Armadillo Aerospace Update Thread

[e of pi]

It was Carmack relatively recently (within the last month). Going off of memory.

John Carmack, Jan 29, email title "Stig data, was RE: smallest realistically useful payload for orbital booster?"

[QuantumG]

It was Carmack relatively recently (within the last month). Going off of memory.

John Carmack, Jan 29, email title "Stig data, was RE: smallest realistically useful payload for orbital booster?"

Thanks.

"One of the biggest mistakes in Stig development was only building them one at a time." - John Carmack

Okay, I was wrong.

PM me if you want more information about aRocket's quoting policy.

[mto]

This is the full flight of STIG-B 3. A sad day for Armadillos.

[mto]

Good Flight and Recovery, Multi Angle

[catdlr]

Full Stig B Recovery System development

Published on Mar 5, 2013
by: armadilloaerospace
This is the development process of the Main parachute recovery system for the Armadillo STIG B Rocket. There is more information available on development of the Ballute, that will be a separate video.

[mto]

Stig-B Final Moments

[savuporo]

From
http://www.newspacewatch.com/articles/space-access03913-summary-and-resources.html

A couple of high profile firms that were regulars of past meetings did not show up:
Masten Space Systems did not attend presumably because of ongoing activity with Xombie and Xaero-B
Armadillo Aerospace also did not attend. No info about their status, though there were  rumors that they have cut back to three full-time employees.

After more than 10 years, they are realizing that getting to space is indeed harder than doing
i  = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 );

?

[FutureSpaceTourist]

If true, the rumours about AA are sad. I'm guessing a lack of current  income beyond what John Carmack is able to self-fund?

[zaitcev]

Any post-mortem?

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Any post-mortem?

See here: http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/08/01/carmack-armadillo-aerospace-in-hibernation-mode/

[Crispy]

Carmack gave his yearly keynote speech at QuakeCon yesterday, and the first question in the Q&A was about Armadillo. Here's what he had to say:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cWA_9L70moE&t=299

Taking AA commercial put money-making projects in the way of their own aims.
So Carmack cancelled the side projects and used his own money to run it for two years. $1m a year. But he wasn't hands-on, and what he calls "Creeping Professionalism" sucked the fun and immediacy out of it for the rest of the team. Productivity declined and they had some disheartening failures. So AA is now in "hibernation" mode, ticking over with a handful of employees, waiting for either Carmack to get free time and money or "someone with a few million dollars who wants to build rockets".

EDIT: Which is exactly what the above linked article says

[R7]

See here: http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/08/01/carmack-armadillo-aerospace-in-hibernation-mode/

Carmack offered several possible reasons why work on the STIG vehicles didn’t go as fast as he’d hoped. One was that he was not involved in the company on a day-to-day basis during this time, focused instead on software development. “Me not being there left me in a position of not wanting to second-guess the boots on the ground,” he said. “I left my hands off the wheel.”

No offence but when he had his hands on the wheel AA was juggling between propellants and had some silly army-of-bubbles LV plans. With STIG the rocket started to look like rockets are supposed to and they were making progress towards space.

Funding Armadillo, he said, has “always been a negotiation with my wife,” he said, setting aside some “crazy money” to spend on it. “But I’ve basically expended my crazy money on Armadillo, so I don’t expect to see any rockets in the real near future unless we do wind up raising some investment money on it.”

STIG tried to cross the Kármán line but crossed the Kang line instead? 

[Danderman]

This is a sad day indeed.

I would never have guessed that AA would fall by the wayside before Masten, but I didn't count on the problem that to launch conventional rockets would take the fun out of it. 

If it had to write an epitaph for AA, it would to note that they lost too much time fooling around with prop combinations other than LOX/kerosene; if they could have had that time back, they may have advanced much farther.

[simonbp]

I don't understand why they went with such a radical change as pixel -> stig; why not just put an aero faring on the older rockets and see how you could go. Stig's problem was never reaching altitude, it was returning safely...

[Lars_J]

Sad to hear. But a lot of their enthusiasm and testing frequency seems to have gone drastically when they abandoned VTVL designs.

[Chris-A]

Sad news. On the other hand, you have to make money or have deep pockets.

[mwfair]

First thing I learned in Aero Engr 101 was "How to make a small fortune in Aerospace".

[sanman]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/02/armadillo_aerospace_hibernation/

Maybe he just needs to take time out to improve his business model

[Robert Thompson]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/02/armadillo_aerospace_hibernation/
"
The difference between the fortunes of Armadillo Aerospace and SpaceX might come down to Musk's messianic quest to "die on Mars," Carmack indicated.

"A couple of weeks ago I was trading some emails with Elon Musk from SpaceX, and I was saying I'm excited about these virtual reality things and other stuff, and he kind of hits me with this 'if it's not on the path of colonizing Mars or making the money to fund colonizing Mars, then it's just not that important.' He's making me feel guilty for not thinking on an planetary scale. Elon is serious about all that stuff."
"

[Robotbeat]

He hasn't been devoting his resources to aerospace like he has in the past. Saw this coming for quite a while. Which isn't to say they won't start up again.

But without vision, the people perish. If your head guy isn't devoting much of his personal will to the project, it's just not going to go anywhere.

There's more information on ARocket.