20,000 Show up for X-Prize Expo

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.

Comments

Flight Videos

[everphilski]

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-

Flight picture here

[pmike_bauer]

Here's a picture

Re:When Carmack is involved...

[Chairboy]

> 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'.

worlds largest enchilada

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I was there

[7Ghent]

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

Re:$20 million will do that

[WindBourne]

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.