How Is The Armadillo Knowledgebase Organized?

Belated congrats on your LLC2 qualification.

I've been following Armadillo's exploits for years and through all the iterations of engines, injectors, nozzles, etc, I've wondered how you guys kept track of this ever-growing bundle of acquired knowledge. Do you just have a bunch of text files with point-form notes, or do you have a more formal way of keeping track of what you've learned?

If they don't, maybe we could make a project in the Spacefellowship of organizing the info in the Armadillo updates and even on their posts to the Armadillo forum . . . I'd be willing to help.

Yes a little wiki or database would be nice. With Hyperlinks of course. I would be happy to help data mine.

It's all stored in John Carmack's massive brain .

That's likely true, though for the whole team. Our knowledge is in emails, a few design documents, some posts to ARocket, and a lot of experiences kept in people's heads.

Heck, as a developer I'd be darn interested in this...

I couldn't begin to imagine what could be done with a resource like that.
I'm sure it would be a lot of work to organize, sift through the posts, data, and to pick the brains of the team members.
If I had the time I would gladly help, unfortunately I am a bit sparse on that .

I wonder what the Armadillo guys think about this

It sounds like 1) a lot of work for them, 2) not necessary to their operations, and 3) a potential enormous competitive loss if someone got a hold of it. They paid for that knowledge in blood, sweat, and, well, maybe not any actual tears yet, but certainly a lot of time, energy, and money. If it were all boiled down to a nicely indexed DVD, it'd be industrial espionage waiting to happen.

Wait until 10 years from now; if John follows precedent, he'll open source the plans to Pixel right about the time they do their first orbital shots (same as he did with open sourcing Doom after Quake shipped....)

... as he did with Quake 1, 2 and 3 subsequently

But you don't really want to wait for him to open source the engineering plans, because a) there probably aren't any (at least no detailed technical drawings) and b) if you are willing to learn about rockets and build something like pixel or the mod, you just have to buy a book about liquid fuel rocket engines, learn and understand the principles and then read through the archive of updates over at armadillo's website. There is a TON of information there, especially regarding engine development.

Of course, there isn't everything there, but certainly enough to start your own learning by doing project. It basically is the same with game engines from ID software: only the code of the engine(s) has been open sourced, not the actual content of the game(s). So you still have to develop/design your own stuff to make it work.


But well, maybe Armadillo will open source their GN&C code a few years from now