20,000 Show up for X-Prize Expo

Zacharski writes to tell us that the X-Prize Cup Expo was held Sunday in Las Cruces New Mexico in front of about 20,000 people. John Carmack was there with his team from Armadillo Aerospace. From the article: "Armadillo Aerospace got their rocket-powered, vertical takeoff, vertical landing vehicle off the ground. Blasting off into the sky then hovering for a few seconds, the craft began lowering itself to the ground - but tipped over on touchdown. The wet ground due to overnight rain was the cause, although the craft appeared undamaged in the fall. An internal hose was punctured, however, causing subsequent flights to be scrubbed." The expo also ended with quite a bang when Starchaser's Churchill Mk2 rocket engine blew up.

Wow...

[sdirrim]

Not much of an incentive for others to continue, but that is how testing works : )

pics of the armadillo exercise?

[torpor]

i mean, come on .. we've got pics of the crowds, a dummy rocket, and a rocket failure.

where are the pics of the armadillo test flight? this is more interesting than the failures!

Flight Videos

[everphilski]

Here's some flight videos taken in preparation for the XPrize cup (not footage from the event, but some final runs taken the week before)

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Ho me/News?news_id=310 [armadilloaerospace.com]

-everphilski-

B-Rate Movies IRL

[lullabud]

Those videos totally look like something out of a b-rate movie, but dammit they're realy! Sooooo cool. :)

Props to Carmack's webserver for withstanding the /. effect. *knocks on wood*

$20 million will do that

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a single X-Prize team (save Scaled Composites of course) have come even remotely close to getting a ship into the air.

Carmack referred to rocketry as plumbing but with the volume turned up. Guess it's not quite that easy.

Re:$20 million will do that

[everphilski]

... have come even remotely close to getting a ship into the air.

I'd say that view is a little extreme. Carmack has a ship that flies. Untethered. Granted it is unmanned. But it flies and it is scalable. The Canadian Arrow team isn't too far out.

As far as non-X-Prize teams are concerned, XCor has a rocket powered airplane that flies in excess of 10,000 feet routinely while they work out the kinks in their propulsion system. Their hope is to make that the main propulsion system in a suborbital craft.

Re:$20 million will do that

[Rei]

scalable

It's barely scalable to X-prize-req's. It's not really scalable beyond that. His ISP is too low and mass is too high. Plus, his design methodology has produced one disaster after another.

Don't get me wrong - I've always been a huge Carmack fan, and was in awe of his programming skill in my childhood. But following the diaries on Armadillo Aerospace, they keep repeating one widely known rocketry problem after another, and taking every dead end in the book. They can't even decide on what propella

Re:$20 million will do that

[everphilski]

Carmack will admit he isn't a rocket scientist. He will also tell you peroxide was a great learning experiance because it gives you quick turnaround time. He was able to experiment with more configurations while working with peroxide than he can with LOX. It was a good learning experiance. They are sold on LOX now. (they only switched propellant formulations once).

Remember - they aren't chasing after a prize, they are a bunch of guys having fun and learning.

His Isp isnt that bad - he's hitting 200 with lox. That's not any worse than Rutan had. And he's working with throatless, a throated vehicle will get anywhere from 20-40% gain in performance.

Again, you can't compare Carmack to Rutan. Rutan is a business man who set out to win a prize with venture capital. Carmack is developing this with friends as a learning experiance. And he's not doing too shabby, especially after he figured out that peroxide sucks :)

-everphilski-

Re:$20 million will do that

[Rei]

Peroxide doesn't help you learn about LOX - they're completely different in almost every respect. LOX is cryogenic, peroxide is not. LOX is stable, peroxide (as sold) is a stabilized metastable compound with various catalyst risks. They require different kinds of tanks made of different kinds of materials. They burn in different kinds of engines. In short, they're about as dissimilar as oxidizers get in rocketry.

They only switched propellant formulations once

They tried no less than various peroxide mon

Re:$20 million will do that

[everphilski]

Peroxide doesn't help you learn about LOX - they're completely different in almost every respect.

From an injector standpoint, yes. But at every station downstream - the chamber, throat and nozzle - for an engine with the same thrust and throttling capabilities the engine design is damn near identical. The laws of thermodynamics don't change because you change propellants. (the chamber temperature varies slightly and the mol wt of the propellants is slightly different, but your chambers wind up looking a

Re:$20 million will do that

[Rei]

From an injector standpoint, yes. But at every station downstream - the chamber, throat and nozzle - for an engine with the same thrust and throttling capabilities the engine design is damn near identical.

Not true. LOX engines run hotter than peroxide engines, and run fuel-rich instead of oxidizer rich. This completely changes the materials and cooling challenges, which are the primary engineering constraints of the chamber, throat, and nozzle. And the injector, as I'm sure you're aware, is incredibly di

Re:$20 million will do that

[everphilski]

Not true. LOX engines run hotter than peroxide engines, and run fuel-rich instead of oxidizer rich.

Not for an amateur project. This is where we are running into communications problems. An amateur project is going to use commonly available metals. You tweak the mix to run it cooler. John has expressed his distaste for custom aerospace alloys, both on his site and in private forums we both frequent.

And on the second point ... yeah edging out ISP will gain you some. But in the end the elusive mass ratio

Re:$20 million will do that

[sjasja]

> This is the kind of stuff that would take NASA 20 years to do

What, get a rocket to blow up? And another to lift off a few feet and then tip over? NASA can do that too.

> Shit, we can't even go to the moon if we wanted to.

Sure you can. It's a question of money. A lot of people would like to pay less taxes rathern than more. It's a question of priorities. Talk to your congressman about that.

> All the tooling for the saturn rockets was DESTROYED.

An urban legend that just won't die. Some facilities were converted for new uses (e.g. STS). No, NASA engineers do not randomly go whacking equipment with axes. Some equipment can rust if there is no program (= money) to store it properly. Some equipment just gets old and no longer relevant (room-size computers with less computing power than your cell phone, electronic equipment for which nobody manufactures the required vacuum tubes, etc.)

A rednecky "the government is big and bad and can never do anything right" paranoia game is a fun game to play. Lets you work up to a nice adrenaline rush. Feel like a big man when you get to look down your nose at others. But don't actually believe it when it matters.

Re:$20 million will do that

[WindBourne]

It shows the absolutely amazing things people can do with the interest and incentive. This is the kind of stuff that would take NASA 20 years to do,but they are well on their way in 5.

I wish ppl would get past this crap.

So NASA could not do it in 20 years, eh? In under a decade, NASA got man onto the moon. And that was 40 years ago. Now, ask how many of these companies today could do that? Even today, few. And 40 years ago? Absolutely none. In fact, ask any of these companies to put 50 tonnes into space in under 5 years. How many? none. They are going through the exact work that NASA (and their quasi private contractors) did back in the 60's. That is they are putting together Engineering teams with some small RD teams. NASA has always done large amounts of R&D on the cutting edge. How many of the current x-prize teams are doing any? Absolutely none. They are all doing engineering (big difference).

BTW, Just as the current group of X-prizes stand on NASA's broad shoulders, NASA also stands on other giants shoulders. In particular, Russia, WWII germanany, and even the Chinese did HUGE amounts of research, that NASA used. Even getting into space was more cooperative than not; Canada, Original Europe (England, France, etc), and Japan have contributed directly and indirectly to NASA's effort.

Shit, we can't even go to the moon if we wanted to.All the tooling for the saturn rockets was DESTROYED. What a fucking great idea, eh? I don't say this much, but hooray for the private sector.

Blame NASA for that?? Not even close. This is the fault of politicians. Nixon started us down the shuttle path. Interestingly, NASA wanted to build a craft along the lines of Rutans approach, but Nixons ppl killed it. They did not like the up front price. Once the shuttle was flying, Reagan had the saturn line killed. When funding was sought to preserve the info, they felt that it was not needed. We have learned the hard way that that kind of info is difficult to get back. BTW. if you think that Private enterprise does a better job on that, well then ask Boeing. Boeing would love to extend the 747 and make some major changes. But they can not. Why? because they do not have many of their core blue prints. The 747 was designed on paper in the 70s. And yet, they do not have the info either. Right now, the vast majority of the 747 depends on skilled craftsman, just as the Saturn did.

BTW, if you think that I say the above because I am opposed to the X-prize or something like that,

1. I am decade long registered libertarian (and vote that way).
2. I have worked for 3 major Private Enterprise R&D labs; Bell Labs, IBM watson, and USWest AT.
3. And along the line of an x-prize [wbtllc.com]

Oh Yeah, I am a fan of x-prize, but I also value NASA for what it normally does. Sadly, it has died over the last 5-6 years. I am hopeful that griffin can bring it back to what it should be; a front-edge R&D team that pushes the envelope that private enterprise can not and will not do. O'Keefe was an absolute disaster. Goldin was not bad, but allowed politics to take hold. In addition, he should have pushed outwards more than he did, esp. towards the end.

Re:$20 million will do that

[bshanks]

> Reagan had the saturn line killed. When funding was sought to preserve the info, they felt that it was not needed. We have learned the hard way that that kind of info is difficult to get back.

Interesting fact. Could you provide a source for the info being trashed by the Reagan admin? Thanks

Re:$20 million will do that

[EnglishTim]

Carmack referred to rocketry as plumbing but with the volume turned up. Guess it's not quite that easy.

To be fair, they have got their ships in the air several times, it's just getting them down accelerating at less that 9.8m/s^2 that seems to have been giving them problems ;-).

I think they're doing quite well considering they're basically five or six guys working in their spare time.

When Carmack is involved...

[erroneus]

...it spells "DOOM!" ...or sometimes Quake... there's a much funnier joke in there somewhere...I think

Re:When Carmack is involved...

[Chairboy]

> there's a much funnier joke in there somewhere...

Yet you skillfully navigated directly past them. Astonishing precision.

For example, you could have expressed surprise that everyone was surprised when all he did was 'rocket jump'.

... can someone fill me in ...

[ninjagin]

... on what the Cup is for, at this stage?

My understanding was that Rutan got the prize, and TFA didn't give me much of an idea as for what this specific competition is trying to achieve.

It did talk a lot about states getting their own spaceports, which I find pretty cool.

If someone could point mt to a relevant link, that's be great.

Thanks.

Exposure for the alt.space community

[everphilski]

Right now it is all about exposure for the alternative space community.

Starting next year there will be actual competitions (hopefully). But this year you prettymuch had XCOR (a airplane retrofitted with a rocket engine), Armadillo (vertical takeoff rocket) for functinal vehicles that flew. The rest of the companies had pieces. Wouldn't be much of a competition to be had. Next year there will be races (rocket racing league).

-everphilski-

Re:Exposure for the alt.space community

[jangobongo]

The Armadillo Aerospace style has been based on it's "better to build 10 vehicles even if you destroy them" credo. It's a way to learn a lot on the way, Carmack noted, "rather than to spend years and millions of dollars just studying something."

For rocketeers and those hungering to enter the personal spaceflight enterprise, Carmack offered a bit of advice.

"It's good to try and make things real as soon as possible. You don't want to leave things theoretical and plan it...it's better to step in and do

Re:Exposure for the alt.space community

[Cally]

The rest of the companies had pieces. Wouldn't be much of a competition to be had. Next year there will be races (rocket racing league).

I think you'll find that before long, pieces will make a reappearance. Sizzling, white-hit pieces, embedding themselves in the landscape at high velocity...

Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad no one was killed, but these failures should help to remind us that rocketry is really quite dangerous. If we had a responsible government, there would be more regulation to protect the public from these experiments.

Re:Well,

[diegocgteleline.es]

Come on - this is not rocket science!

Re:Well,

[Dmala]

I absolutely agree. Risk of any kind is totally unacceptable. Any endeavour where there's even a chance of someone getting a paper cut should be encumbered by layers and layers of conflicting regulations or outlawed entirely.

Flight picture here

[pmike_bauer]

Here's a picture [ckspc.org]

Warning to all those at work!!!

[zifferent]

The previous picture contains nudity. Now, if your boss doesn't mind such things. Go right on ahead and click. Unfortunately, this kind of thing can get a person like me fired.

Re:Warning to all those at work!!!

[Douglas Simmons]

thought the [domain] drove the point home adequately

my apologies.

Re:Flight picture here

[halltk1983]

Other poster was not to "flying armadillo", but the reply to it.

Where's Boeing?

[backslashdot]

I have seen evidence that commercial beats government. But SpaceShipOne is not it. They acheived what NASA and the soviets acheived over 3 decades ago.

Given that the rockets used by NASA are designed by third party commercial contractors, how come they aren't heavily in this game?

Re:Where's Boeing?

[Overzeetop]

That's easy:

NASA spends Billions and Billions of dollars to get something into the air. The contractors stand in line a capitol hill, sign a paper and provide wire information for their bank accounts. For every $100 of NASAs budget they spend, they receive $10 which they may keep as profit.

Why in the world would someone with this kind of deal throw millions of dollars into a project which may or may not end up to be commercially viable? It doesn't make financial sense.

Re:Where's Boeing?

[swimmar132]

The rockets that NASA use are really expensive. These alternative forms are not.

Re:Where's Boeing?

[ivan256]

Correction, they're replicating what NASA did 45 years ago. Even NASA can't do what they did 30 years ago.

Anyway, consider this: The US spent $300 million to get to sub-orbital flights (That's almost $2 billion in today's dollars). The SpaceShipOne program cost $30 million.

Re:Where's Boeing?

[JohnsonWax]

While I agree with your point, don't overlook that Scaled had $2B in today's dollars of NASA funded research to work off of. Retracing the steps of others should always be cheaper and faster because you know what path to follow. But the modern, politicized, cost-plus NASA approach to solving problems pretty much guarantees that any real progress will be exceptionally expensive and largely accidental thanks only to the competencies of the engineers to overcome the f'd up environment in which they are placed.

Re:Where's Boeing?

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Alan Shephard's sub-orbital hop, which is what SpaceShipOne managed to replicate, was over 40 years ago.

The rocket contractors aren't in "this game" because it's a game. They have their gravy train, and they send payloads into space with some frequency, so they understand how hard it is to do. They're not interested in playing games.

Re:Where's Boeing?

[bani]

SpaceShipOne didn't even come close to what Shepard did.

SpaceShipOne went straight up and down, 367k feet. It peaked at mach 3 and reentry topped at around 5g's. Maximum reentry temperature was around 200F.

Shepard's flight was 612k feet, and 302 miles downrange. It peaked at mach 7.7, and on reentry he experienced nearly 12g's. Maximum reentry temperature was around 2000F.

Re: SpaceX

[zardo]

www.spacex.com [spacex.com] - not to be confused with the x-prize competition.

X-Prize in St. Louis Post-Dispatch

[Buran]

I live in St. Louis, where the X Prize started.

X Prize connection did little for region [stltoday.com]

Re:X-Prize in St. Louis Post-Dispatch

[Buran]

And would someone please explain how linking to an article about my own hometown is fucking FLAMEBAIT?

Starchaser blew up

[terrymr]

There's a surprise ... pretty much an every time occurance for them.

Re:Starchaser blew up

[CreatureComfort]

But at least they've got the being consistent part down.

Re:Starchaser blew up

[SEWilco]

At least it blew in the right direction.

Re:Starchaser blew up

[zebadee]

It was only a kerosine leak that burnt, the official website claims the engine itself was barely damaged.

Gerald Bull's Super Gun

[Pedrito]

I'm surprised nobody has tried to follow up on Gerald Bull's idea of a Super Gun to launch things into orbit.

It would be relatively cheap and I have to think it's going to be a bit simpler than building a rocket.

You do run into the problem of being limited on what you can launch. Not only is size limited, but whatever you're firing into orbit is going to have to deal with some pretty serious acceleration issues.

Still, it would be cool to see someone follow up on his work to see if it's doable.

Heat shielding

[terrymr]

There's also the heat issue ... the reason things re-entering the atmosphere get hot is because orbital velocities and atmopspheric friction don't go well together.

Re:Gerald Bull's Super Gun

[Overzeetop]

You mean like this?

I think I'll file it next to the space elevator literature.

Re:Gerald Bull's Super Gun

[lommer]

I wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunately, there hasn't been anyone influential enough that has been pushing the concept since Bull's assasination. These days, science moves forward only when people who are passionate about a certain area pour their soul into it. The other thing is that as hard as rocketry is, we've had lots of experience with it and we have almost none with the kind of artillery that Bull wanted to build. Bull was a brilliant guy (he had earned his PhD @ 23 years old), and his guns were quite complex. We're talking multiple charges detonating along the length of several kilometers of the barrel, and he also used rocket sabots that would ignite at high altidude to give the projectile the last little boost.

For more information on the remarkable story of Bull and his supergun, check wikipedia:

Gerald Bull [wikipedia.org]: Biography

Project HARP [wikipedia.org]: Bull's earlier work for the US gov't.

Project Babylon [wikipedia.org]: Bull's work for saddam hussein that eventually got him killed by the Mossad

Re:Gerald Bull's Super Gun

[LurkerXXX]

Dude, HARP was a fake. Remo Williams and the other CURE team members figured that one out a long time ago.

Re:Gerald Bull's Super Gun

[Ga_101]

To my knowledge, I think that the ESA was working on something along this line using a 4 km long mag-lev track.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EADS_Phoenix [wikipedia.org]

Good idea if you ask me. Lob your hardware into orbit using this, then (if you want to man said hardware) send up your astronauts on a R7 and dock with it. Shame that I haven't realy heard that much about it.

Re:Gerald Bull's Super Gun - grrr fixed link

[Overzeetop]

You mean like this [globalsecurity.org]?

I think I'll file it next to the space elevator literature.

you mean Jules Vernes' idea...

[YesIAmAScript]

As described by Jules Verne in 1865.

I believe the reason people don't look into it is it cannot be done.

I didn't even search for a link, but there's just too much atmosphere on Earth to do it.

Re:Gerald Bull's Super Gun

[ediron2]

As interesting as the project sounds, getting imprisoned and/or dying at the hands of assassins probably is not high on most engineers' lists of job perks. I know the idea doesn't appeal to me.

Any idea what the max *actual* altitude reached by his gun designs was? Or are there charts showing velocity vs. elevation for these launches? Seeing mention of 60-miles in one of your links caught my eye... from 60 to 100+ miles, atmospheric issues have dropped off to nearly nothing compared to the first 60 miles

see SpaceShipOne

[YesIAmAScript]

Getting to 60 miles isn't easy. That's for sure. Getting higher is tougher still, because even without drag you still need to spend a lot of energy to fight gravity to go higher.

But all of that is NOTHING next to getting the speed you need to orbit.

Look at SpaceShipOne. It got to 62 miles. But it had approximately 0 horizontal velocity when it got there. In order to orbit, it needs well over 20,000 miles per hour horizontal velocity to orbit.

And since you did all the work at the start (you fired from a gun,

Re:see SpaceShipOne

[anethema]

Why not use mountains?

Build a rail up the side of everest..rail gun style...By the end of it you are pretty damn high (well only about 6 miles now that i look it up doh) but still..going in the right direction! If you can hit escape velocity by the end of the rail without burning your unit out you're good to go!

Re:see SpaceShipOne

[ediron2]

Well, maybe we get there with a 60-mile gun and a much-shorter space elevator cable. And some incredible marksmanship/luck. Toss in ramjets and huge helicopters capable of keeping a gun hovering 10 miles up. Rube Goldberg would be proud...

Thanks for your comment. The need to get up to 60 miles (to-near-vacuum) and then 'magically' add the needed radial velocity was the bit was what I was overlooking.

TANSTAFL.

Ad astra

[Quinn_Inuit]

Ok, I know the success has been minimal so far, but this is still exciting. I wish them all the best of luck. The stars are a birthright we've been too long denied, and it's nice to see people stepping in to take up the slack from NASA's moribund manned spaceflight program.

worlds largest enchilada

[Anonymous Coward]

20,000 people sounds impressive until you learn that more than that came to Las Cruces to see the worlds largest enchilada.

http://www.twefie.com/ [twefie.com]

It's in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Re:worlds largest enchilada

[greenegg77]

So, what they need to do is create the worlds largest enchilada rocket!

Re:worlds largest enchilada

[CreatureComfort]

Hmmm...

1) Build world's largest enchilada
2) Get 20,000 people together to see/eat it
3) Harness all that pressurized gas for Rocket Fuel!
4) Profit!

Test flight!

[ericfnj]

Here is the best test flight of all, IMO. Full ignition was not achieved. However, termainal velocity was achieved. P.S. Does anyone else wonder if this is the state of this contest? [sdsu.edu]

Re:Nay Sayers

[ericfnj]

Agreed. Private efforts are always better, but government efforts and funding $$$ are many, many years ahead in this area.

I was there

[7Ghent]

Drove down from Albuquerque with several friends. We got some decent pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/killbox/ [flickr.com]

Moved out of Las Cruces too soon..

[AnswerIs42]

Damn!

Lived there 7 years and finally moved because .. well.. living there SUCKS! And now all this cool stuff shows up!

20,000 showed up, 5,000 by accident...

[digitaldc]

...5,000 attendees thought it was a place to meet and celebrate their favourite pr0n stars.
The expo also ended with quite a bang, it was told.

New Mexico, huh?

[n6kuy]

I woulda went, but I think my US Passport is expired [nmmagazine.com].

Re:New Mexico, huh?

[Nanohertz]

I was in a in Boston and told a guy I was from NM-- he replied "Sure must be neat living in another country!" And here he was so proud that he fought in Vietnam and didn't even know for whom. Now living in Texas it seems that the other 49 are missing, no one thinks outside of these borders. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!!"

I was there

[apsmith]

More than the mishaps and explosions, the exciting thing about it all to me was the wide variety of people there. There were realtors selling land near the soon-to-be New Mexico Spaceport [space.com], and the Up Aerospace people [upaerospace.com] who're going to inaugurate it. Carmack, Peter Diamandis, Rick Tumlinson and that bunch were all hanging out amongst everybod. There were many kids, many local residents at the event.

And though they've done it before for air-show crowds, this was the first time I'd seen the XCOR [xcor.com] EZ-Rocket in action; truly awe-inspiring to see how easily it could maneuver. The loud rocket engines as it buzzed the crowd a few times didn't hurt the experience!

Anyway, not as exciting as if there'd been some real suborbital flights, but it looks like in just a couple of years that'll be a reality. Exciting times!