Official Armadillo Q&A thread

For those who didn't see it yet, some news from Armadillo http://spacefellowship.com/2009/07/23/a ... -payloads/

I think this is one of those key moments in private commercial launch development that legitimizes this new industry. I've always been a little hesitant to talk about Armadillo to my "normal" or mainstream colleges. Frankly they think most of us are a little nuts discussing small scale rocketry.

But with the beginning of launch services for academia, I have a new "certified" angle to make with them.

Thank you Armadillo

Howdy folks. Just popped in to +1 the love for the team. Carry on with the awesome work!

I hope you guys get some worthy competition, that way you can be tied for the lead.

3 Questions for Armadillo guys:
1) Can you give us a timeline of when you expect to go suborbital, and eventually, orbital?
2) Do you have video of the boosted hop? Those are really cool!
3) What progress is going on with the Rocket Racers?
I can't wait for the next update (well, at least I really don't want to )
More power to you!

An update would indeed be very nice. It has been over three months since the last one. Matthew Ross gave us a short summary a while ago here in this thread, but I think an extensive update with technical details, pictures and videos is overdue.

At least give us some words on your current status. I guess everybody here is waiting for the high altitude flights!

Btw: Masten Space has received a waiver for free flights, so you guys better watch your back, hehe Looks like they are finally catching up (and fast)!

I'll try to ask Carmack those questions tomorrow at the quakecon keynote and report back here

John will indeed talk about Armadillo today at his Quakecon keynote, and answer questions during Q&A.

Basically, we've all just been too busy with all that's going on to get the update out. Finishing up the NASA contract culminating in the free flight and boosted hop for them as spectators, then moving immediately back over to Rocket Racing stuff (plane was flying again all this week), and now jumping back on the Super Mod to get it ready for the LLC Level II attempt... there's just been no time for anything not essential.

I sent the latest selections of photos and videos on to Phil so that maybe he could write the update copy since John is so busy, but Phil is no less busy! Heck, I've missed lots of Armadillo lately because *I've* been so busy with the "day job."

We realize everyone is eager for us to post one, and we intend to, but there is just So Much To Do with these three different projects going on, not to mention whatever's going on for each of us *outside* of Armadillo.

Thanks for the update Matthew. We are all impatient for stories off your progress but nothing is worth the risk of an early retirement from beeing overworked, even aming for the moon So take care.

regards Marius

At the keynote Carmack said that the level 2 attempt is currently planned for labor day weekend. Other than that he said the rocket racing plane has been making a lot of test flights recently and that AA would make a lot more progress in the next year for reasons he couldn't announce yet.

Im sure there's someone out there that would happily volunteer keeping a more frequent blog for you, no ? A chronicle keeper ..
You'd have to have someone ( John ? ) reviewing and approving before publishing, but thats significantly less workload than writing up mammoth updates yourself ?

By the time said volunteer had hassled everyone on the team for all the details they'd need for their giant blog post, they'd have taken up almost as much team time as if the team had just written it themselves

I'm glad to get one-paragraph "we're really busy with X, Y, and Z" updates here. I'm sure they'll post some kind of update after Labor Day....

How about an AA twitter feed? An occasional 140 character update shouldn't be too onerous.
I wonder at JC's comment about more progress next year implies a new contract or investor?

I understand how big John's opportunity cost for doing things like blog updates must be, and for other team members as well. Ideally we're looking for some way of getting information to the fans with almost zero effort. I'd like to see Matt posting more photos. I figure you guys must be taking loads of pictures, if only to record engineering data, and we'd be happy to take what we can get, even if it's posted without explanation. Russ Blink has a flickr account where he posts low-res photos once or twice a month, and I like it, but it would be great to see some medium-res stuff from Matt, who probably takes a lot more photos.

I remember a time when AA posted a long update every week. Sigh...

Thanks for the reminder

Looking a Russ' latest pick, the new SuperMod seems to gave much larger helium tanks - I wonder why?