Opinion: Fire imp dooms Carmack X Prize bid
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Armadillo Aerospace, John Carmack’s Mesquite, Texas-based space startup, has flamed out in the 2007 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge — which was not actually testing competitors’ ability to land on the moon but to demonstrate a rocket capable of moon-ready maneuvers. Carmack, whose development of the engines for fabled games Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Quake qualifies him for consideration as the Orson Welles of first-person shooters, has been an X Prize regular (and so far, bridesmaid) with the so-ungainly-it-looks-almost graceful modular ‘Pixel’ vehicle design. The Northrop Grumman proving was held at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico over the weekend. Here’s what pixel was required to do to win this year’s prize:
The Competition is divided into two levels. Level 1 requires a rocket to take off from a designated launch area, rocket up to 150 feet (50 meters) altitude, then hover for 90 seconds while landing precisely on a landing pad 100 meters away. The flight must then be repeated in reverse—and both flights, along with all of the necessary preparation for each, must take place within a two and a half hour period.
In its attempt to get that first-level prize, worth a cool $350,000, Pixel went down in flames, according to Wired News:
‘After a loud explosion, a pool of fire spread approximately 30 feet away from the rocket, according to one photographer watching through a telephoto lens. Firetrucks were summoned, but the fire was out before their arrival.’
The money from this year’s prize may be rolled over for 2008, and the big winner will be the developer who can perform not only the takeoff and landing feat described above but a more taxing second level:
The more difficult course, Level 2, requires the rocket to hover for twice as long before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface, packed with craters and boulders to mimic actual lunar terrain. The hover times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform the real lunar mission.
The awarding of X Prizes and related awards for engineering breakthroughs great and small has become a pleasing hum of progress. You may come down on the other side of the Hickam/Simberg divide in the development of space, but regular competition for incremental improvements strikes me as a saner and more lasting way forward than massive do-or-die commitments to singular high-value goals. I’m sorry to see the Armadillo didn’t pull this one off, but then I’m not sure how you can really simulate lunar-landing conditions on heavy old Earth. Do you just get the thing to fly and figure you’ll divide all your specs by six when you get up to the moon?
Fire imp: id software; Pixel: Armadillo Aerospace