Official Armadillo Q&A thread

Surely the first person to ride in the bubble should be David Blaine? It looks like his kind of thing.

Oh dang, that kind of disappoints me now.

I agree, very disappointing. He rides in a LOX tank or nowhere.

I read over on Alan Boyle's "Cosmic Log" on msnbc that Armadillo is supplying engines for a version of the rocket racer. Now that the information is public, what can you tell us of your thoughts on how successful this venture will be as well as how distracting.

It does seem like a good thing in terms of company credibility. Delivering working hardware in a timely manner speaks volumes. That is as long as business does not become dependent on the success of the racing league.

I assume new tanks / plumbing / software are required. (the software being much simpler really)

Are you developing these systems?

Who is doing the integration with the airframe?

Have you considered making a small control board into which a user simply inputs a on/off voltage and a thottle voltage. The board taking care of start sequence and fuel depletion shutoff, as well as servo control for valves. Maybe you already have that.

It would be good to get all the extra burn time testing in the "real world" Nothing replaces customer feedback for ironing out little quality issues.

exciting stuff,

Daniel

So that further explains the multiple start-stop test on the ethanol rocket!

I also read over on space.com that they're going to be adding salt water to the fuel to make the exhaust plume bright yellow, so that the spectators can see it better.

Call me a rocket geek, but I like the bright blue better. That color just screams 'ISP!!!'

How much manual labor will have to go into the production of each engine? The engine body and injector are CNC milled, so that is just setup time, but Armadillo rockets tend to be fairly welding intensive... are you trying to design around some of that, or are the projected volumes just so low as to not matter?

Neat stuff!

They also have an image of a testfiring with this yellow plume over at space.com:
Yellow Plume Test Firing

Looks indeed spectacular

The image on Armadillo's site is higher quality: http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/200 ... dPlume.jpg

Compare that plume with [url]
http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/200 ... lPlume.jpg[/url]. The difference is a system set up to spray salt solutions into the exhaust plume.

how are you guys finding these images on armadillo? I havent seen these images in any update

I predict that they'll be in the next post, and I'll bet he'll say something about them moving shop.

oh, no fair, c'mon share how you are doing it

Ben, you are such a tease

Brocklesby, John posted the photos in another discussion group, where the move was also mentioned by Armadillo team member Phil.

John, other Armadillos,
First of all: congratulations on the RRL contract! I have a couple of questions about this new business. I hope that you are at liberty and willing to answer these.

First, will the propulsion system basically be a module lying on its side in the back of the plane or will it involve a redesign of the whole system? What are the requirements in terms of operation in a varying G-load environment? Are for example negative G-forces anticipated?

The announcement about the move is also great for you! It sounds like this will enable you to go back to your very fast development cycle (not involving driving for hours every weekend). Is AA also responsible for conducting a full flight test campaign? Will you be able to perform test-flights at the new airport you're moving to? Or will that require more licence-/permit-work? If doing the test-flights yourself, will you hire a test pilot? I seem to recall one of the team members having a flying licence, but I guess that flying brand new a rocket powered plane is something that requires some special skills.

Furthermore, XCOR obviously has a head-start on you. Do you plan on also flying your plane at the Oshkosh exhibition race? If you will, I will be quite impressed by your development speed.

Finally a question I think you won't be able to answer (because I should be asking it to other people), but I'll ask it anyway.. There have been a few small hints in the media-reports that XCOR was having a few problems and that that is the reason AA was contracted. The YouTube movie of the XCOR plane making a test flight at least looks really impressive. Do you know anything about this? Or is the motivation for having AA as the second engine supplier really just about diversifying, spreading risk and adding an extra element of competition?

Thanks in advance for any answers you are able to give!

Cheers,
Wouter

Great news with the RRL. That's a huge public exposure and a great way to get new contracts, too.

Too bad I'm living like 10000km from New Mexico

Some time ago (last year) I've been reading that xracer's engine will be on/off only (full thrust or no thrust). Is this still the case? How do you achieve throttling in your engine?

Good luck, guys!

For races, different coloured flames might help identify each aircraft.

Might it be possible to use different salts to produce different colours in the flame, and time a cycle of rapid pulses of the salt solutions to produce apparently static bands of colour in the flame? Red, white and blue being the obvious aim. Does this qualify as chindogu?