Details of latest Armadillo developments from Neil Milburn

Summary of main vehicle details:

Fully Reuseable
200Kg to 200Km
2.5m Diameter [Obviously to ease transportation issues by complying with Department Of Transport maximum road vehicle width of 102 inches (~2.59m)]
8 engines -fixed and canted in pairs to allow vehicle control via differential throttling.

Picture on Yfrog Here:

http://yfrog.com/h2wsjbj


I would like to express my gratitude to Clark for his seemingly tireless work bringing us space news on his incomparable blog spacetransportnews.com
http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=27115
and
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index ... id=27174#c

You can hear a full audio transcript of
FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conf. - suborbital Q&A
here:
Michael Belfiore's audio/notes pencast for this session.
http://michaelbelfiore.com/2011/02/subo ... s-off.html

The whole session is quite long and the audio is not of the highest quality but it is well worth listening to the whole session - especially to hear all that Jeff Greason has to say about XCORs ongoing development of their LYNX suborbital spaceplane, operability and plans for the future.

Thanks.

That slide seems to show that AA will be launching that thing this year! Hurrah!

Wow, and this is news:



Emphasis mine. This is the first time I've heard Armadillo use "orbit" in connection with a specific vehicle component they're already building. The 2010's are going to be an extremely exciting decade

Cheers!
Rob

From the arocket mailing list....


"Armadillo is expecting to fly over 100,000? next month, and I am not trivializing any aspect of the effort. If we get the vehicle back intact, we should be attempting a 100km flight on the next trip.

John Carmack"

WOW

Way cool! And good luck too, this stuff is not easy .

So, anybody want to venture a guess as to how this steerable parachute recovery thing is going to work? They're flying straight up, and I presume the goal is to get back to the launch site, so the main thing would be to compensate for wind drift. Alternatively, if you're happy with a landing somewhere downwind, you just need enough control to steer it away from inaccessible areas.

Will this thing land vertically or horizontally? Will it be powered during descent? If it's not powered and hanging under the parachutes horizontally, won't using the roll control vane just make it spin rather than traverse? Any ideas?

Roll vanes (you would need 3 or 4 I guess) only useful prior to using parachutes I imagine, and would be used in a returning coast phase, but not sure how much cross range you would get - not much, but I guess significant enough to be of use - after all, it's drops a long way prior to opening the chutes. After chutes open - who knows. Might not want to drop tail first as that could damage the engine - perhaps horizontal or nose down. Anyway, a decent steerable parafoil (like the X38) would give you decent cross range performance.

Loads more pics:

http://yfrog.com/h294691880j

http://yfrog.com/hsuptjqj

http://yfrog.com/hs2xpxj

http://twitpic.com/443keq

Looking at these, it is a lot bigger than I thought after seeing the original pics. Looks good!

Up till now that haven't needed much in the way of launch equipment - guess someone is going to have to weld together a launch tower!

Armadillo have added a new video to their youtube channel.
It shows the tube rocket 'STIG' (Suborbital Transport Inertially Guided) undergoing checkout on its launch trailer/tower.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfPDlV5FR4g

Armadillo have really started stepping up their media updates this year!

Yet another image from John, this time the rocket is boxed.

http://yfrog.com/h0ttuawj

Maybe we should start a STIG thread

so they are putting them in boxes now?

Can I order one?

There is also a new video on youtube showing the nosecone ejection. Dont have link handy but easy to find.