Armadillo Aerospace - New Update April 2, 2008

[Zapp]

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=357 

 

[Zapp]

Matthew Ross also posted the "Space Access 08" video on the frontpage, nothing new, but old news are better than no news  

[Tergenev]

Nobody here seems to even react to Armadillo anymore. And yet, it strikes me that these folks are going the old Wright Brothers way to operations. Build the experience slowly, modestly, iteratively, and with a simple yet insistent scientific approach.

In today's message from John Carmack, there were several very interesting things:

 - The burnthrough of the nozzle as they let the fuel run out without stopping the burn was quite dramatic. It's fun to see stainless steel glow red-hot and evaporate.
 - Their continuous, albeit sped-up, video of an engine being restarted 21 times is also quite fun. It really seems like this team is beginning to understand the boundaries of their system in both capabilities and weaknesses.
 - Their new LNG work (methane) should seem to be of some passing interest to those on this board, since this is work in cooperation with NASA. Smart for NASA, as they can probably gather data through this team cheaper than just about anything that the agency has every done. As usual, the Armadillo guys seem to have adapted their system quickly to work with LNG. Although it is clear that they have a long way to go before they get as comfortable with it as they are with the ethanol.
 - The most interesting thing about this update, though, is John Carmack's assessment of the current state of other New Space efforts. Overall, he seems much more sober and conservative in his assessments than he has in the past, although he's never been terribly exuberant. The most interesting point was his assessment of the Blue Origins effort (not that he knows more than the rest of us) but his comment directly to Jeff Bezos seems to indicate that Mr. Carmack genuinely hopes to give Bezos some advice. Overall, I was sort of surprised by Carmack's tone about some of the teams. I guess the more one becomes a rocket scientist, the more summarily judgmental and derisive one becomes. Still I can't disagree with his assessment of Scaled Composites' chances at profitability, nor his gentle chastisement of the rest of the industry when it comes to Blue Origins' chances and capabilities. Carmack really seems to see Scaled Composites as the father figure of New Space, while Armadillo and XCOR are the legitimate children with genuine capability (unlike the illegitimate capabilities of EADS Astrium, Rocketplane, and SpaceDev.) (Space X may be the distant wealthy uncle?) At least, thats the way Carmack seems to see things.
 - Finally, (I know, this post is already too long) I was surprised that Carmack seems to genuinely believe that Armadillo could actually be the first to deliver suborbital passenger service with their crazy fishbowl concept. That's as radical a change of mindset as any I've seen in the last couple years in the NewSpace market. . . .signs of an acknowledgment of the real risks (i.e. the Scaled accident, the SpaceX failures) and the dramatic slow-down of progress.

[meiza]

I have a tremendous appreciation of Armadillo's practical experience. You just can't buy that kind of thing with money, it takes time and a lot of effort.

[kkattula]

Armadillo Rock!  Every update is eagerly awaitied.

The most impressive thing is their ability to go from thinking about a new method, to designing, building, testing and maturing it in just a few weeks.  How long have they been worjing on film-cooled stainless steel engines? Two months and they're almost finiished? Working unpaid, part time? Armadillo flew a tethered flight on their first stainless engine after one week! And they've run it on methane as well as ethanol.

Everything is designed to be simple, reliable and inexpensive.  Once they have this engine dialled in, I expect things to move pretty quickly.

[bad_astra]

I still read their updates and I'm still excited at the work their doing. They'll have their win one day and get their greater recognition.

[savuporo]

Armadillo rocks. The best contemporary rocket engineers out there, period. ( Rocketry ceased to be science long ago )
I do wish that they would get around to fly high and fast for a change .. i am suspecting that while they are getting their stuff really solid with low hovering rockets, going high and fast will open up new cans of worms for them that they arent even thinking about now, and as they havent gotten no experience in that domain i suspect this will put a significant damper on further progress.
Just hoping they have the determination to ride this out.

[zaitcev]

I think John omitted Masten because they do not plan to fly passengers any time soon, but otherwise I think they are similar to Armadillo in capabilities, for now. They, however, lack any kind of modular architecture. It's strictly the execution of the original plan towards revenue.

[Lampyridae]

I was interested to see them quoting $1M for 100 qualification test flights... wow, if they manage to succeed that could mean very low cost suborbital flights... maybe even in Joe Soap's pocket. Although it is kind of like one's entire university fees being burned in 10 minutes. Heh heh so much for doing my PhD....

[savuporo]

zaitcev - 6/4/2008  5:19 PM
I think John omitted Masten because they do not plan to fly passengers any time soon, but otherwise I think they are similar to Armadillo in capabilities,

Uh .. with all due respect to guys at Masten, currently Armadillo's capabilities seem to far surpass them. Armadillo have put themselves into position to sell vehicles, have long operational flight experience ( significant caveat : low altitude only ), and have tons of history and experience with various hardware configurations.

[josh_simonson]

Without cross-plumbing, their modular vehicle looks somewhat dangerous to me.  What if one of the edge engines shuts down with most of a load of fuel in it's tanks?  The vehicle will have to land heavier and significantly off balance.  They may find that the 'sweet spot' is with modular engines but a single tank, much like SpaceX is doing.

[jongoff]

Pete,

I think John omitted Masten because they do not plan to fly passengers any time soon, but otherwise I think they are similar to Armadillo in capabilities, for now.

Yeah, our plan is still to focus on the unmanned portion of the market first, and use that to build up experience and revenue.  Trying to compete in the manned suborbital market, when pretty much all of our competitors are much better funded than we are seems like a mistake.  Depending on how that market shakes out, and how soon we can get to market with our unmanned flights, we might get involved at some point, but that's a decision for down the road.  For now we're still trying to build-up expertise in all of the building blocks.

They, however, lack any kind of modular architecture. It's strictly the execution of the original plan towards revenue.

While I agree that we're not following John's modular approach at the moment, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your last sentence.

~Jon

[jongoff]

Savuporo,

Uh .. with all due respect to guys at Masten, currently Armadillo's capabilities seem to far surpass them. Armadillo have put themselves into position to sell vehicles, have long operational flight experience ( significant caveat : low altitude only ), and have tons of history and experience with various hardware configurations.

Yeah, I think it's a fair assessment to say that Armadillo definitely has a lot more flight experience than anyone else in the VTVL market.  I'm biased enough to think that we make better engines, but they've definitely had a lot more success on the controls side of things.  We're taking active steps to correct that though (such as bringing on a GN&C engineer, doing more simulations and detailed tests, etc).  It'll be interesting to see how things go.

~Jon