This would have been pure SciFi even 0 years ago and very close to 5 
years ago.
Look for John and team to win the NASA "Lunar Lander" competition to 
be held shortly.
Skydiving off a flying platform, as John mentions, sounds 
'interesting'. Having seen videos of "The Quad" in action, you'd want 
the rockets throttled well back as you left.

We'll have the flying cars yet :-).

        RM

    www.armadilloaerospace.com for more details


From: "John Carmack"
To: <arocket@exrocketry.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 9:46 AM
Subject: Re: [AR] Introducing a new rocket company: SpeedUp 
(wasArmadilloUpdate)

> > If you don't need
> > fly by wire
> > then I would think avoiding it at all costs would be the way
> > to go if it
> > needs to get past FAA or some such. But then this is just an 
> > opinion
> > from the armchair.

>I of course agree 100% but it occurs to me Armadillo may already
>have a huge head start on an exciting new sport... the Widget Rocket
>Racing League (tm).  Any reason midgets in Widget suits couldn't
>stand on top of John's awesome quad vehicles with joysticks... like
>tomorrow???? :)
>Tom
>http://neverworld.net

We are almost certainly going to perform some manned flights with the
quads (the second one passed hydrotest on Saturday, and should be in
the air within two weeks) next year.  Lots of people have commented
that skydiving off of one of them sounds like fun, and flying off of
a pier over a lake also sounds entertaining.  I have been seriously
considering writing a user interface for our vehicles that runs on a
smartphone with 802.11 support.  Flipping open your phone and
piloting your rocket ship would be soo SciFi...

The current gimballed central engine is not the architecture that I
would want for a user friendly, high dynamic vehicle, the control
authority is a bit marginal.  If we put a person on top, we will
probably throw some heavy weights down at the landing gear to make
sure the CG doesn't move closer to the gimbal point.  Our next
vehicle will be back to differential throttling, which can make the
vehicle feel like a magic carpet.

Speaking of differential throttling, a question for the Masten folks,
if they are willing to answer:

Do you plan on throttling all four engines in sync for hover control
and just using the hinges for attitude control, with a theoretical
differential throttling fallback position, or using some kind of
blended control scheme that simultaniously does differential
throttling and hinge movement?  A blended scheme would have more
chance of actually functioning correctly in a transition to full
differential throttling than a system that had to make an explicit
mode change, but it is also more complex to debug.  As I have said
before, I would throw the hinges out and just go with pure
differential throttling.  The only thing you lose is the ability to
decouple attitude from position hold (no need to lean into the wind),
and a theoretical ability to survive an engine out.

BTW, the recent article about Masten claimed that you had $500,000 in
the prototype vehicle.  That was a misunderstanding on their part,
right?  I assume they meant "expended in the development and building
of the prototype vehicle".

John Carmack

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