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

Bad comparison

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Significant rocketry started in the 1940s and space travel in the 1950s. That's over 50 years to get its shit together. Yet, in approx 120 launches the space shuttle program has lost two vehicles/crews in huge fireballs. If planes crashed that often LAX would have a crash before breakfast every morning.

Or, put another way... within 20 years of the Wright Brothers the airplane industry had far better safety records than the space industry does after 50 years.

How funny

[WindBourne]

When I was a kid, I remeber the coming of the 747 (I paid attention since my father was a commercial pilot). Many ppl swore up one side and down the other, that this was a NIGHTMARE in the making. They said that they would never go because it would crash all the time killing more ppl than were in my town (small town). Their were so many cowards and small thinkers. Fortunately, Boeing pushed it, built it, and now, it is the major largest craft going.

Another group thought that we had no business going to the moon and swore that LLM would simply sink into the moon. I suspect that these same ppl believe that we never went.

Just so that you know, Carmack and his rocket are real.

Re:John's forum post on the subject

[XenoPhage]

For those that are not aware, this was John's post on a PUBLIC forum. John has continually posted information regarding his team's experiences and any important information they have learned. He's taken the open source mentality into the rocketry arena and many teams are all the better for it. This is the type of information that NASA would happily write a few hundred page reports on and they encase in cement and bury.

I've been lurking on the rocketry group for a while now and it's great to see the open discussions about everything from rocket design to safety. I've learned more in a few months that I ever did watching all those NASA shuttle launches over the years.

Too much reliance on GPS?

[Radon360]

John goes on about the use of GPS in the control for acceleration for a bit. Understanding that where you have no nearby reference points, such as in space, this may be a good solution. At the same time, you usually don't have anything nearby to worry about crashing into (such as the ground). Although GPS can be very accurate, it often takes more datapoints that can be obtained in a very short timeframe to get that accuracy.

I wonder if there's a reason why they aren't using some means of LASER or RADAR rangefinding when in close proximity to landing for obtaining positioning (altitude) and velocity/acceleration information. The update rate could easily be several orders of magnitude faster than GPS could ever provide...especially since you need two position reports from GPS to find velocity and three to determine acceleration.