Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace Rocket Crashes and Burns

mcgrew (sm62704) writes "New Scientist is reporting that John Carmack's 'Armadillo Aerospace' has suffered a large setback in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge after one of its two main rockets crashed and burned. 'During the test, Texel lifted off and hovered without incident, then descended again and touched the ground. But it then rose again unexpectedly and began accelerating upward. "Crap, it's going to fly into the crane, I need to kill it," Carmack recalls thinking. He hit the manual shutdown switch, turning off the vehicle's engine in mid-flight. Texel was about 6 metres above the ground and fell like a stone. One of its fuel tanks broke open when it hit the ground, spewing fuel that ignited and engulfed the vehicle in flames. "It made a fireball that would make any Hollywood movie proud," Carmack says.' No one was hurt in the crash, but the vehicle was destroyed."

Comments

Re:Coming soon...

[jonnythan]

Carmack and Romero are two different people.

Re:The carmack

[XenoPhage]

Failed? I think not. Just so you're aware, Armadillo was the only team last year to even attempt the lunar lander prize, and except for some bad luck, would have walked away with it.

This year, there may be a few other challengers, but I think John and company will walk away with it. John and his team have taken this challenge in directions that the "big guys" have never tried, and it's working.

We'll see! Only 65 days left!

Re:that's unfortunate but

[BiggerBoat]

is "Matt" the only one in possession of the video?

Yes, it's sitting on my kitchen counter back in the States right now.

Is his ENTIRE path to Germany devoid of internet connections?

Nope, obviously I'm posting on the internet right now. It's just that my laptop is not good enough to capture video reliably over its Firewire connection (believe me, I've tried). And besides, I was under the impression when I left that John was not going to be posting any video until the next update anyway, which will be after I get back. Hell, I never expected this to make Slashdot without a video to see yet.

Including the place he stayed until he leaves "the next day"

Because I was leaving for Germany the next day, and because our Saturdays at Armadillo usually run late, I had very little time to do ANYTHING other than make sure I had all of my travel essentials in order (Did I get some cash for the trip? Are the dogs taken care of? Do I have all my stuff packed? Do I have my itinerary printed out? Where's my damn passport? Is everything battened down at the "day job"? Etc.) Of course, I could have just forsaken sleep to make sure UbuntuDupe didn't become suspicious of something nefarious...

You see, we're all volunteers at Armadillo, and therefore all have day jobs. My day job required me to come to Germany for the Leipzig Games Convention to promote things entirely unrelated to Armadillo. This is the job that actually provides a salary, so it kind of takes precedence over Armadillo sometimes.

Could I have left the video with the others so that they could capture it and get it up on the web page? Well, no one else on the team has any experience with that -- their expertise is in software design, electronics, manufacturing, welding, etc. So I'd have had to train them to do it. And again, why would I do that when, as I understood it, John's not going to post the video till the next update anyway?

But you go and believe whatever you want. Just know that we WILL post the video when I get back.

Matthew Ross
Armadillo Aerospace