John Carmack's Test Liftoff a Success

brainstyle writes "Space.com is reporting that John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace (and who apparently has some game design hobby) has had a successful launch of the prototype of its entry in the X-Prize. From the article: '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.'"

Comments

Hope for all geeks out there

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

May we one day see a FOSS satellite in orbit?

Seriously, I think that this demonstarates the new power given to the (relativly) little guy by computers. Thanks to simulation we can all tweak ideas without blowing up prototypes.

I wish I had as much free time as some of these people.:E

It's always nice

[zoloto]

It really is nice to see some of your more favorite programmers involved in their hobbies. It makes them more real in a way that "sitting behind a computer screen and doing nothing else to stimulate your mind" can. Not to mention he probably wrote the simulator, lol.

anyways, this is good news for J.C. congrats man

Re:It's always nice

[j-pimp]

Is that any different from having a favorite athlete? What sports are hard? Require lots of training and talent? Rooting for a programmer doesn't affect his output?

Thats right.

Awesome

[Cackmobile]

but they look a little behind the ball. SpaceShipOne is already carrying people into space(the official limit) and they are launching a small rocket. Even if they don't win I hope they keep going.

Maybe something (only) John can answer

[lingqi]

I wonder how have the experiences of programming things like the DOOM / QUAKE engine helped in this project? I mean, I am very sure that it is a great asset to be an all-around great programmer for the armadillo project, but I cannot relate how being able to squeeze frames and triangles out of a graphics card helps when dealing with rocket related... stuff; Maybe writing the physics engine and the collision detection code and being able to debug well helped? was there any direct relationships between the day job and the hobby? How did they help eachother?

dammit /. should do another interview with J.C...

Re:Gun ownership is INALIENABLE tsarkon reports

[BenEnglishAtHome]

You have to draw the line of what "arms" means somewhere,...

You're trolling, of course, but it's a good troll because it exploits a gap in knowledge most people arguing this issue aren't even aware of.

Without taking time to go into a long reply with many examples, suffice it to say that the Framers knew very well the difference between "arms" and "artillery." They specified "arms." Typical military rifles (a flintlock back in the day, an assault rifle today) are fine. Military weapons of serious, if not mass, destruction (a cannon back in the day, a nuke today) are not fine.

There can be some reasonable disagreement about where, exactly, to draw the line. In the old days, all artillery required horses to drag it and a crew to serve it. Nowadays, an RPG is a one-person weapon. Thus, the old criteria of "man-portability" may no longer be relied on to draw a bright line between arms and artillery. Where the line is to be drawn is a fine thing for politicians to debate into the wee hours, but it doesn't inform this discussion. FWIW, I think we do a very good job of drawing that line, today. Automatic weapons are very heavily regulated and taxed and the owners are seriously investigated before being given permission to acquire them. Less militarily-capable weapons get less regulation. More capable weapons draw more scrutiny. (Hell, if you want it and can afford it, you can, as a private citizen, own, operate, and shoot out of a fully-operational fighter plane with multiple functional machine guns. But you'd better be rich and have plenty of time and patience to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops.)

In summary, then:

There's a right to bear arms.

There's no right to bear artillery.

Simple, huh?