A sky-high success has been reported by Armadillo Aerospace of Mesquite, Texas. The group scored a perfect test flight [Video] June 15 of prototype hardware as part of their X Prize project, the Black Armadillo.

That cash purse will go to the first team that privately finances, builds and launches a craft capable of hauling three individuals up to 62.5 miles (100 kilometers) altitude, returns safely to Earth, then duplicates that suborbital flight with the same vehicle in the span of two weeks.

Leading Armadillo’s bid to snag the X Prize is John Carmack, co-founder and chief technical engineer of id Software. He admits to being a long-time rocketry enthusiast, anxious to send civilians into space.

"The flight was perfect. It went 131 feet high, and landed less than one foot from the launch point," Carmack reported on his publicly accessible web site. "It can easily do flights three times as long, which may show up some problems before we hit them with the big vehicle."

Armadillo’s rocket concept makes use of a hydrogen peroxide monopropellant.

Carmack said the vehicle’s auto-land system worked perfectly, softly settling down on its tail section. "I had tried several algorithms on the simulator before settling on this one, and it behaved exactly the same in reality, which is always a pleasant surprise," he noted.

Carmack said that next week’s scheduled public flight of SpaceShipOne from Mojave, California have "good odds" for success in flying its pilot to the X Prize, suborbital altitude.

As for Armadillo’s future flight planning, Carmack and crew are staying the course. He added, however, that his group’s prospects are "pretty dim" for getting the group’s larger vehicle up and operating in five months time and attaining the needed permission to fly the vehicle.

Regarding the role that private rocketeers are playing, Carmack suggests a new paradigm is at work.

"The Ansari X Prize is stimulating the re-examination of a premise that has gone almost unchallenged for decades - that 'rocket science' can only be undertaken by governments and corporations with billions of dollars at their disposal," Carmack points out on the X Prize web site. "It doesn't have to be that way, because we have advantages at our disposal today that no government on earth had at the beginning of the space age - the amazing advances in electronics, computerized manufacturing processes, in-place space assets like GPS and satellite data systems, and, of course, several decades of hindsight. I expect people to remain skeptical, but an existence proof will change the conversation completely."