HOLLOMAN
AIR FORCE BASE, New
Mexico – Weather and
rocketry are in synch for the Armadillo Aerospace team to launch quick
turnaround vertical takeoff and landing vehicles in the quest to win Northrop
Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge money.
Here at
opening day of the X Prize Cup, the Armadillo's lead rocketeer, John Carmack,
is taking a fingers-crossed stance, in anticipation that all his team's work is
going to pay off.
The challenge was designed by NASA to speed up the commercial development of a vehicle capable of ferrying cargo or humans back and forth between the surface of the Moon and low lunar orbit.
The complete Lunar Lander Challenge purse of $2,500,000 -- NASA's contribution is $2 million -- is divided into two levels. Level One is worth a total of $500,000. The more difficult Level Two is valued at a sum of $2,000,000.
Once again, Carmack and his team are the lone competitors in the challenge. Last year, despite three attempts, Armadillo Aerospace's Pixel failed to win the prize at the X Prize Cup.
"I do
classify myself much more as an engineer than an entrepreneur," Carmack told an
audience October 26 at an X Prize Foundation Executive Summit. He also chided
some of his next-of-kin rocket builders that all that's needed is a good
business plan.
There are
plenty of technology problems that must be faced, he explained.
"Technical problems only submit when they've been beaten to submission. And a
lot of them are biting back," he noted.
Low-grade
millionaire
Carmack
said he's spent about $3.5 million dollars out of his own pocket so far. "I'm a
low-grade millionaire...I have enough money to continue putting this half-million
dollars a year into our project as necessary."
After some
seven years of development, "we've made great progress," Carmack added. "I just
don't see what's going to stop us."
As a key
pet peeve, Carmack said that some are taking the scapegoat approach, blaming "the
big bad government" for impeding progress. He felt that this is not accurate,
with Armadillo spending about 25 percent of their efforts dealing with regulations,
permits, insurance, etc., with little impact on their eight-person team.
Test a
little and fly a lot is alive and well at Armadillo Aerospace, Carmack
explained.
"Nobody has
a good reusable spaceship now...and I would contend that right now nobody really
knows exactly how to do that," Carmack told the audience.
"I know Armadillo
is sort of a hard company for some people to get their heads around. Where on
one hand it looks like sort of a garage/hobby operation. But on the other hand,
we're the ones that are out there doing this," Carmack said. "We don't have
more flight tests than anyone...we have more flight tests than everyone.
And it's going to continue that way," he said.
Unknown
unknowns
The
Armadillo approach is modularity of flight hardware. Projecting out on his
engineering trajectory, Carmack said he and his team are looking at building a
commercially viable reusable vehicle, one that rockets people and cargo up to
62 miles (100 kilometers) at the edge of space, then returns to Earth for a
soft landing.
Atop the
rocket structure, a six-foot acrylic sphere serves as a cabin, sort of a
fishbowl flying up into space, Carmack related. "That's more compelling than
being strapped into a little seat and looking out a small porthole."
Carmack
said he expects to have that craft in operational status within a five year
period, with the starting gun, if all goes well, from next year. It's a new way
of doing research," he said.
But as a
public-carrying vehicle, Carmack envisions $10,000 to $20,000 tickets to ride
the craft, labeling it the world's biggest roller coaster. "In the end, it's
going to become an attraction."
Another
cautionary warning Carmack tossed out to fellow commercial space community
members is overuse of simulations, rather than building and testing things
incrementally.
"The
unknown unknowns are always going to catch you," Carmack said, no need to study
things to death via expensive simulations. Rather, do testing in reality, "and
we're heavily biased towards that," he said.
Work is
progressing and the obstacles are falling, Carmack said, with Armadillo
Aerospace of Mesquite, Texas sensing it has a credible plan all the way to
orbit.
"In the
end, while space is not easy, it is hard ... but it's not complicated," Carmack
concluded.
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