DALLAS, Texas -- John Carmack, video game developer and founder of
Armadillo Aerospace, told an attentive audience at the International Space
Development Conference Friday that his Pixel reusable rocket is making
technical and business progress despite some setbacks at the 2006 X Prize Cup.
Since
attempting to win the Lunar Lander Challenge in New Mexico last October, Pixel has flown safely nearly 40
times, Carmack told the audience who attended the "Armadillo and the Lunar
Lander Challenge" panel. While Carmack said he had no intention of marketing
Pixel—he considers it a technical dead end—he said that businesses and the
Department of Defense have expressed interested in using the vehicle as a
sensor platform.
Pixel was
the lone participant in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge held last
year at the Wirefly X Prize Cup. The NASA-sponsored Challenge was part of the
two-day event held October 20-21 at the Las Cruces International Airport in New Mexico. NASA provided
$2 million in prize money for the challenge.
For those
unfamiliar with it, Pixel is a rather oddly shaped space vehicle. Short and
squat, it features a central mast and engine unit surrounded by four fuel
tanks: two for liquid oxygen, two for ethanol. Four thin shock-absorber landing
legs extend from the bottom of the tanks. This very thinness caused Pixel to
fall over after a
hard landing
in Las Cruces. Despite this, none of the tanks ruptured, and the Armadillo team was
able to right the vehicle and return it to flight the next day.
In addition
to fixing landing gear and engine duration problems, Armadillo has reduced turnaround
times for refueling and servicing the rocket, matching and then beating the
servicing records set by the DC-X Delta Clipper in the 1990s.
Carmack
announced Armadillo's intentions to develop a bolt-on capability for the Pixel
tank and engine, potentially adding as many as 100 additional engine units to a
single vehicle. This would enable the vehicle to reach the border of space, while
a smaller upper stage consisting of a second set of bolt-on engines would
launch a payload to orbit.
However,
this isn't all that interests Carmack. He also wants to use a Pixel-based
rocket platform for "space jumping." The person riding the platform would be
wearing a spacesuit manufactured by Orbital Outfitters and a parachute. When
the passenger reached the correct altitude (over 130,000 feet), he or she would
jump off the platform and proceed to beat the world's high-altitude skydiving
record, set by a U.S. Air Force pilot in 1960. "I can't believe nobody's tried
to beat that yet," he remarked.
A
self-confessed "computer geek," Carmack is incorporating a software-based
"modularity" to Armadillo's rocket design process. This approach allows the
team to develop and test subsystems and components individually and repeatedly rather
than testing them all at once in flight. Carmack repeatedly emphasizes the
modular approach, as well as the need for repeated testing. "I expect to crash
two or three vehicles with every version," he said, though admitted that the
lessons Armadillo has learned through iterative design have resulted in no
crashes for quite awhile.
Carmack is
optimistic about Armadillo's progress, all things considered. He promised more
developments and progress in the future, up to and including orbital flight.
"It's exciting to see how close we're getting here. It's getting hard to scoff
at our abilities."
Bart
Leahy is a technical writer at Schafer Corporation in Huntsville, Alabama. The opinions expressed are his
own.
NOTE: The
views of this article are the author's and do not reflect the policies of the National
Space Society.
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