XPrize - When?
Roga
I assume that all the teams are making progress, they all seem to be
saying the same things every time -- and nobody seems to actually be
progressing very rapidly towards making a flight.
Does anyone have any better info on any of the competitors -- are they
all testing 1/4 prototypes waiting for further funding, or is anyone
actually on track to a launch date, building the final product? Is
everyone too poor to even build their final product, or are some teams
only lacking funds for ground operations/legal permits/etc.
There are 20 teams, some with very inexpensive business plans, some
with very rich investors. So where are the rockets?
Andrew Case
>I've been keeping updated on the XPrize for a few years now, and while
>I assume that all the teams are making progress, they all seem to be
>saying the same things every time -- and nobody seems to actually be
>progressing very rapidly towards making a flight.
Armadillo Aerospace is building testbed hardware at a furious pace.
The rate at which they are trying out and refining ideas is truly
impressive. XCOR is also moving ahead smartly, though they are not
a declared competitor. Canadian Arrow recently tested an engine,
but I don't know what else they've got in the bag. Their schedule
seems pretty aggressive, though.
>There are 20 teams, some with very inexpensive business plans, some
>with very rich investors. So where are the rockets?
At least some of the teams are building things very quietly. Others
are quiet because they aren't getting anywhere. It's not obvious
which is which.
......Andrew
--
--
Andrew Case |
ac...@plasma.umd.edu |
John Carmack
I haven't yet gotten around to filling our our official entry form for
the X-Prize, but we are a publicly declared competitor, and you are
welcome to follow along with our progress in far more detail than you
likely want at: www.armadilloaerospace.com
We have several more intermediate vehicles to build on the way to the
X-Prize, but we are fully funded (out of my pocket), so all we need is
time. We are hopefully going to be hitting several of our personal
milestones in the near future:
Demonstrate a 60 second (steady-state) biprop burn, which is roughly
the burn time for an X-Prize vehicle. XCOR has been doing this for a
couple years now, but not many others have.
Demonstrate a 5000 lbf monoprop engine. That catalyst pack will later
be used for a big biprop, but not this year.
Our seated lander is rebuilt, so we will be demonstrating auto-hover
and auto-land with the laser altimeter control, and if we get
everything nailed down, we will let a person ride on it in the parking
lot. Not exactly a giant leap for mankind, but a useful step. Again,
XCOR has been flying people on rockets for a year now, but nobody else
has.
Fly our flight control system in a streamlined vehicle (2' diameter,
300lbs). It won't go very high, but it will take off and fly without
a launch rail, and give us a lot of data we need for our first manned
high speed vehicle.
John Carmack
Joe Strout
Carmack <jo...@idsoftware.com> wrote:
> We have several more intermediate vehicles to build on the way to the
> X-Prize, but we are fully funded (out of my pocket), so all we need is
> time. We are hopefully going to be hitting several of our personal
> milestones in the near future:
>
> Demonstrate a 60 second (steady-state) biprop burn, which is roughly
> the burn time for an X-Prize vehicle. XCOR has been doing this for a
> couple years now, but not many others have.
This brings up a question I've been wondering -- the old "buy vs.
build" issue. ISTM that the folks at XCOR are experts at making rocket
engines; you could buy one (or several) of theirs, be confident that
they'll work well, and concentrate your own engineering resources on
the rest of the vehicle (which, after all, is still a pretty big job).
So I'm curious, why have you chosen to develop your own engines at the
same time you're developing an entirely new vehicle? Are XCOR's
products just not the right fit, or out of budget, or what?
Thanks,
- Joe
--
,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| j...@strout.net http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'
John Carmack
> In article <c0e0a1dd.02081...@posting.google.com>, John
> Carmack <jo...@idsoftware.com> wrote:
>
> > We have several more intermediate vehicles to build on the way to the
> > X-Prize, but we are fully funded (out of my pocket), so all we need is
> > time. We are hopefully going to be hitting several of our personal
> > milestones in the near future:
> >
> > Demonstrate a 60 second (steady-state) biprop burn, which is roughly
> > the burn time for an X-Prize vehicle. XCOR has been doing this for a
> > couple years now, but not many others have.
>
> This brings up a question I've been wondering -- the old "buy vs.
> build" issue. ISTM that the folks at XCOR are experts at making rocket
> engines; you could buy one (or several) of theirs, be confident that
> they'll work well, and concentrate your own engineering resources on
> the rest of the vehicle (which, after all, is still a pretty big job).
>
> So I'm curious, why have you chosen to develop your own engines at the
> same time you're developing an entirely new vehicle? Are XCOR's
> products just not the right fit, or out of budget, or what?
>
> Thanks,
> - Joe
Several reasons. Foremost is that we think that hydrogen peroxide has
a lot going for it, and XCOR, well, disagrees. The main thing that it
buys us is system simplicity -- our entire 3-axis stabilized
propulsion system with four attitude engines and a main engine has
less plumbing than a single one of XCOR's torch ignited biprops. Our
strategy of rapid vehicle evolution gains large benefits by being able
to put a new system together in a couple weekends. We gladly trade
away some Isp for this.
I'm not opposed to buying functionality. One of the very first things
I did with Armadillo was to buy a functional 100lbf peroxide engine
from Juan Lozano, which gave us a baseline to compare our efforts
against. We can now confidently design and produce engines for a
fraction of the cost of buying them, and at a much faster rate, which
is important when we occasionally crash a vehicle and wreck a set.
I did get a price quote from XCOR early on, and it just didn't make
sense for us. Four or five engine from XCOR would have cost more than
our entire first year of development. I think hard about all large
$$$ purchases, because it is a slippery slope to get on, where you
just throw money at a problem. I will bite the bullet if I really
think that developing a cheaper alternative is either too involved, or
too risky. Buying fiber optic gyros was an early example. A recent
example was the silicide coating for our radiative chamber. I felt
that $3000 for coating a 2.5" diameter by 6" long chamber was a shitty
price, but the other options we were pursuing were much more
speculative, and we only had two tries before having to procure and
machine more TZM, so I went ahead and spent the money. It seems to be
working as advertised, and the cost should scale only weakly with
engine size, so it was probably the right call, but it still grates.
Also, I am very much a the-journey-is-the-reward sort of person, and
developing rocket engines is rather entertaining...
John Carmack
www.armadilloaerospace.com
Rand Simberg
jo...@idsoftware.com (John Carmack) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:
>I did get a price quote from XCOR early on, and it just didn't make
>sense for us. Four or five engine from XCOR would have cost more than
>our entire first year of development. I think hard about all large
>$$$ purchases, because it is a slippery slope to get on, where you
>just throw money at a problem.
Try getting a quote from Rocketdyne sometime, if you want sticker
shock.
I find it amusing (and great) that, as lean and mean as XCOR is in
their costs, compared to the Usual Suspects, there's someone who
thinks that their stuff is too expensive, so they're doing it on their
own.
Attitudes like that are how you drive down costs--it's called real
competition, and you'll never see it in a government-funded/managed
program.
--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org
"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Replace first . with @ and throw out the "@trash." to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers: postm...@fbi.gov
George William Herbert
>jo...@idsoftware.com (John Carmack) glowed:
>>I did get a price quote from XCOR early on, and it just didn't make
>>sense for us. Four or five engine from XCOR would have cost more than
>>our entire first year of development. I think hard about all large
>>$$$ purchases, because it is a slippery slope to get on, where you
>>just throw money at a problem.
>
>Try getting a quote from Rocketdyne sometime, if you want sticker
>shock.
Without naming names, in the last couple of years I have asked
one of the propulsion companies to sell me a newly-fabbed
replica of something they built in the 1960s for around
low seven inflation adjusted figures, and got an eight
to low nine figure response.
I greatly respect the technical abilities of the usual
mainstream industry suspects, but they appear to have
no current capability to do lean projects.
>I find it amusing (and great) that, as lean and mean as XCOR is in
>their costs, compared to the Usual Suspects, there's someone who
>thinks that their stuff is too expensive, so they're doing it on their
>own.
>
>Attitudes like that are how you drive down costs--it's called real
>competition, and you'll never see it in a government-funded/managed
>program.
Yep.
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
Roga
openness about the process. I guess not having to please investors
goes a long way to making the whole thing more of a spectator sport.
While you're not very far along now, and you've only been around for a
short time, I know more about your attempt than everyone else
combined. Can't wait to see the Armadillo fly. I have a feeling the
venture will be very profitable for you whether or not you end up
winning the prize, as long as you finish the vehicle.
pat
"John Carmack" <jo...@idsoftware.com> wrote in message
news:c0e0a1dd.02081...@posting.google.com...
> Joe Strout <j...@strout.net> wrote in message
news:<120820022116503756%j...@strout.net>...
> > In article <c0e0a1dd.02081...@posting.google.com>, John
> > Carmack <jo...@idsoftware.com> wrote:
> > - Joe
>
> Several reasons. Foremost is that we think that hydrogen peroxide has
> a lot going for it, and XCOR, well, disagrees. The main thing that it
> buys us is system simplicity -- our entire 3-axis stabilized
> propulsion system with four attitude engines and a main engine has
> less plumbing than a single one of XCOR's torch ignited biprops. Our
> strategy of rapid vehicle evolution gains large benefits by being able
> to put a new system together in a couple weekends. We gladly trade
> away some Isp for this.
>
I love this guy.
Jeff Greason
> > This brings up a question I've been wondering -- the old "buy vs.
> > build" issue. ISTM that the folks at XCOR are experts at making rocket
> > engines; you could buy one (or several) of theirs, be confident that
> > they'll work well, and concentrate your own engineering resources on
> > the rest of the vehicle (which, after all, is still a pretty big job).
>
> Several reasons. Foremost is that we think that hydrogen peroxide has
> a lot going for it, and XCOR, well, disagrees.
That's a little stronger than I'd put it. Peroxide is fine for some
applications. It's just that XCOR doesn't have other customers for
peroxide engines right now, so we'd have had to charge you the
full development cost. We have many customers for LOX/hydrocarbon
engines and so we can spread the cost out.
> Also, I am very much a the-journey-is-the-reward sort of person, and
> developing rocket engines is rather entertaining...
I suspect that this is the killer argument in your case :-)
----------------------------------------------------------------
"Limited funds are a blessing, not Jeff Greason
a curse. Nothing encourages creative President & Eng. Mgr.
thinking in quite the same way." --L. Yau XCOR Aerospace
<www.xcor.com> <jgre...@xcor.com>