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20,000 Show up for X-Prize Expo

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the that's-why-man-invented-landing-pads dept.

Zacharski writes to tell us that the X-Prize Cup Expo was held Sunday in Las Cruces New Mexico in front of about 20,000 people. John Carmack was there with his team from Armadillo Aerospace. From the article: "Armadillo Aerospace got their rocket-powered, vertical takeoff, vertical landing vehicle off the ground. Blasting off into the sky then hovering for a few seconds, the craft began lowering itself to the ground - but tipped over on touchdown. The wet ground due to overnight rain was the cause, although the craft appeared undamaged in the fall. An internal hose was punctured, however, causing subsequent flights to be scrubbed." The expo also ended with quite a bang when Starchaser's Churchill Mk2 rocket engine blew up.

6 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. pics of the armadillo exercise? by torpor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    i mean, come on .. we've got pics of the crowds, a dummy rocket, and a rocket failure.

    where are the pics of the armadillo test flight? this is more interesting than the failures!

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  2. Exposure for the alt.space community by everphilski · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Right now it is all about exposure for the alternative space community.

    Starting next year there will be actual competitions (hopefully). But this year you prettymuch had XCOR (a airplane retrofitted with a rocket engine), Armadillo (vertical takeoff rocket) for functinal vehicles that flew. The rest of the companies had pieces. Wouldn't be much of a competition to be had. Next year there will be races (rocket racing league).

    -everphilski-

  3. Where's Boeing? by backslashdot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have seen evidence that commercial beats government. But SpaceShipOne is not it. They acheived what NASA and the soviets acheived over 3 decades ago.

    Given that the rockets used by NASA are designed by third party commercial contractors, how come they aren't heavily in this game?

    1. Re:Where's Boeing? by ivan256 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Correction, they're replicating what NASA did 45 years ago. Even NASA can't do what they did 30 years ago.

      Anyway, consider this: The US spent $300 million to get to sub-orbital flights (That's almost $2 billion in today's dollars). The SpaceShipOne program cost $30 million.

  4. Re:$20 million will do that by EnglishTim · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Carmack referred to rocketry as plumbing but with the volume turned up. Guess it's not quite that easy.

    To be fair, they have got their ships in the air several times, it's just getting them down accelerating at less that 9.8m/s^2 that seems to have been giving them problems ;-).

    I think they're doing quite well considering they're basically five or six guys working in their spare time.

  5. Re:$20 million will do that by everphilski · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Carmack will admit he isn't a rocket scientist. He will also tell you peroxide was a great learning experiance because it gives you quick turnaround time. He was able to experiment with more configurations while working with peroxide than he can with LOX. It was a good learning experiance. They are sold on LOX now. (they only switched propellant formulations once).

    Remember - they aren't chasing after a prize, they are a bunch of guys having fun and learning.

    His Isp isnt that bad - he's hitting 200 with lox. That's not any worse than Rutan had. And he's working with throatless, a throated vehicle will get anywhere from 20-40% gain in performance.

    Again, you can't compare Carmack to Rutan. Rutan is a business man who set out to win a prize with venture capital. Carmack is developing this with friends as a learning experiance. And he's not doing too shabby, especially after he figured out that peroxide sucks :)

    -everphilski-