Armadillo Aerospace update: Jet vanes win

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/A ... ews_id=256

This weeks update has been posted and it looks like Armadillo Aerospace is switching over to a jet vane system.

If you check out the movie you'll see why.

I watched their video of the tethered test flight. THIS is what successful spaceflight is all about, control. Control from launch to touchdown. No deadstick landings, whether by parachute or glide, but precise hover and touchdown in the painted circle with the big 'S' -- helipads have an 'H' for 'Helicopter' so spaceport pads can have an 'S', eh? Take off from the top of an office building in New York City, achieve orbit and dock with a space station, pick up passengers, return to the spacepad on top of the office building on Avenue of the Americas.

Armadillo has VISION.

Of course, that 'S' needs to be of some highly heat resistant paint.

--Ralph

Armadillo has always been my favorite team, I guess because they are so open about their development. Their adventures and travails would make a good reality show, for television, I reckon. As far as actual concepts, I like Da Vinci better, though I know I am in the minority on that.

Still, Armadillo is DC/X vindicated, as far as I am concerned, if they ever make it happen. The jet-vanes look a lot better then differentiated thrust. Question now is where will they launch from? It looks like they are not going to go from WSMR. I'm sure they have contingency locations in mind.

It's interesting to see all these IT gurus and corporations getting involved in space now. So far we got:
Carmack in Armadillo
Paul Allen funding SpaceShipOne
Sun Microsystems funding Da Vinci (probably just annoy Paul Allen
Bezos doing something over at Blue Origin
Elon Musk with SpaceX. These are interesting times. Maybe Ross Perot will throw a couple of billion in the ring once he sees a texas spaceship in his home state.

Although I'm pretty sure it's just wishfull thinking I'm kind of hoping that Armadillo has a few surprises in store for everyone. They have a lot of additional equipment lying around. Seeing how rapidly they flew the jet vane vehicle and how quickly the large rocket came apart, it wouldn't surprise me to see them flying the even larger vehicle that will use that 1600 gallon tank within a month or two if they wanted to. They've already done some of the preliminary work on that vehicle and it seems the only thing thats really stopping them from putting it together is the need for the bigger engines.

Armadillo expects to fly the big vehicle this Saturday.

http://lists.erps.org/archives/erps-list/msg06383.shtml

Although it's most likely the big vehicle that uses the 850 gallon tank I do hope to see them start work on that 1600 gallon tank.

But is it going to fly or just be tethered to that flimsy looking crane again? That thing is going to fall over one of these tries. I live about 15 miles away from where I think they are doing testing. Hope I don't hear any booms this Saturday.

Well this bit in their last news post



Pretty much guarantees they'll have that tether for all the tests at their shop. It does seem like they're going to knock over that hi-lo/forklift/crane if they really push.

Hey wasn't there mention here recently implying that there were no regulations to vehicles that don't exist? Must be nice for something like the FAA not needing such regulations when there's federal limits on flying rocket burn times and enough paper work to keep teams of lawyers busy in the white world of aerospace if they even want to think launch licence until some of the recent changes.