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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.

31 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. $20 million will do that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not a single X-Prize team (save Scaled Composites of course) have come even remotely close to getting a ship into the air.

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

    1. Re:$20 million will do that by sjasja · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > This is the kind of stuff that would take NASA 20 years to do

      What, get a rocket to blow up? And another to lift off a few feet and then tip over? NASA can do that too.

      > Shit, we can't even go to the moon if we wanted to.

      Sure you can. It's a question of money. A lot of people would like to pay less taxes rathern than more. It's a question of priorities. Talk to your congressman about that.

      > All the tooling for the saturn rockets was DESTROYED.

      An urban legend that just won't die. Some facilities were converted for new uses (e.g. STS). No, NASA engineers do not randomly go whacking equipment with axes. Some equipment can rust if there is no program (= money) to store it properly. Some equipment just gets old and no longer relevant (room-size computers with less computing power than your cell phone, electronic equipment for which nobody manufactures the required vacuum tubes, etc.)

      A rednecky "the government is big and bad and can never do anything right" paranoia game is a fun game to play. Lets you work up to a nice adrenaline rush. Feel like a big man when you get to look down your nose at others. But don't actually believe it when it matters.

    2. Re:$20 million will do that by WindBourne · · Score: 5, Insightful
      It shows the absolutely amazing things people can do with the interest and incentive. This is the kind of stuff that would take NASA 20 years to do,but they are well on their way in 5.

      I wish ppl would get past this crap.

      So NASA could not do it in 20 years, eh? In under a decade, NASA got man onto the moon. And that was 40 years ago. Now, ask how many of these companies today could do that? Even today, few. And 40 years ago? Absolutely none. In fact, ask any of these companies to put 50 tonnes into space in under 5 years. How many? none. They are going through the exact work that NASA (and their quasi private contractors) did back in the 60's. That is they are putting together Engineering teams with some small RD teams. NASA has always done large amounts of R&D on the cutting edge. How many of the current x-prize teams are doing any? Absolutely none. They are all doing engineering (big difference).

      BTW, Just as the current group of X-prizes stand on NASA's broad shoulders, NASA also stands on other giants shoulders. In particular, Russia, WWII germanany, and even the Chinese did HUGE amounts of research, that NASA used. Even getting into space was more cooperative than not; Canada, Original Europe (England, France, etc), and Japan have contributed directly and indirectly to NASA's effort.

      Shit, we can't even go to the moon if we wanted to.All the tooling for the saturn rockets was DESTROYED. What a fucking great idea, eh? I don't say this much, but hooray for the private sector.

      Blame NASA for that?? Not even close. This is the fault of politicians. Nixon started us down the shuttle path. Interestingly, NASA wanted to build a craft along the lines of Rutans approach, but Nixons ppl killed it. They did not like the up front price. Once the shuttle was flying, Reagan had the saturn line killed. When funding was sought to preserve the info, they felt that it was not needed. We have learned the hard way that that kind of info is difficult to get back. BTW. if you think that Private enterprise does a better job on that, well then ask Boeing. Boeing would love to extend the 747 and make some major changes. But they can not. Why? because they do not have many of their core blue prints. The 747 was designed on paper in the 70s. And yet, they do not have the info either. Right now, the vast majority of the 747 depends on skilled craftsman, just as the Saturn did.

      BTW, if you think that I say the above because I am opposed to the X-prize or something like that,

      1. I am decade long registered libertarian (and vote that way).
      2. I have worked for 3 major Private Enterprise R&D labs; Bell Labs, IBM watson, and USWest AT.
      3. And along the line of an x-prize

      Oh Yeah, I am a fan of x-prize, but I also value NASA for what it normally does. Sadly, it has died over the last 5-6 years. I am hopeful that griffin can bring it back to what it should be; a front-edge R&D team that pushes the envelope that private enterprise can not and will not do. O'Keefe was an absolute disaster. Goldin was not bad, but allowed politics to take hold. In addition, he should have pushed outwards more than he did, esp. towards the end.
      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    3. Re:$20 million will do that by Rei · · Score: 2, Insightful

      scalable

      It's barely scalable to X-prize-req's. It's not really scalable beyond that. His ISP is too low and mass is too high. Plus, his design methodology has produced one disaster after another.

      Don't get me wrong - I've always been a huge Carmack fan, and was in awe of his programming skill in my childhood. But following the diaries on Armadillo Aerospace, they keep repeating one widely known rocketry problem after another, and taking every dead end in the book. They can't even decide on what propellant to use - I mean, for YHVH's sake, they're this far into development, and they're not even set on a single propellant?

      From H2O2 monoprops to vaned thrust deflection on a rocket instead of gimballing, the project seems one big attempt to tackle every no-no in the book. While I don't give Rutan the sort of idolization that many around here do, I have to say this for him: He built his craft to the task at hand. He took the minimum required work for the low delta-V task at hand, but didn't take any of the "known dead-end" routes. He was also smart to buy his engine from elsewhere and focus on his craft. How many here, when you write a program, start with writing the operating system, then all of the drivers, then the compiler, and then your program? Not many, I'd imagine :) Anybody here build motorcycles or other vehicles - do you start by maching your own cylinders for the engine? Etc. Just because poor-performing rocket engines may have few/no moving parts doesn't make them simple devices to build - especially if you insist on ressurrecting dead horses. The devil is in the details.

      --
      But this Rottweiler not only is snarling and frothing at the mouth; it also went to Harvard.
    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-

    6. Re:$20 million will do that by Rei · · Score: 2, Informative

      Peroxide doesn't help you learn about LOX - they're completely different in almost every respect. LOX is cryogenic, peroxide is not. LOX is stable, peroxide (as sold) is a stabilized metastable compound with various catalyst risks. They require different kinds of tanks made of different kinds of materials. They burn in different kinds of engines. In short, they're about as dissimilar as oxidizers get in rocketry.

      They only switched propellant formulations once

      They tried no less than various peroxide monoprop concentrations; peroxide and liquid catalyst, of various types; peroxide and various fuels (they did some degree of work or another with each of ethanol, isopropyl alcohol, furural alcohol, kerosene, and acetone); peroxide, fuel and liquid catalyst/hyperglolic (i.e., triprop); LOX and various fuels; etc. And they were looking at a whole lot more, in the middle of all of their work - I mean, *radical* scrap-the-project-and-start-over changes, such as considering burning lithium aluminum hydride (which Carmack strangely considered because he liked the performance numbers of alane (aluminum hydride), which is an utterly different chemical; John, just because it has the words "aluminum" and "hydride" doesn't mean it's bonded similarly!).

      they're just a bunch of guys having fun and learning

      Which I have no problem with :) My only gripe is with those who think that Carmack is about to rocket off to deep space ;)

      ISP isn't bad - he's hitting 200 with LOX. Thats not any worse than Rutan had

      From April, I'm seing 188. By May, they were down to *178*. By Aug, they were up to 194. In Sept, their tests lost "a lot of ISP".

      Astronautix.com reports 250 ISP for SS1. Remember, now, that the effects of ISP don't scale linearly, but geometrically.

      after he figured out that peroxide sucks

      Which the Germans figured out during the late 1930s/early 1940s, and the Americans and Russians in the late 1940s/early 1950s, and the British in the 1950s/1960s as far as rockets to lift you off the ground were concerned ;) Now, the germans used peroxide-driven turbopumps (which Russia continues to this day, even in Soyuz - in fact, peroxide contamination caused the catastrophic Soyuz failure in 2002 that killed a soldier on the ground), but even those were problematic (as in regular explosions) for a very long time. A couple failed private projects have used peroxide as a main propellant since, but that's about it, as far as I can dig up.

      Relatively low strength peroxide is still occasionally used on small maneuvering rockets, where performance isn't important and not enough fuel goes by to cause signficant catalyst poisoning problems, but even for that it's not usually used. This is how a lot of early US spacecraft maneuvered. We also used it on some training craft.

      All of this is, of course, not counting amateurs who don't read/care for the history books and are building garage rockets for fun :) Anyways, I do wish Carmack the best. My only worry is that I hope he doesn't inadvertently kill himself or someone else in the process of experimenting. I'd trust someone like Rutan not to kill anyone on the ground (in the air, now, that's a different story ;) ); however, some of the test incidents at Armadillo have been a bit concerning.

      --
      But this Rottweiler not only is snarling and frothing at the mouth; it also went to Harvard.
  3. When Carmack is involved... by erroneus · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...it spells "DOOM!" ...or sometimes Quake... there's a much funnier joke in there somewhere...I think

    1. Re:When Carmack is involved... by Chairboy · · Score: 5, Funny

      > there's a much funnier joke in there somewhere...

      Yet you skillfully navigated directly past them. Astonishing precision.

      For example, you could have expressed surprise that everyone was surprised when all he did was 'rocket jump'.

  4. Flight Videos by everphilski · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's some flight videos taken in preparation for the XPrize cup (not footage from the event, but some final runs taken the week before)

    http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Ho me/News?news_id=310

    -everphilski-

  5. Well, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm glad no one was killed, but these failures should help to remind us that rocketry is really quite dangerous. If we had a responsible government, there would be more regulation to protect the public from these experiments.

    1. Re:Well, by Dmala · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I absolutely agree. Risk of any kind is totally unacceptable. Any endeavour where there's even a chance of someone getting a paper cut should be encumbered by layers and layers of conflicting regulations or outlawed entirely.

  6. Flight picture here by pmike_bauer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here's a picture

    --
    I read /. for the (Score:-1, Conservative) comments.
  7. 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-

  8. 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 Overzeetop · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's easy:

      NASA spends Billions and Billions of dollars to get something into the air. The contractors stand in line a capitol hill, sign a paper and provide wire information for their bank accounts. For every $100 of NASAs budget they spend, they receive $10 which they may keep as profit.

      Why in the world would someone with this kind of deal throw millions of dollars into a project which may or may not end up to be commercially viable? It doesn't make financial sense.

      --
      Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    2. 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.

    3. Re:Where's Boeing? by JohnsonWax · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While I agree with your point, don't overlook that Scaled had $2B in today's dollars of NASA funded research to work off of. Retracing the steps of others should always be cheaper and faster because you know what path to follow. But the modern, politicized, cost-plus NASA approach to solving problems pretty much guarantees that any real progress will be exceptionally expensive and largely accidental thanks only to the competencies of the engineers to overcome the f'd up environment in which they are placed.

    4. Re:Where's Boeing? by OwnedByTwoCats · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Alan Shephard's sub-orbital hop, which is what SpaceShipOne managed to replicate, was over 40 years ago.

      The rocket contractors aren't in "this game" because it's a game. They have their gravy train, and they send payloads into space with some frequency, so they understand how hard it is to do. They're not interested in playing games.

    5. Re:Where's Boeing? by bani · · Score: 3, Informative

      SpaceShipOne didn't even come close to what Shepard did.

      SpaceShipOne went straight up and down, 367k feet. It peaked at mach 3 and reentry topped at around 5g's. Maximum reentry temperature was around 200F.

      Shepard's flight was 612k feet, and 302 miles downrange. It peaked at mach 7.7, and on reentry he experienced nearly 12g's. Maximum reentry temperature was around 2000F.

  9. Starchaser blew up by terrymr · · Score: 3, Funny

    There's a surprise ... pretty much an every time occurance for them.

  10. Gerald Bull's Super Gun by Pedrito · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm surprised nobody has tried to follow up on Gerald Bull's idea of a Super Gun to launch things into orbit.

    It would be relatively cheap and I have to think it's going to be a bit simpler than building a rocket.

    You do run into the problem of being limited on what you can launch. Not only is size limited, but whatever you're firing into orbit is going to have to deal with some pretty serious acceleration issues.

    Still, it would be cool to see someone follow up on his work to see if it's doable.

    1. Re:Gerald Bull's Super Gun by lommer · · Score: 3, Informative

      I wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunately, there hasn't been anyone influential enough that has been pushing the concept since Bull's assasination. These days, science moves forward only when people who are passionate about a certain area pour their soul into it. The other thing is that as hard as rocketry is, we've had lots of experience with it and we have almost none with the kind of artillery that Bull wanted to build. Bull was a brilliant guy (he had earned his PhD @ 23 years old), and his guns were quite complex. We're talking multiple charges detonating along the length of several kilometers of the barrel, and he also used rocket sabots that would ignite at high altidude to give the projectile the last little boost.

      For more information on the remarkable story of Bull and his supergun, check wikipedia:

      Gerald Bull: Biography

      Project HARP: Bull's earlier work for the US gov't.

      Project Babylon: Bull's work for saddam hussein that eventually got him killed by the Mossad

    2. Re:Gerald Bull's Super Gun by Ga_101 · · Score: 2, Informative

      To my knowledge, I think that the ESA was working on something along this line using a 4 km long mag-lev track.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EADS_Phoenix

      Good idea if you ask me. Lob your hardware into orbit using this, then (if you want to man said hardware) send up your astronauts on a R7 and dock with it. Shame that I haven't realy heard that much about it.

  11. Heat shielding by terrymr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's also the heat issue ... the reason things re-entering the atmosphere get hot is because orbital velocities and atmopspheric friction don't go well together.

  12. worlds largest enchilada by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    20,000 people sounds impressive until you learn that more than that came to Las Cruces to see the worlds largest enchilada.

    http://www.twefie.com/

    It's in the Guinness Book of World Records.

  13. Test flight! by ericfnj · · Score: 3, Funny

    Here is the best test flight of all, IMO. Full ignition was not achieved. However, termainal velocity was achieved. P.S. Does anyone else wonder if this is the state of this contest?

  14. I was there by 7Ghent · · Score: 5, Informative

    Drove down from Albuquerque with several friends. We got some decent pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/killbox/

  15. 20,000 showed up, 5,000 by accident... by digitaldc · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...5,000 attendees thought it was a place to meet and celebrate their favourite pr0n stars.
    The expo also ended with quite a bang, it was told.

    --
    He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
  16. I was there by apsmith · · Score: 2, Informative

    More than the mishaps and explosions, the exciting thing about it all to me was the wide variety of people there. There were realtors selling land near the soon-to-be New Mexico Spaceport, and the Up Aerospace people who're going to inaugurate it. Carmack, Peter Diamandis, Rick Tumlinson and that bunch were all hanging out amongst everybod. There were many kids, many local residents at the event.

    And though they've done it before for air-show crowds, this was the first time I'd seen the XCOR EZ-Rocket in action; truly awe-inspiring to see how easily it could maneuver. The loud rocket engines as it buzzed the crowd a few times didn't hurt the experience!

    Anyway, not as exciting as if there'd been some real suborbital flights, but it looks like in just a couple of years that'll be a reality. Exciting times!

    --

    Energy: time to change the picture.