Just talked to John Carmack, the chief of Armadillo Aerospace, about the crash of his rocket Mod, which was trying to finish its second and final leg of Level 1 of the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. To win that level, worth $350,000, independent rocketeers must vertically launch from one concrete pad, fly horizontally for 100 meters, and land on a second pad. Flight time must exceed 90 seconds.
After a successful first flight, the Armadillo team, while on the pad prepping for the return flight, discovered an igniter problem similar to one that led the team to scrap its first attempt on Saturday morning.
To clean the blockage, crewmembers filed down a paper clip and poked it through the igniter's orifice -- not exactly rocket science. Carmack believes that bit of MacGyver'ing altered the rate of flow of the fuel. That led to a rough takeoff (in parlance, a "hard start," meaning that too much fuel in the combustion chamber caused an explosion). Mod hopped straight up, rather than rising gently. Knowing the engine was having problems, Carmack still tried to keep Mod hovering for the required 90 seconds, but steered it close to the ground, hoping to avoid damage when it finally did crash. At about 83 seconds, and just an agonizing few meters above the pad, Mod was swinging back and forth, unable to gracefully land. When two of its legs caught the concrete, the rocket tumbled sideways.
"I was afraid the engine might blow," Carmack said. "We saw we had a hurt engine, so we hustled it over the pad." The damage, he said, was relatively light, and can be fixed in a matter of hours. One control actuator, used to help steer the craft, was destroyed, and an engine chamber was shattered. Both are easily replaced. "It's frustrating that we've done this flight successfully (in test situations)," he said. "But flying it back to back is harder."
The Armadillo team will reload and, if they can successfully win the $350,000 prize in the morning, will be ready in the afternoon to fly a different craft in search of the $1 million prize. To claim that award, the team must land and then take off from a bumpy pad, simulating the lunar surface, rather than the flat one Carmack and company landed on today. To help solve the igniter problem, Carmack's accepted an offer from the Unreasonable Rocket team to help install a filter, which he described as "unbelievably good sportsmanship."
(photo credit: Chris Jonas)
