After winning the Level 1 LLC, this weekend, Armadillo Aerospace's John Carmack gave an interesting interview.
In the category of what's next for Armadillo, they are obviously working on the Rocket Racing League racers. They are also planning to start work on the new suborbital space tourism vehicle. This is going to allow them to do some larger run fabrication of the new rocket motors. They've also been working with NASA on a LOX / Methane rocket motor. It turns out getting combustion with methane is allot harder than they expected, which is counter intuitive because it is a gas and should combust more easily. The problem is both the LOX and methane are very very cold to start with so it turns out to be harder to get them to begin combustion.
They are hoping to start work on the crewed version for commercial flights right away. "Megapixel" will essentially be a scaled up version of the mod/quad design. It will probably have 8 fixed mount motors and achieve attitude control by adjusting thrust to each motor, which will be offset slightly from each other. The crew cabin will eventually be a fully transparent sphere which holds one or two passengers and offers unobstructed 360 degree views. They are hoping to be able to try an unmanned suborbital test flight next year with existing hardware, and be able to launch manned test flights by 2010. They've also had allot of interest in trying to break the high altitude sky diving record, a so called "space jump" above 120,000 feet. They think they could actually try that next year with existing hardware, but obviously they'd need someone with "the right stuff" to attempt the jump.
On the business side, they are hoping to be able to offer flights for $100,000 or less. That is 1/2 what Virgin galactic is asking, but of course the RRL / Armadillo offering is a vertical take off and powered vertical landing. Many people just won't ever be comfortable taking off and landing without wings, so obviously there is plenty of room in the market for both offerings.
Things are definitely going well for Armadillo Aerospace. Carmack commented that they are now operating profitably, even without the prize money from winning the LLC, which is just gravy. He also shared some interesting views on different approaches to engineering. Armadillo has always strived to make the engineering process more like software. You try something, it fails, you learn, and make improvements. It is an iterative process that is very hands on. The NASA approach is much more cost intensive, because they spend more time on tests and simulations. Ironically, the goal of the tests and simulations are to save cost, because they idea is the hardware is so expensive you want to learn all you can by doing simulations. But, in the long run, you learn allot more, and learn more cheaply, by building test vehicles and maybe blowing them up occasionally. He says it takes an engineer to build a bridge that will just barely not fall down. The typical NASA approach is to try to engineer the best vehicle possible, but if you try to build a perfect vehicle it will never happen. That's why the Armadillo approach is so much more effective and less expensive at the same time. As a point in fact, before yesterday's launch they went at the vehicle with a hack saw, removing several pounds of extra structure they probably didn't need in the first place. Of course they didn't need to lose the weight, they had plenty of fuel to spare at the end, but the point is this is experimental science. Every flight is a test flight, and you always learn and adapt as you go.
As a closing comment, he said once they have the suborbital platform essentially as a solved problem, they will be able to scale it up to deliver a payload to the 100 km mark. From there they could easily launch a LOX / methane second stage to possibly achieve orbit and deliver a sputnik like test platform into orbit.