Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
FPFPFPFPFP
first post
If we can't shoot it or drive it, what good is it ?
i like his hobby better
I am not lame dammit...
FIRST PSOT!
first post!
Dibs on shotgun!
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
May the Maths Be with you!
'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.'
I hope he's not referring to the "simulator" about the space marine on Mars/Phobos/Deimos...
(especially not if the simulation behaved exactly the same)
but server crashes and burns with only 6 posts on the article??
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
/karma-whore
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
he'll have a deadline more precise than "when it's done" if he wants to win the X-Prize.
>successful launch
;-)
like the doom3?
Andrej
he isn't working on Doom 3!
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.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
'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.'
I know not this reality which you speak of.
Is this the reason we still haven't seem Doom 3 yet?
So in 6 months they are going to go from a prototype that goes 100 feet to carrying three people into space? Obviously they are not contenders for the X-Prize.
Wow, they got some model rocket to fly 131 feet.
100 km is nothing! It just makes the thing a high altitude plane. You can't maintain a stable orbit a that altitude, and the planes that get up there are nowhere near escpae velocity.
A rocket that can get up there will need more than just a few extra miles. It needs to travel at about 10 times the speed, have serious prtection for reentry, and have heavy shielding to protect it once it gets out of the Van Halen belt.
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?
/. should do another interview with J.C...
dammit
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I'm sure the Armadillo team would have loved to have won the X-Prize, but they don't seem to be too discouraged. They've built a rocket that flies and lands very neatly, and that uses a novel propellant mixture. I gather they're still going to try to build an X-Prize class vehicle over the next year or so. They've learned a lot about building rockets. And, judging by the celebration when they landed that test flight, they're still having fun. Sounds like a hell of a hobby to me, and I wish I had the cash to do something like it :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Cant wait to see that BFG M-II, scaled up to blast some astroids.
"/Dread"
Can someone honestly tell someone is going to fly 20 miles into space using this wirey little hover-craft? I think a plane/rocket is a little more practical do you? I seriously doubt the design is suitable for reaching orbit.
Beware, geeks, maybe there is no light at the end of the tunnel...
John Carmack just showed us inferior quakers what a REAL rocket jump is like ...
I love the video. The rocket looks great, but the funniest bit is when we see that everybody was hiding behind a car for safety :)
btw, which one of them is John?
The home page of Armadillo Aerospace says that the rocket is hydrogen peroxide fueled. But hydrogen peroxide (H_2 O_2) is just the oxidizer, right? What is the fuel, I wonder? The rocket produces almost no visible flames .
Also is an equatorial launch even needed if it's going to be sub-orbital anyway?
Is there any advantages from a high Polar launch have any advantages that an equatorial launch might lack?
How is this supposed to result in a manned space-flight with a 2-week turnaround? Is Armadillo primarily a software product, with the hardware being done 'at the last stage'?
...
Honestly, I really just don't get it. It seems great that they've got a vertical takeoff and landing algorithm, but what about all the other hard science thats going to be required to keep a human alive during the flight?
Maybe someone familiar with their program can explain it to me, because I really want to believe that Carmack is going to take us to space, having been responsible for THE technology that has wasted so much of humanity's time so far
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
As any self respecting geek has a slashdot account i have to figure John Carmack of all people does... So how bout it, what do you have to say for yourself?
"Alcohol, cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" -Homer Simpson
Put SpaceShip One up there, with the Armadillo rocket as payload. 3 stages to orbit.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Comment removed based on user account deletion
xcor has an actual working craft which has flown a number manned test flights already. It is being piloted by Dick Rutan. They have a working 1800lb thrust engine which exceeds anything armadillo has. They also already have a launch license.
It's a bit silly for carmack to say he doesnt think anyone else is closer than him.
if you ask me it's all a plot to bring back undead space marines from phobos.
fact: microsoft > linux
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, a fully amateur satellite effort, anyway. Here.
For those of you that are underwhelmed by the 310 pound vehicle, do note that the big vehicle (1500 lbs) that can actually carry people is also flying. Look back in the Armadillo updates around April 19 for testing video. We have since reworked the propulsion system to follow what has worked so well on the subscale vehicle, and should be testing it this weekend. If it works well, we will be repeating the boosted hop with the big vehicle next week.
The flight time is currently limited by federal law to 15 seconds of rocket burn time. We have a waiver coming to extend that to 120 seconds, but beyond that we will need a full launch license.
The significance of all this is that the vehicles are intended to fly up, come back down and land right where they took off from, all without ablating, expending, or seperating anything. It should be possible to have turn around times under one hour even for quite large vehicles.
BTW, Doom beta testing is going very well.
John Carmack
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
whats that supposed to mean? fuck you liberal scum. gun stealing, rights depriving fascist/communist. you fascist and communists are the same. i hate you both. but you are the same.
libertariansim and constitutional revivalism. death to the new order ! death to you treason pig!
A hobby? This is THE Carmack from ID Software. I can't believe the original poster thought that the game stuff was just a side thing. It's the other way round, the space stuff is his hobby and he's most famous for writing games like Doom and Duke Nukem.
mogorific carpentry experiments
I don't see Xcor on the list of X Prize teams:
http://www.xprize.org/teams/teams.html
Unless they're on there under a different name, they're not competing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Fascists and Communists Unite, take my gun, and watch the Einsatzgruppen execute the undesireables.
I asked, "Is the structure and meaning of this sentence the same as the sentence I first quoted you?" He said, "yes." I asked him to rephrase this sentence to make it clearer. He transformed it the same way as the first sentence: "Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
ENGLISH USAGE EXPERT INTERPRETS 2ND AMENDMENT
I just had a conversation with Mr. A.C. Brocki, Editorial Coordinator for the Office of Instruction of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Mr. Brocki taught Advanced Placement English for several years at Van Nuys High School, as well as having been a senior editor for Houghton Mifflin.
I was referred to Mr. Brocki by Sherryl Broyles of the Office of Instruction of the LA Unified School District, who described Mr. Brocki as the foremost expert in grammar in the Los Angeles Unified School District-the person she and others go to when they need a definitive answer on English grammar.
I gave Mr. Brocki my name, told him Sherryl Broyles referred me, then asked him to parse the following sentence:
"A well-schooled electorate, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed." Mr. Brocki informed me that the sentence was over punctuated, but that the meaning could be extracted anyway.
"A well-schooled electorate" is a nominative absolute.
"being necessary to the security of a free State" is a participial
phrase modifying "electorate"
The subject (a compound subject) of the sentence is "the right of the
people"
"shall not be infringed" is a verb phrase, with "not" as an adverb
modifying the verb phrase "shall be infringed"
"to keep and read books" is an infinitive phrase modifying "right"
I then asked him if he could rephrase the sentence to make it clearer. Mr. Brocki said, "Because a well-schooled electorate is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed."
I asked: can the sentence be interpreted to restrict the right to keep and read books to a well-schooled electorate-say, registered voters with a high-school diploma?" He said, "No."
I then identified my purpose in calling him, and read him the Second Amendment in full:
"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
I asked, "Is the structure and meaning of this sentence the same as the sentence I first quoted you?" He said, "yes." I asked him to rephrase this sentence to make it clearer. He transformed it the same way as the first sentence: "Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
I asked him whether the meaning could have changed in two hundred years. He said, "No."
I asked him whether this sentence could be interpreted to restrict the right to keep and bear arms to "a well-regulated militia." He said, "no." According to Mr. Brocki, the sentence means that the people are the militia, and that the people have the right which is mentioned.
I asked him again to make sure:
Schulman: "Can the sentence be interpreted to mean that the right can be restricted to "a well-regulated militia?"
Brocki: "No, I can't see that."
Schulman: "Could another, professional in English grammar or linguistics interpret the sentence to mean otherwise?"
Brocki: "I can't see any grounds for another interpretation."
I asked Mr. Brocki if he would be willing to stake his professional reputation on this opinion, and be quoted on this. He said, "Yes."
At no point in the conversation did I ask Mr. Brocki his opinion on the Second Amendment, gun control, or the right to keep and bear arms.
THESECONDAMENDMENTISWHATTHECOMMUN
The building wasn't much more than a tattered amount of plaster and timber but it was
our main HQ for the time being. The Afghanistan countryside looked almost like back
home in Arizona. That's where all similarities stopped. My men and I were part of a task
force to weed out and harvest information from known Talibon sympathizers.
All of the men with me lost someone dear to them of Sept. 11th. I needed these types of
men to help me in my objective. Our methods were questionable but extremely effective.
We already accounted for the discovery of several Talibon strong holds.
Amat Hussel was a big beefy Turk that spoke the lingo perfectly. Just like a native. His
wife and son were aboard the plane that struck the first tower.
The prisoners made their way in. There was always some type of surprise each day.
Today the Afghani countryside coughed up four women in military attire.
Amat informed me that they were found trying lay some antipersonnel mines in the
vicinity of our troops. I told him to ask them the standard questions and as expected the
prisoners refused.
I looked around at the men in the room with me. We didn't care about rank in my unit. I
was in charge, that's all that mattered. I spotted Wingo in the corner. His sister was
aboard the plane that stuck the Pentagon. Black hair, medium build of Cherokee heritage.
Ruppenstein was a New Yorker. Red hair, muscular, big guy. His brother was a
firefighter that went into the trade towers but never came out.
Duffy was the result of a black and Samoan union. This guy made The Rock look like the
poster child for anemic disorder. His mother worked in the first tower. She is believed to
be of the many who jumped to their death rather than to be burned alive.
I told Amat to order them to remove their headgear. As they did they all revealed long
beautiful lustrous brown hair. I instructed Amat to convince them that it would be far
better for them to cooperate. That all the men in this room held little sympathy for them
or their cause.
After the translation the first female soldier yelled something then spat on the floor. "You
don't have to translate that Amat. Wingo lock the doors, Duffy you and the rest help our
guests off with their clothes."
Wingo got that small smile on his face "Does this mean that it's -Play time _ Sir?" "I
believe that we all need a slight break from the routine. Wouldn't you all agree?"
The lock came down swiftly but not as swiftly as the soldiers did on the prisoners. The
sound of tearing material was almost as paramount as the screams of the women.
Duffy had the first prisoner's breasts one in each hand as Wingo held her arms behind her
back. Each prisoner had her on set of captors and was all in different stages of undress.
I looked to the far right and saw Amat stuffing his huge dick into the ass of a small
framed woman. Her rather large tits were flopping out and smacking together as her rode
her shit hole. She flailed and screamed as did her comrades.
A third prisoner was sandwiched by the Carson brothers. They lost their father -- a police
officer that had also entered one of the towers. Their prisoner was trying to scratch and
kick them but her actions just drove their cocks into both of her orifices that much
deeper.
I approached the last prisoner. To my surprise she spoke English. "Let us go! This is not
part of the Geneva Convention!"
"Neither are murdering thousands of innocents for your cause you filthy whore." With
that I ripped open the front of her tunic and out popped the must beautiful pair to DD
breasts.
They were extremely firm and had large aureole and stiff nipples. She just stood there
with her hands on her hips not caring about her naked top.
"You dogs think that you scare us? Your dicks barely are noticeable."
"Is that so?" I said, "It sure as hell doesn't sound like that from your sisters--sister!" One
captive-the one with Amat- was yelling something to her leader as the big T
"Liftoff a Success... but giant sky-pen fails to leave it's mark." It does look like a giant wooden pencil though!
Islam's reward, 72 boys to rape "in heaven"
Homo-Sexuality Deception of Islam
1. Though homo-sexuality occurs outside of Islam also, inside Islam it configures as its inescapable and integral part and the large-scale habitual usage of this practice, by the Moslems, is indubitable and indisputable from the history of Islam itself. This custom and its usage was shocking to the Hindus, of course, but not to the Moslems who, though they swear by Allah, did not regard it as a bad thing at all, let alone an immoral or an illegal one. Though Islamic homo-sexuality is wide-spread, over far-reaching corners of Islam, most Hindus do not have a clue about it nor the cause of its occurrence in Islam, because the truth is being submerged by the wind-bags of false-hood manufacturers (Moslems, Missionaries, and Marxists), who are assisted in their nefarious designs by their Phony-Liberal Hindu cronies, who are targeting Hindus, to insult and degrade their religion. The false-hood manufacturers categorize homo-sexuality (especially lesbianism) as a Hindu custom and you can observe a demonstration of this in their incessant pyrotechnics on the movie "Fire," where even the names assigned to two characters in the movie, in a lesbian relationship, are the names of Hindu goddesses. The obvious intent is to degrade and desecrate the Hindu religion and to humiliate the Hindu.
2. The latest entrant to this lesbian controversy is the Allah-Swearing Tamil Naidu Moslem Board, that has issued a stern admonition to all Moslem women, not to watch the movie "Fire" at all. This Allah-Swearing Board has judged that it is "Haraam" for Moslem women to watch this film, either in cinema halls, or on TV, or in Video players. They state that because of its lesbian theme, the movie is contrary to Islam.
Contrary to Islam? What a suit-case of fiction!
Lesbianism is not only not contrary to Islam but is a part and parcel of Islam and is the veritable product of its Draconian Monster laws.
3. Quran expressly permits Moslems to acquire slaves through conquests. In Islam, war is prescribed for a Moslem on religious grounds and the concomitant slavery and lesbianism have always been integral and inescapable parts of Islamic wars, as fringe benefits for the Moslem Jehadis and are, therefore, completely conformal with the spirit and teachings of Islam. Mohammad recognized slaves as the property of the Moslem master and nearly all Moslem Sultans kept a large troupe of concubines inside their lavish harems, as permitted by Quranic laws. Inside these harems, lesbianism became an inescapable custom of choice among the sex-starved occupants of the harems, in the dream-house palaces of the Sultans. There is nothing like this wrack and ruin that occurred, at any time and any where inside the Hindu System, throughout its ten thousand year old history.
4. Islamic monster laws, that belong to the dark ages, and the Islamic slave system and its attendant lesbianism, are incontestably the product of the principles of Islam and represent the great wheels of Islam, in its march towards the extermination of the Kafirs (non-Moslem infidels) and their Kufr. Quran gave a divine sanction to the custom of polygamy and concubinage. So, a Moslem can have wives (number limited to four) and can supplement them with half-wives or concubines (no limit on their number) captured in holy wars (Jehad) as those "whom your right hand possesses," perfectly in keeping with the laws of Quran. A Moslem, therefore, engages in this activity with a clean conscience and religious fidelity. This activity and its multiplication was made possible because of the fast-growing Islamic Imperialism. To say that lesbianism is anti-Islamic (as held by the Allah-Swearing Tamil Naidu Moslem Board) is utter non-sense.
5. As a practical reality, it must be realized that concubinage and harems are possible only for those creeds that practice aggressive wars, such as Islam, and annex outside territories from where they can pick male and female slaves. There is
"It doesn't have to be that way, because we have advantages at our disposal today that no government on earth had at the beginning of the space age ....
freedom from politics, i thought.
Posted as AC due to recent overzealous mods.
I have been following Carmack's progress since almost day one, but will they make it? Unless something horrific goes wrong with the Scaled Composites airplane, they will win the prize. They have already made a couple of high-altitude flights and are working towards a launch in THREE DAYS!
A blog like any other.
Let's be honest, he'd have about another 2 years to go before that thing can make 100km. I'd be suprised if it could rise 1 kms at the moment.
Uh.. I don't know if I read this correctly, but..
"The flight was perfect. It went 131 feet high, and landed less than one foot from the launch point," Carmack reported on his publicly accessible web site. "It can easily do flights three times as long, which may show up some problems before we hit them with the big vehicle."
..131 feet, and it can easily do flights three times as long, which is what, ~400 feet?
I don't get it, how is that something good? Even at 400 feet, that's nowhere near the target altitude.
Please correct me if I missed something, as it is 7AM and I've been up all night programming.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
Holy smokes! that was a really impressive video. How in the world did they make it so that the rocket stabilized so well? I mean, gyroscopes only provides a partial answer. When the said that it landed within 1 foot of the launch pad, I assumed they meant that it *fell* within one foot of the launch pad. That thing sailed up and came down as if it was landing on an egg shell. Impressive!
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=111496&cid=946 1296
Your wish is his command.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
It apparently never dawned on them that their device could malfunction and explode, spraying them with shrapnel. Or, it could have gone off course and landed on them.
Sheesh!
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
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.
In other news, Doom 3 will have a new vehicle available for players to use...
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Which would you rather go to space in?
... but difficult to get really excited about.
I don't doubt the Bert Rutan team are closer to the Xprize - and it is a nice looking ship they have - but it does look a bit like like a glorified aeroplane that hitchhikes into space. Which is - alright....
But the Armadillo ship is a real boy's-own full on VTOL geek rocket ship!
Not pretty - but WOW!
Find Japanese addresses in English on Google Maps Japan: http://diddlefinger.com/
They stood close because they were hoping the exhaust would dye their hair blond.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Quote from article, "John Carmack, co-founder and chief technical engineer of id Software. He admits to being a long-time rocketry enthusiast".
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Carmack's vehicle does.
That's one reason I chose 200km rather than 100km for my amateur rocketry prize. I'm pretty sure SC's and XCor's aerodynamically-limited approach would both lose in a race to 200km because they aren't really "space" vehicles.
Carmack's vehicle is.
I'm tempted to change my prize award to be private rather than amateur so that I can give it to Carmack's team. The problem is that my goal was, and is, to make space accessible to much lower levels of capital than even Carmack's group has expended -- which is already phenomenally low by aerospace standards.
Carmack's accomplishment, with his simplified fuel and system, is more profound than anything that has come along from the aerospace business since the hybrid rocket motor back in the 60s. Sadly -- compared to the golden age of aviation -- that's still not saying much. Carmack is, howeer, bound to inspire teams capable of running a modern day "Wright's bike shop" -- and that is saying much.
Seastead this.
I was looking around to see if they used open source software to do the simulations mentioned in the article, this sourceforge page seems to be a likely candidate for the control software. I haven't fully explored the site yet, but it looks like they are still in the alpha stage and only have a cvs repository running. I'd like to know if there is any simulation software out there so I could explore it. (or for other people to explore it) Anyone have an idea where I could find some?
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
A few weeks ago they crashed a smaller prototype during testing when something went haywire. Then they show up a few weeks later with a bigger craft that performs perfectly.
The guidance is impressive, it equivelent to having a computer balancing a broom stick in real time.
Remember the govt's VTOL spacecraft that tipped over and blew up on the pad?
I bet if John was funded by paul allens millions he would be as far along as the scaled composits team. The fact that he has gotten this far with far less money is also a impressive feat.
Got Code?
That would explain why you failed so miserably in your attempt
Think about it
That would explain why you were so slow.
Or maybe you only had one hand to type with?
The moment these guys drop a spent booster
or come crashing down in the middle of some
city they'll be screaming for the Feds to
protect them from the lawsuits.
And you know they will, because the people behind
these outfits are the same types behind SCO and
Enron.
Anything for a quick buck.
Because it runs Linux
If it ran FreeBSD then it would still be serving away quite happily.
Remember, Linux is for BITCHES!
"These days, you dont have to be a rocket scientist to be a rocket scientist."
John Romero of Daikatana fame also had a much-hyped launch, but his ship was bloated and delayed for months and could only reach escape orbit at 10 frames per second.
This is a surprisingly lame attempt at the X-Prize. A hydrogen peroxide engine is a terrible choice for propulsion. The propellant is dangerous and and has low specific impulse. It has been mainly used for thrusters in the past. It is not even the best choice for that. Bipropellant thrusters now predominate. Any high power rocket modeller can show better than this. One wonders why he chose to publicize the event, considering the upcoming flight of Burt Rutan's vehicle. That is what I call a serious attempt.
an ill wind that blows no good
Armadillo uses peroxide as a mono-propellant. Peroxide needs a catalyst to decompose fast enough to be a problem so if the rocket falls over and spills it's contents out onto the ground there will not be an enormous explosion. If the guidance goes haywire, then they are going to be at risk for a fair distance. They may have judged that it is actually safer being closer to the takeoff/landing as that way a rogue rockey would not have the time to build up any dangereous lateral speed...
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
You mean they aren't *Natural* Blondes?
This means that he coded a real-life physics engine. Other's have done like things but from what I've read Carmack is obsessive over the perfection of his engines.
Did anyone else here think of that old Lander game when you saw it plant itself back on the ground?
You also are forgetting that they have been doing captive launch tests for the past several months and have been working with this fuel system for several years, including several spectacular crashes, broken hoses, weld breaks, and just about anything else you could imagine. They knew what they were doing.
/. crowd has a chance to calm down on this story. It shows a strong reaction when mixed with leather. They tried several materials including nylon, cotton, denim (I know, cotton with a tighter weave), and several other fabrics. I guarentee there was absolutly no leather anywhere near the launch that day.
BTW, if you want to see something dangerous with Peroxide, check out their material tests video. I would include the link but the site has been slashdotted. Check it out when the
This choice of a propellant is a testament to private enterprise and how manned rocket flight can be made much safer than NASA is willing to admit. Had this been an O2/Kerosene rocket instead (like the Saturn V 1st stage), the original poster would have been correct. Get several miles away from the launch pad, preferably in a concrete bunker that is mostly buried in the ground.
The material tests were done using a higher concentration of peroxide, IIRC. John is on record in sci.space.tech saying that they have since gone to a lower concentration of peroxide combined mixed with alcohol. This was in part of this was due to the difficulties he had obtaining high concentrations of peroxide, but eliminating the risk of explosion & lowering the temperature of the reaction were also important considerations.
With the concentration of peroxide they use now, there is no chance of an explosion, so shrapnel is not a major risk.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Or at least give them great lift.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Happens all the time...
preface: This is a joke
John Carmack always gets +5 when he posts something. It's not even a question, moderators are drawn to give up those points like a heroin addict looking to shoot up when they see his name.
I think one day JC is going to just put "I farted, it stanks" and hit OK by accident, and then see the following on the comment:
+1 Insightful
+1 Funny
+1 Interesting
+1 Informative
You're right that there's nothing that new about hydrogen peroxide fuel. What is new, apparently, is using a weaker solution (50% peroxide rather than 90%).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I find it rather amusing that you mention doom 3 in a post about the rocket... I suppose to satisfy those curious geeks that would rather pay attention to a video game than a possible historic moment in technology.
:-)
A question that falls between the two though... since you seem to be working on both (and where do you find the time, man), do you find the knowledge of one can help the other? Game physics aren't quite the same as real-world, but there are probably some simularities. I'll go with the assumption that you were involved in creating the software to general launch "test scenarios" - which is a more fun project?
It's amazing to have somebody who was/is a game-geek cult hero go on to be involved with somethink like a true rocket launch... and I'd imagine you learn a lot at it. Maybe you can add an armadillo easter-egg into D3 somewhere
I don't think there's a huge business in suborbital hops. Cheap payloads to orbit, maybe, but they're going to have to scale up their design a hell of a lot to be able to do that. John Carmack is a rich guy, but I don't think he's rich enough to pay for the development on his own, and finding investors in new space technology has been damned hard to do.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
why else would someone make a game about monsters invading earth from hell, and the humans in the game fled to space, and makes rockets that try to make it to space?
quick, time to get your BFG's
December 20, 2003 notes
The reason being that parachute has failure mode (premature deployment) which may possibley cause damanage on the ground in much wider area. But comparing to landing parachute, it is such a dynamic control that it MUST be landed by computer. How many of you trust your programming enough to put your life solely depending on it? Me? Hell no.
Come on, more FUD please! Your attempt at a troll is pathetic!
It it just me, or does the landing of that thing look a little odd...? The last second or so, when it drops sharply to the ground and then wiggles looks like somebody placing a chess piece on the board...looks like it's dropping way too fast to have what appears to be zero shock absorption at the landing. And whats with that little wiggle, anyway, when it's already on the ground?
I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation, but it looks like a bad animation, or a liftoff run backwards.
-fister
From what I've seen, Armadillo definitely practices safe rocketry.
On Monday ins't SpaceShipOne attempting to go to 100km?
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Do you remember the text at the end of doom1?
Carmack in space could be a baad baad thing.
It's not getting up that's the problem, it's coming down from orbit. Going up is proving easier and doable. Coming down should work as well. Your problem is where you land if something goes wrong. It's not the cost of the craft, it's the safety of the crew that's expensive.
Only governments and large companies can field the rescue effort required for accidents. Most of the world's surface is ocean and private rescue is still unlikely. US astronauts, from the beginning, were trained to survive for days on land and at sea. This was despite having the entire US Navy waiting for them with good radar contacts around the world. The world is a large place and it's easy to get lost in it while no one is watching. At the moment, I doubt that a reasonable rescue could be fielded by anything but government or a cooperative effort of all the world's oil companies. I have my doubts about the oil companies even if they wanted a launch.
While we can and should expect the world's governments to share tracking information, you still want to have rescue waiting all around the world. Just imagine yourself having to ditch into the middle of the Indian Ocean. This is going to remain an expensive obstacle until space flight is common enough for people to make a living at rescue and facilities are built.
Don't get me wrong, private space will come and it's a great thing to work on. We should simply be aware of the larger problems before we call suborbital flight an existence proof of private space. The Wright brother's were a better proof of commercial aviation. I envy those lucky few who get paid to work on private space ventures.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A theoretical conversation between John Carmack the astronaut and ambassador Zarvox of Omicron Persei 8
Zarvox: Greetings earthling. We come in peace. What is it that you do on your planet?
Carmack: I make computer games where you run around and kill aliens.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Carmack is a celebrity among geeks. We all have people we admire. Even geek tribes have leaders.
Obviously, Joe Schmo is not going to know him, but we do. It is fine that you may resent him, but you should also respect the fact that living the geek dream is something that we all aspire to doing... but for one circumstance or another, we haven't been lucky enough to do it.
So give Carmack some friggin' props for at least pressing a little bit of the envelope and being a pioneer. In a world where technology is everywhere, he is pushing the barrier. Respect that.
Personally, I have always been dissappointed my whole life that I couldn't wake up, suit up, get in the airlock, and go out and weld space stations with my hands for a living. I think all of us geeks are upset for not being born in a more advanced civilization than we already are, or not having been born with enough money to get all the education we want.
He is at least using his cash for a useful hobby. Some day there will be normal use space travel. Damn if I can't wait for those days. Think, modern commerce in space... instead of spy sattelites and weapons platforms. It sounds a whole lot better than what is going on now.
Damn you innovators! Damn you all!
I find your design interesting because of its applicability to a manned Mars mission. I had done some research on the subject and believed that a small rocket like your own might be most suitable, though I had an ablative heat shield in mind (which would remain on the Martian surface to reduce take off weight). Armadillo's rocket does not rely on a thick earth atmosphere to gain altitude, nor does it require any prepared launching area (to my knowledge) unlike aircraft with their tarmacs. It's simple, conventional and would be easily tended to far from civilization, and most importantly it looks like it will work.
It seems that your craft fills a niche of its own, that of an adaptable vehicle capable of reaching space from a very wide variety of environments with little requirements, something quite desperately needed for further manned solar exploration.
(Now if only the Martian in-situ fuel production could be nailed down, then a large portion of the technical hurdles will have been passed...)
weather permitting - hop in your winnebagos and drive on down to Mojave to see it yourself:
m
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/index.ht
So as I understand it he has to fly twice in two weeks to claim the prize?
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
In related news, the Mesquite Sheriff's department took a report from Little Billy Shumacker who's model rocket was stolen by a man with glasses who tried to offer him the cheat codes for 'god mode' for doom 3 in exchange.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Didn't the Van Halen brothers have an uncle who was a physicist at the University of Iowa, who discovered radiation belts from the Explorer 1 ionization detector?
I am sure the Hunstville Germans had their very staid, Lutheran wives, but the astronauts, even though they had engineering college degrees, these guys were first of all military jet pilots, and I always thought that fighter pilots attracted the sort of women who hung out with race car drivers.
Who cares about John Romero now that Stevana dumped his ass? She was the only reason anyone paid attention to him in the first place. She was a hott babe. Now he's got that tubby chick from eastern europe. Transylvania, no less. What's her name? Racula?
It's good to see things looking up for John Carmack however. He's the real reason that FPS games exist in the first place.
This is the standard response from your typical slashdot idiot whenever they read criticism of any kind. What about the fact that I don't have Bill Gates billions? Fact is Carmack has more money (and graphics programming ability) than sense. His amateurish experiments are not noteworthy and diminish more serious efforts of other competitors.
Oh ya. I have progressed to a 4 foot model using 2 G engines. It flies to 3000' and exceeds the speed of sound in flight. You can find commercial gasoline/hydrogen-peroxide-water fueled models that fly to 6000'. Perhaps Carmack should have bought one of those and made a press release.
an ill wind that blows no good
A variety of responses:
We don't expect to win the X-Prize, both because Burt probably has it in the bag, and we are behind schedule. We still plan on continuing our development, because our designs are nearly an order of magnitude cheaper to fabricate and operate than Space Ship One, and orders of magnitude matter. If SS1 crashes on Monday, we will throw more time and resources at an attempt, because there really is no other contender, but it will be a long shot.
We could have flown an unguided rocket to very high altitudes a long time ago, but we have instead concentrated on control systems, which is where the important work needs to be done. A team that was busy flying rockets to hundreds of thousands of feet altitude, then decided to add a guidance and control system to their rockets would be in for many rude surprises at high energy levels.
This isn't immediately obvious, but an X-Prize class vehicle pretty much requires an active control system (a trained pilot with appropriate controls is also an active control system). A short burn time rocket, like the recent CSXT 100 km shot, can live with just aerodynamic stabilization (note that it also landed 20 miles away), but the G forces are far too high for people. As the burn time lengthens with lower acceleration forces, the vehicle will gravity turn away from vertical, making it almost impossible to keep a 60 second burn time even accelerating upwards.
People that harp on about propellant specific impulse in the context of suborbital rockets are like programmers that obsessively optimize a function that isn't a hot spot. The goal of a rocket ship is not to deliver specific impulse, it is to move a payload reliably and cost effectively. Isp can always be traded away for mass fraction, and quite often you can improve operability or reliability by doing so. With our new vehicle designs using a single engine and jet vanes instead of four differentially throttled engines we are more likely to consider trading some engine and system complexity for performance, but issues like the requirement for deep throttling still make it a complex decision.
I do Armadillo work on Tuesdays, weekends, and late at night. At Id lately I have been working on next-generation rendering technology while the rest of the company manages the Doom beta process.
I don't issue press releases. I just publicly write about what I am working on, and other people find it noteworthy enough to talk about. All of our development work, including the dead ends and mistakes, is fairly well documented on the Armadillo Aerospace website.
John Carmack
There is no f*cking way you can get out of the Mamsteen belt. It's too dank up there, and too much RF noise; you'll feel like kicking air and bobbing your head for no reason. I hear Loverboy belt causes eating disorders and stretchmarks... And the Nirvana belt causes random exploding of brains.
They said the same think aboot man traveling nowhere fastd. Then I ssays, yous knownk: by my standink here, the planet's orbiting is also spinning on an axis which rotates 1,000 Miles Per-Hour.
Bu en terms of speed, I ssays I mustd agree that time doth not exist. As I ssay to efery highway military police state officeur: "I don know how fastd I was moving, bu I knownk where I have been."
And yea, a plane can fly 100Km; in a vaccum, we knoweth outside of this atmosphere on planet Earth as "Space: theee final frontier; these are the voyages of the sarship Enterprise"
What did you have to pay her? Or did you become
a Linux Zelot after the wedding vows? Talk about
midnight pumpkins.
If I could moderate in this discussion, I'd throw a point your direction.