Armadillo suspense

You know they did something earlier today. Sundays seem longer lately when I think like this.

No flight this week,

No MOVIE this week!

I suspect they'll fly next week. The May 2 update said that they could get the big (850 gal) rocket in the air in 2-3 weeks. I think after that they are going to start on the 1600 gal rocket, which will be their X Prize one. I'm not sure how long it will take them to build that, though; Rutan plans to launch in July, I think.

Newest update on armadillo aerospace... thats a big tank. Now, everyone else seems to know exactly what he's doing, but I'm still confused. Is he building like, a super efficient rocket?? Cause if that's what he's doing, its cool.

I'm pretty sure that's just their 850gal tank, and the bigger one is nearly twice that size.

[EDIT] Yeah, that is their smaller tank, because they mentioned before that in the 1600gal rocket the tank will be above the passenger compartment because they want people to be able to get in and out without a ladder.

Here's a picture of the larger tank back in December

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2003_12_20/newTank.jpg

Along with what looks suspiciously like part of the cabin section and a smaller tank I believe was intended for a test vehicle they stopped working on. I've only seen a small part of the larger tank in any of their pictures/videos so I keep hoping that they've been doing work on that vehicle in parallel with the work on the 850 gallon tank vehicle that they've been doing all the tether tests with. Oddly enough it seems as though they still refer to the 850 tank setup as the large or rather big vehicle. I do wonder now if they could pull off the X-prise shots with the 850 tank and the jet-vanes. It certainly wouldn't have a large amount of fuel for landing but it might be close. It's too bad (especially considering the time lost) that they're not going to be able to use the crushable nose-cone vehicle for the x-prise.

Even if they don't win, according to John Carmack, Armadillo will continue on, even if its with a scaled down, one man version of Black Armadillo. I think they have the most cost effective vehicle, save possibly for DaVinci Wildfire.

I don't think Armadillo would need to scale down the rocket; they're coming along just fine with the big one right now, and as TJ mentioned, they're probably working on the final, huge rocket in parallel and just not telling anyone.

John once said that his long term goal is to get to orbit. I think I once read that one of the things they were tinking about was the possibility of using a one man ship like bad_astra mentioned for stuff like satellite repair. I'm sure that the next 5 years at Armadillo are going to be very interesting.

Does anyone beside myself think that attaching the engine mount directly to a fiberglass (although structurally enhanced) fuel tank is a "less than optimal design"?
Armadillo has been a favorite of mine from early-on but I would seriously feel apprehensive about climbing into the cabin of the big vehicle for an unteathered flight. Granted that the propellant is rather stable on it's own if a crack due to excessive froce from the engine(and subsequent fuel leak occured) if the tank cracked soon enough after liftoff and the tank completely depressurized, the vehicle will not be at a high enough altitude to have a successful parachute deployment and touchdown.
I hope to see a more safe design in the future.....I'm still rooting for the guys though...

Agree with you Archeangel. The other unsafe aspect of Armadillo's design is the landing gear arrangement. I don't understand why they made the four landing gear at such a tight angle. It would seem like they are going to have difficulty landing upright no matter how precise their engine control is. Remember the demise of DCX?

Another valid point. The landing gear needs to located further away from the center of the vehicle's vertical axis in order to give it a lower center of gravity. This presents a couple more problems though.
1) locating the landing gear/supports further away from the center will place them outside the skin and therefore susceptible to drag. If they place the landing gear/supports outside the surface plane of the vehicle's skin, they will have to contruct some kind of airfoil over the gear to reduce this drag during takeoff.
2) Constructing said airfoils (or even extending the skin over the far placed landing gear) will most likely impact the re-entry dynamics, depending on the planned angel of attack during landing.
I am sure there are many more concerns to be voiced just on the landing gear alone. This is a basic and well know problem with VTVL vehicles.

i think the "narrow" landing gear placement possibly has to do with saving weight.

seems to me armadillo has gone from a pre-x-prize orbital one-stage one-man design to a suborbital one-stage three-man design and are planning to go back to the pre-x-prize design if they don't win the x-prize.

weight is always crucial and as their vehicle seems smaller than the canadian arrow v2-based design i can't help but feel they either must have very efficient propulsion or very low weight (or a combination of the two). would love more info on this but i don't seem to find any at their site. i'm hopeful but sceptical.

it's hard to decide stuff like this and i wish both this team and others would release more detailed information (yet in an "oversight" kind of way) about their designs. basically what kind of calculations they base their designs on. until then i'll continue to be sceptical towards any team until they fly their actual vehicle and not only test vehicles (so far only scaled has flown their vehicle).

Now just a moment fellows ... landing gear? I thought Mr Carmack was going to use a disposable/crushable nosecone to absorb ground impact after a parachute descent. Did I miss a more recent design change?