Armadillo Aerospace Update Thread

[SpacexULA]

Carmack is very close to being vindicated in his choice of VTVL for reusable launch vehicle. Give it a year or two for SpaceX's first stage vertical landing or, should SpaceX fail, five (for Blue Origin).

I still wonder how a Masten/Armadillo/Upaerospace could survive is SpaceX started allowing suborbital payloads on the first stage if recovery of Falcon 1.1 to water works out.

Considering almost no Falcon 1.1 flight is maxing out the payload to orbit, that's a LOT of mass that can go up and come down with the first stage that would usually go up on sounding rockets.

[Robotbeat]

Carmack is very close to being vindicated in his choice of VTVL for reusable launch vehicle. Give it a year or two for SpaceX's first stage vertical landing or, should SpaceX fail, five (for Blue Origin).

I still wonder how a Masten/Armadillo/Upaerospace could survive is SpaceX started allowing suborbital payloads on the first stage if recovery of Falcon 1.1 to water works out.

Considering almost no Falcon 1.1 flight is maxing out the payload to orbit, that's a LOT of mass that can go up and come down with the first stage that would usually go up on sounding rockets.

Masten can offer a lot quicker turnaround.

[R7]

There are sounding rockets much more powerful out there than STIG. They can reach 1000km with one stage and are not that expensive.

What sounding rocket goes that high with one stage, how much does it cost and what's the max acceleration?

[ChrisWilson68]

This may not be a very popular opinion, but for myself I'm not too bothered by Armadillo disappearing.  In my view, they were always just a hobby.  There's nothing wrong with a hobby, and if it entertained the people who worked on it, that's great.  But I don't think Armadillo made -- or had any chance of making, if it had continued -- any impact on the wider industry.  Virgin Galactic has a better approach to getting people and cargo to and from suborbital hops.  If the people who used to work at Armadillo go to work at some other aerospace company, they're likely to be contributing more to the industry there.

[Robotbeat]

Armadillo and others had an impact. It helped prove VTVL feasibility (perhaps convinced Musk to do Grasshopper when he saw multiple small groups getting VTVL working repeatably) and trained many engineers on building rockets hands-on. There has been plenty of mobility between the different rocket companies. People switched back and forth between Masten and Armadillo. Some undoubtedly work for SpaceX or Virgin Galactic or XCOR or Blue Origin now.

[kkattula]

Armadillo and others had an impact. It helped prove VTVL feasibility (perhaps convinced Musk to do Grasshopper when he saw multiple small groups getting VTVL working repeatably) and trained many engineers on building rockets hands-on. There has been plenty of mobility between the different rocket companies. People switched back and forth between Masten and Armadillo. Some undoubtedly work for SpaceX or Virgin Galactic or XCOR or Blue Origin now.

Not to mention NASA now have Morpheus (derived from Armadillo technology) and Mighty Eagle flying.

Armadillo showed everyone that you don't need even a (low by aerospace standards) DC-X level budget to do VTVL rockets.

They pioneered the use of tether testing under cranes and tried out many other ideas. A huge contribution to New Space.

Anyone who thinks they were just a hobby, clearly hasn't been paying attention for the last decade.

[ChrisWilson68]

Anyone who thinks they were just a hobby, clearly hasn't been paying attention for the last decade.

Or, they've been paying attention but they have a different opinion than you of the same facts.

Why is it so hard for so many people to acknowledge that other people can have different opinions from the same facts?  Why the need to insist people who disagree are ignorant?

[Robotbeat]

...Because some people's opinion is wrong.

Look, the people involved in Armadillo were real people. Saying what they spent years and years on was just a "hobby" would probably /not/ be something you'd say to their face, would it?

Some of those people read this thread.

[bioelectromechanic]

Armadillo is a world class company, they do stuff many countries can't.
I look up to the people which are part of it.

[sdsds]

Carmack leaves id Software.

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/205539/John_Carmack_officially_leaves_id_Software.php

[Elmar Moelzer]

Carmack leaves id Software.

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/205539/John_Carmack_officially_leaves_id_Software.php

Yeah, I heard that. Wonder what that means for Armadillo.
Also, and somewhat OT, I wonder whether there will be another quakecon and if, without him as speaker.

[Danderman]

Well, it is sad that AA has folded.

This is one company that did have the capability of going very far with their rockets. I suspect that they had reached the point where it wasn't as much fun as before, and the prospects of making any cash were sufficiently remote that Mr. Carmack did the math and went home.

Let's hope that he generates some more cash and comes back for more punishment.

What separates John Carmack from many others is that he came onto the scene, just like everyone else, and expected to be flying in space Real Soon Now. He got serious enough to understand that space was not as easy as he thought, but still persevered to the point of developing serious hardware.

[savuporo]

Not sure if this was ever posted here, but Carmack gave plenty of reasons why he quit

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

I keep wondering what happened to the team.

[Elmar Moelzer]

Damn, that sucks!

[jongoff]

It probably does not mean that AA is coming back any time soon, but Oculus, the company that John Carmack is now the CTO of, just got bought by Facebook for $2B. It will be interesting to see if John decides to get involved in space things again once whatever "golden handcuffs" the acquisition terms include run out. I don't know John well enough to know if he's been burned-out on space by his AA experience, or if he's interested in getting involved again. And if he does, who knows if it'll be in the rocket side or some other part of the puzzle.

But I'm sure that won't stop rampant speculation! :-)

~Jon

[Robotbeat]

It probably does not mean that AA is coming back any time soon, but Oculus, the company that John Carmack is now the CTO of, just got bought by Facebook for $2B. It will be interesting to see if John decides to get involved in space things again once whatever "golden handcuffs" the acquisition terms include run out. I don't know John well enough to know if he's been burned-out on space by his AA experience, or if he's interested in getting involved again. And if he does, who knows if it'll be in the rocket side or some other part of the puzzle.

But I'm sure that won't stop rampant speculation! :-)

~Jon

Well, apparently you've been able to get him to do some free consultation work on using the Oculus for tele-operation in space for Altius Space via Twitter.

[jongoff]

Well, apparently you've been able to get him to do some free consultation work on using the Oculus for tele-operation in space for Altius Space via Twitter.

Back in December. I picked a bad day to follow-up on that conversation! :-)

~Jon

[Robotbeat]

Well, apparently you've been able to get him to do some free consultation work on using the Oculus for tele-operation in space for Altius Space via Twitter.

Back in December. I picked a bad day to follow-up on that conversation! :-)

~Jon

Ha, no kidding!

[QuantumG]

Wow.. that's a pretty fast startup to exit!

[jongoff]

Wow.. that's a pretty fast startup to exit!

Wow. Founded in mid 2012, and exiting for $2B at the end of Q1 2014--not even 2yrs. Really impressive!

~Jon