
They build a little and test a little.
They have had failures and will do so in the future. It's a part of building *ANYTHING*. Doubly so for something that's a bit difficult.
Their model is more like the early aircraft builders than NASA...and that's a compliment!
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
John Carmack doesnt have any degree in this area.
A degree is proof of knowledge.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
If it would be possible to build a "super spud gun" using PVC fittings, etc - in this similar manner? Get a long piece of PVC, attach booster chambers using sewage drain "down spout" connectors, a load of JBWeld, some sensors and electronic ignition, etc.
Maybe make the thing out of steel and weld all of the connections - would be an interesting porject for "backyard" high-altitude experiments.
Possibly even "x-prize" level experiments...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I feel sorry for the flight testers that work for Carmack's company.
Well, now Carmack's giving new meaning to the term "rocket jumping" isn't he?
that is utter bs. I have a shitload of knowledge about computers, martial arts, food etc... but I have a degree in none of those fields. We need to stop putting the degree at such high value.
Doing and knowing is proof of knowledge. Degree is proof regurgitating (sp?) something someone else told you.
If you really want a big gun then you want a Ram Accelerator. It will subject a projectile to about 25,000 G's of acceleration.
The beauty of it is its efficiency. The fuel (gas) is stored in the barrel. The projectile is fired to have it travel fast enough to cause its shock wave to ignite the gas in the tube and therefore propel it even more. Basically, it is just ahead of the detonation wave it creates.
The University of Washington has a good bit of info about them.
Cool stuff.
Up until a few years ago, NASA's Space Shuttle Orbiter was powered by 5 computers. Each one of these ran at 1Mhz, and at best was comparable to your 8088. It was a different processor, but that should give you a clue. 3 computers ran at a time, having primary control over everything. Two were on stand-by. For every event that they controlled, there was an "election" process. Three computers decided what to do, then they'd compare their result. If the three computers didn't agree, all 5 computers would decide if that computer was faulty, then test again.
:)
:)
All this on a 1Mhz machine.
Did I fail to mention the mass storage? Tape drives.
He doesn't need a supercomputer. ID games are very intensive and track more game variables than the Orbiter has sensors.
Even the ground-based equipment would be better on a modern PC than what was used for the original flights. Microsoft's flight simulator takes into account all the flight variables. If a Microsoft product can do it on a low-end PC, I'm sure a well written piece of software could do it better.
I'd be happy to fly on the first flight of a civilian spacecraft, especially if it wasn't designed like a giant pick-up truck (i.e., the design of the NASA craft.)
Judging someone's programming abilities by where they work is not quite fair. I know someone who programs for satellites. I program for web sites. After several discussions between us, it's agreed that I'm the better programmer. Funny that, I don't agree.. But my work isn't in aerospace, mine keeps Internet servers alive.
I'd love to take the input of sensor variables, and make control decisions.
Anyone looking for a programmer to send up on a civilian space flight, be sure to contact me.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Er, that was Romero, methinks, not Carmack.
And I never heard the thing about Quake in an Aztec environment.....
RMS I still don't know about.
A degree proves you bought into some college's marketing, spent a ton of money and bought a certificate saying you have achieved the basic requirements necessary to be recognized by that organization.
A degree is not proof of knowledge, it is proof of passing a test. It is the same as an A+ certification. It provides a baseline that you should be competent in the beginning aspects of that particular discipline. This assumes of course we a re talking about a BS.
A PhD, states you have dedicated the necessary time required to exhaustively study one minute area of knowledge.
None of this is meant to disparrage any one who has undertaken the work necessary for a PhD. A college education is not the end-all, be-all that the OP has based his comments on.
As a practical example that a degree != knowledge, I ask what college Abraham Lincoln went to for his legal degree?
Look it up, it'll be good excersize.
"Draw them in with the prospect of gain, take them by confusion." Sun Tzu
I feel sorry for the flight testers that work for Carmack's company.
Don't. He's using sandbags and the like as "flight test" payloads - and that's with the rockets not going more than several feet off the ground (so far, though that may soon change). Good thing, too, since he's aced a few of them.
Rocket science isn't rocket science anymore! ;-)
You can pretty much troll over to the NASA websites and download 50+ years of research. This works, this doesn't, you got to avoid getting your lox pipes damp... It's all there.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Show me the real rocket and then we can talk.
g
Low bandwidth: http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/sff_low.mpg and http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/sas02_low.mpg
High bandwidth: http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/sff_high.mpg and http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/sas02_high.mp
And just to plug my own group's rockets: http://cube.erps.org/movies/.
John Carmack has no degrees at all.
Doesn't stop him from being a kick-ass coder, or rocket builder.
He mainly works on the control systems, but then you'd know that if you actually went to the site and read about it. I check the updates every week, it's fun to watch.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Since then, they've made some real progress in control and consistancy, so I would expect a manned lander flight in the next few months. They tend to multitask so that they have some long term goals to aim for while achieving something meaningful on a regular basis.
science is a religion
I am helping a hardware vendor optimize the E3 build of Doom right now, but I'll make a pass of replys and comments later on tonight...
(yes, the Id net connection is slashdotted at the moment)
John Carmack
Screw Bull, there were many other ways for him to keep his research and projects alive than by whoring himself to Hussein.
.... This guy was begging to be assasinated, and I am glad that someone tossed him the alms he was asking for.
His lack of morals, judgment, his illegal selling of arms to South Africa, his building of a delivery mechanism (artillery pieces, supergun, improved scuds) for weapons of mass destruction for Hussein,
"We" (high-power rocketeers; I've never done it personally) have to arrange well in advance for a FAA waiver. Lots of paperwork, sometimes met with glassy stares or even hostility. Some FAA people are great, others clueless.
Sometimes you get a short window in which to fly, or a low ceiling. (e.g., 5000'.) The group I fly with now is having a launch next weekend. They had a waiver for the whole weekend lined up, but they've been given two no-fly windows each day because jets from a (relatively) nearby airbase are doing low-altitude exercises in the area.
Even if we get a waiver, there are pilots who ignore the "Notice to Airmen" posted at the airport. When a low-flying plane gets within a mile or so, and isn't heading away, we have to hold up launches for a bit.
Stefan
Carmack has access to all the same tools for simluation that NASA, Los Alamos, etc. have. The simulation software is not developed anymore by nasa (nastran, dytran, other such sims) but by companies specializing in this software. He doesn't need to code that up, its already been done with millions of man hours put into these kind of sims. He's a smart guy, but nobody (including NASA) is going to reinvent the wheel these days. This is a well known, well developed discipline. He can just buy the software and hire a few engineers and physicists to perform the sims.
science is a religion
I'm trying to figure out which government agency you work for, 'cause that seems to be the only place in the world that so religiously pursues that particular bit of laughable garbage. Some of the best programmers I know of don't have CS degrees. And a lot of the hack programmers that I _do_ know are proud CS graduates.
I don't think it was until after the automobile was mass produced that gasoline was so cheap and parachutes could usually be counted on to work. Besides, now we have more computational power than existed in the whole world at the time of early space flight in packages that weigh less than a pound and sensors to go along with them. One of the early (and continuing) problems with space flight was control and designing the parts. We also have 3D CAD tools that run on a PC rather than taking teams of engineers years to draw up and analysis tools for looking at data that far surpass anything available even 30 years ago. To top it off, we have research available as public archives detailing what various governments spent billions to find out.
With all that going for them, I think we'll see private space flight within a decade.
science is a religion
My eyes have flitted over this story on the front page, and every time I see it, I misread the headline as "Maverick Puppeteers Rock Space Access."
That is a story I would like to see, though.
Back on Aug 02 of last year, I asked Carmack about his future goals the last time this came up. His answers were very enlightening, and I encourage people to check them out.
I would be curious to hear from him if any of his goals have changed, either more or less ambitiously.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Hrmm...looking at the URL, it could easily be this.
Sorry, I couldn't resist (:
Holy shit, bitch! If someone mentions King David or Budah or some shit would you get all pissy? What's the big deal? How can you take a poop with an ass that tight?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The 1 million lb payload rocket is the Sea Dragon. This is the archetypal "Big Dumb Booster". It's never flown, though...
Energy: time to change the picture.
He came to Space Access to meet with us, and it was interesting talking with him. He is certainly not an engineer, but he is actually building a lot of hardware, which is more than can be said for most folks in the space crowd.
The abject stupidities in his original design that got him a lot of flack (Fins at the top! 1.2 T/W ratio without guidance!) are now gone, and he has decided to have a testing plan before launching himself, so I think he has a decent shot at flying something and living to talk about it. I wish him luck.
An interesting question: is it easier to motivate a learned individual that never does anything, or educate an ignorant individual that actually produces things?
John Carmack
(* Whatever you call them, rebels have defined our history from Day One. The first to rebel against conventional wisdom? Eve. We're still recovering from the fallout from that ordeal.
Seriously, look at how many "rebels" have made their way into our history and into our hearts *)
The best role that mavericks fill is taking risks that "rational" people wouldn't. Most mavericks fail, but the lucky few that succeed are what changes everything.
One of the Wright brothers' was seriously injured trying to perfect an upgrade to their designs.
BTW, does anybody have any web material about the space dude who had a hard time persuading the early moon program to use the randeveus approach? Without that, they would have needed a huuuuuuge rocket.
Table-ized A.I.
(* after a certain point, even parachutes won't save you from a miscalculation. *)
Why not? If you have a space-suit and a strong parachute, why can't that save you?
The atmosphere thickness increases gradully. Thus, the drag on the chute should be relatively continious, no?
Perhaps space would be cheaper if they perfected the "space parachute" first.
Table-ized A.I.
(* I've seen someone on the web which has made the BFPG10k (big fucking potato gun10k). I can't find the site right now, but they were blowing up watermelons with potatoes.*)
Movie Idea: "Private Gallager"
Table-ized A.I.
(* You are an ignorant asshole. Russian hardware is usually much better, cheaper, easier to maintain, and more robust. If I recall it was a laughable explosion on an american space shuttle that humbled you assholes first. Fuck off and shutup yankee pig.*)
Has the russian shuttle ever flown in space?
It is true, however, that Soviet space equipment has proven itself to be generally reliable. It seems to have the ability to be more "self servicable" than US counterparts. McGiver type astronauts love it.
Anyhow, perhaps such a shuttle could serve as an emergency backup vehicle or something.
Table-ized A.I.
BS
the CPUs arent even being used, 1-2ghz cpus can handle REAL physics. You can download a real physics sim and see for yourself, even a 500mhz cpu can handle it. They just dont want to code it because its much harder.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Actualy they allowed a back door to allow anyone to take over the quake server but not the actual machine.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Your idea of cool is not my idea of cool. My idea of cool is writing a compiler. Everyone knows there are some really really stupid horrible people who get regular sex. Why should I be impressed by that?
Isn't our society now advanced enough that we can look beyond our genetic programming ?
Yes, I would like sex, but I don't think that the effort I'd have to put in (hanging out at social type places, pretending to be interested in inane crap etc) would be worth it, and I also don't have the time to devote to even the most casual of relationships, so it wouldn't be fair to my partner.
Therefore I remain "celibate" (in the modern sense), semi-by choice, and use masturbation to ease any sexual frustration I feel.
Any way, last time I tried to have sex with a woman I couldn't get it up.
Do you feel that this information is "JUST NOT COOL" ? Does it embarass you ? I don't even feel that this is an admission, because there's nothing wrong with it.
Maybe you're not comfortable with yourself, but I am. I may be awkward in certain social situations, but in my head all is tranquil and at peace. I am happy.
I could make more "admissions" but I feel they would embarass other slashdot readers, so I will spare them rather than me the experience.
graspee
(* Also, the Buran is considerably larger than its american counterparts (yet of surprisingly similar design) *)
:-)
Probably due to the Vodka cooler alone
Table-ized A.I.