credit: Armadillo Aerospace / Rocket Racing Inc
With a target price of $100,000 per ticket or less, launch vehicle developer Armadillo Aerospace and Rocket Racing League company Rocket Racing Inc are aiming to offer suborbital flights from New Mexico's Spaceport America from 2010
The image above is the rocket concept the two companies have released to the media
Rocket Racing Inc chief executive Granger Whitelaw says: "The price of space is coming down to Earth. And thanks to Armadillo's ships and New Mexico's spaceport, human beings will be treated to the most stellar views in the galaxy."
See more images of the joint venture's concept vehicle, some comment by me and Virgin Galactic's reaction in the extended portion of this blog post
click on all the images in this blog post to see larger versions in the same browser window
credit: Armadillo Aerospace / Rocket Racing Inc
This design had been on Armadillo's website for some time although just checking the site now it has disappeared
I was expecting something new for the concept. It is interesting that this has come out after the non-arrival of a reportedly "imminent" deal between Spaceport America and Virgin Galactic
While Armadillo has "proven" technology with its Rocket Racer engine I am not entirely convinced that that powerplant, or a cluster of seven of them, could really push even a two-person transparent capsule to above 100km
For a start the design above is not very aerodynamic and will waste a lot of fuel just trying to overcome that hurdle in the first 30,000ft (9,150m) of atmosphere but they also want a vertical powered descent with all the structural inefficiencies and fuel requirements that will bring
I don't understand why they didn't opt for this design (see below) and build in a transparent section, assuming any existing transparent material is going to be able to cope with the aerothermodynamic loading on ascent
credit: Armadillo Aerospace
Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn's reaction is, "...for Armadillo/Rocket Racing league, good luck to them"
Coming back to the whole Spaceport America involvement, there has been very slow progress towards Virgin signing an anchor tenant contract for some time with a memorandum of agreement inked a while back
The New Mexico government even made getting an anchor tenant part of its legislation for the creation of the spaceport and with the MOA Virgin seemed destined to fill that role, but are they?
Contacting Whitehorn this evening (UK time) he emailed me to say, of the new 'imminent' agreement, "this is the new agreement for the actual lease and facilities to the Fosters/URS design now finalised, which will supersede the original MOA."
One has to wonder though if the New Mexico government is concerned that they will have an utterely empty $225 million spaceport, cum white elephant, on their hands if Virgin Galactic, which rolled out an empty WhiteKnightTwo mothership in July, doesn't start flying in 14-months time. They could still be test flying SpaceShipTwo in 2010 at Mojave air and space port
I also wonder about the likelihood of Armadillo test flying so soon. It seems rather challenging, to say the least, for any company to go from a concept that has a habitable section that has untested technologies, sub-systems, let alone a proof of concept test article, and no successful flights of anything that could be called a prototype propulsion module, to flight tests inside of 12-months, assuming they make their first flght in December 2009
So the Armadillo, Rocket Racing, New Mexico government link up probably is a step to shore up political support for the spaceport, to give that impression of a growing list of tenants that includes Up Aerospace and maybe even the UK's Starchaser Industries
Being here in the UK and not having anyone in New Mexico to attend the press conference on our behalf, I have submitted a bunch of questions by email. Let's see what they say!
"This design had been on Armadillo's website for some time although just checking the site now it has disappeared"
No it hasn't:
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=356
"...I am not entirely convinced that that powerplant, or a cluster of seven of them, could really push even a two-person transparent capsule to above 100km"
It's an arrangement of six, not seven. The second passenger is new; in previous renderings there was only one person.
"For a start the design above is not very aerodynamic and will waste a lot of fuel just trying to overcome that hurdle..."
Armadillo's plan of record is a fairly slow ascent, around 300 mph. So they're trading aerodynamic drag for gravity losses. It seems odd to me too, but apparently they've worked the numbers. Pixel has a delta-V better than 2000 m/s even when deeply throttled, which is more than what's needed.
"It seems rather challenging ... for any company to go from a concept that has a habitable section that has untested technologies, sub-systems, let alone a proof of concept test article, and no successful flights of anything that could be called a prototype propulsion module, to flight tests inside of 12-months, assuming they make their first flight in December 2009"
The sixpack is based on the module, which aside from winning the level-1 LLC today, has a few dozen tethered hovers under it's belt, and 5 good free flights (3 today, 2 at the 2007 X-Prize Cup). There is still a substantial propulsion element to work out, namely differential throttling, but otherwise it's the same machine they've been flying for the last year. After that, they can put a big sphere on top and start developing aerodynamics, high-altitude navigation and communications, etc.
I can't remember where I read it, but I think Armadillo is planning for a substantial VTVL test plan in 2009, so your start date of December 2009 might be pessimistic. Of course, they need to finish 5 more Rocket Racers and a NASA contract before they can concentrate on their own projects. I doubt they will be operating a passenger service by December, 2010. Maybe they can fly a daredevil to 100K feet for a space-diving mission by then, but not regular passengers.
Knowing Grainger Whitlaw., I am sure next month he will announce the acquisition of Transparent Aluminum Inc.
Then his master plan of global domination with rocket powered snow globes will be complete..Muuha...muuhahaha
Steve
Where's the launch abort system, emergency parachute, & hatch with explosive bolts?
Well said. If you were going to produce a concept for a vehicle you intend to launch within a year you would think it would be a bit more than this. Having met Jon Carmack I am a little disappointed at the use of this design.
That will teach me only to look in the most obvious place, the image gallery. Why bury it at the bottom of a press release from February? And one that says, of the images, "the “six pack” [is] our current plan for commercial suborbital use. Don’t try to read too many technical details into these concept renderings, there are lots of things not explicitly drawn."
Lots of things not explicitly drawn. Telling me...
One of the major problems I see with using a transparent sphere as a space capsule is one of thermal control. anyone who has had to leave a car with its windows up on a sunny day will appreciate what I am talking about.
However, Thermal control in space is academic since this craft appears to have no heat shield for reentry.
Hire is something more about transparent habituated space modules:
http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2008-01-2025
The transparent bubble for space flight is fusible but Armadillo's visualization looks rather naive.
They are too far from human rate vertical rocket flight, I thing.