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Armadillo Aerospace: Scaling Up for Modularized Spaceships
Golden, Colo.---Since 2001 Armadillo Aerospace has made more than 100 rocket-powered test flights using three different propellant combinations and some 50 engines in a dozen vehicles. The company also has used various kinds of attitude control systems and several generations of electronics boxes to control their launch vehicles.
Officials at the Mesquite, Texas-based company believe this step-by-step approach is helping them make significant inroads into computer-controlled, vertical-takeoff and vertical-landing technology that will lead to a new type of human suborbital - and eventually orbital - vehicles in the coming years.
"We're sort of at the cusp where we have capabilities that, all of a sudden, people actually care about," said John Carmack, a 36-year-old pioneering programmer in the computer gaming industry. "Previously, everything that we were doing could be easily dismissed as toys or little hobbies."
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"In theory, we can bolt together as many as we need, whether it's 16 or 64 of them," Carmack said. The modular approach permits Armadillo Aerospace to scale both boosters and upper stages to handle any size payload that is necessary. He sees modularized propulsion systems as the scaleable foundation that takes the company through commercial operations and, eventually, all the way to orbit.
This modular approach is expected to lead in the near future to a human-carrying vehicle for flights up to a 100,000 kilometers, Carmack explained.
"All the pieces are right there," Carmack said. "They are basically sitting right there in our shop. And it's close. There are any number of things that can make it take longer ... but there's no more magic required."
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Somewhat to his surprise, three major aerospace companies are talking to Armadillo Aerospace about flying sensor systems on Armadillo vehicles, using them as high-altitude platforms, Neil Milburn, program manager for Armadillo Aerospace, said in a June 15 interview: Those flights are expected to begin in 2008. While not identifying the customers, Milburn said one of those companies is not a domestic U.S.company.
"So we have finally crossed over into the realm of providing actual value that people care about," Carmack added.
In addition, Orbital Outfitters, a startup firm with offices in North Hollywood, Calif., is designing new space suits for the coming age of space tourism. They plan to test their Suborbital Space Suit 1 using an Armadillo Aerospace-provided rocket, which will roar to an altitude of about 3,640 kilometers with a space-suited individual who will dive back back to Earth.
Over the past six years, Carmack as a rocket entrepreneur has spent slightly more than $3 million bankrolling the work through his earnings from his computer gaming business.
"I think there's a darn good chance we're going to be net-profitable this year. And I think that probably within two years I would have paid off all my investment ... and we'll be bringing in steady income streams," Carmack said.
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Golden, Colo.---Since 2001 Armadillo Aerospace has made more than 100 rocket-powered test flights using three different propellant combinations and some 50 engines in a dozen vehicles. The company also has used various kinds of attitude control systems and several generations of electronics boxes to control their launch vehicles.
Officials at the Mesquite, Texas-based company believe this step-by-step approach is helping them make significant inroads into computer-controlled, vertical-takeoff and vertical-landing technology that will lead to a new type of human suborbital - and eventually orbital - vehicles in the coming years.
"We're sort of at the cusp where we have capabilities that, all of a sudden, people actually care about," said John Carmack, a 36-year-old pioneering programmer in the computer gaming industry. "Previously, everything that we were doing could be easily dismissed as toys or little hobbies."
>
"In theory, we can bolt together as many as we need, whether it's 16 or 64 of them," Carmack said. The modular approach permits Armadillo Aerospace to scale both boosters and upper stages to handle any size payload that is necessary. He sees modularized propulsion systems as the scaleable foundation that takes the company through commercial operations and, eventually, all the way to orbit.
This modular approach is expected to lead in the near future to a human-carrying vehicle for flights up to a 100,000 kilometers, Carmack explained.
"All the pieces are right there," Carmack said. "They are basically sitting right there in our shop. And it's close. There are any number of things that can make it take longer ... but there's no more magic required."
>
Somewhat to his surprise, three major aerospace companies are talking to Armadillo Aerospace about flying sensor systems on Armadillo vehicles, using them as high-altitude platforms, Neil Milburn, program manager for Armadillo Aerospace, said in a June 15 interview: Those flights are expected to begin in 2008. While not identifying the customers, Milburn said one of those companies is not a domestic U.S.company.
"So we have finally crossed over into the realm of providing actual value that people care about," Carmack added.
In addition, Orbital Outfitters, a startup firm with offices in North Hollywood, Calif., is designing new space suits for the coming age of space tourism. They plan to test their Suborbital Space Suit 1 using an Armadillo Aerospace-provided rocket, which will roar to an altitude of about 3,640 kilometers with a space-suited individual who will dive back back to Earth.
Over the past six years, Carmack as a rocket entrepreneur has spent slightly more than $3 million bankrolling the work through his earnings from his computer gaming business.
"I think there's a darn good chance we're going to be net-profitable this year. And I think that probably within two years I would have paid off all my investment ... and we'll be bringing in steady income streams," Carmack said.
>>
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