Armadillo Update - Failure to win Lunar Lander prize

[PistolPete]

Below is the link to video of all of Armadillo's Sunday attempts. I had my tripod with me this time so the video is more stable, but I still had to rely on the jumbotron to view what was happening close to the ground. Hopefully next year they will pick a spot that is easier to see from the viewing area.<br /><br />LINK <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><em>So, again we are defeated. This victory belongs to the farmers, not us.</em></p><p><strong>-Kambei Shimada from the movie Seven Samurai</strong></p> </div>

 

[PistolPete]

No_way, I just looked at some of the photos you took. Is that your girlfriend in the pink cowboy hat? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><em>So, again we are defeated. This victory belongs to the farmers, not us.</em></p><p><strong>-Kambei Shimada from the movie Seven Samurai</strong></p> </div>

 

[no_way]

Yeah she is. We got mistaken for Texans for that <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br />As you can tell, she likes to be on the pictures much more than i care to ( or anybody else i know <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> ). Im there on one pic with NightHawk on the back.

 

[no_way]

By the way, Armadillo has a postmortem of XPC up.<br />On their problems : they really dont know what was the root cause for any of the problems. Not a single one.<br />Their fix: rework the engine entirely for different ignition. If they ever intend to do inflight restarts, i'd say its a good call.

 

[PistolPete]

Dude! We parked right next to each other on the first day! I was driving a burgundy Dodge Neon. That pink cowboy hat was impossible to forget. If I had known that was you I would have introduced myself. <br /><br />I bumped into Henryhallam. I saw this lanky looking dude with a British accent chatting it up with the SpeedUp team and thought to myself "Man, that's got to be Henry!" <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />Perhaps, with any luck, we can all meet up again next year and properly introduce ourselves. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><em>So, again we are defeated. This victory belongs to the farmers, not us.</em></p><p><strong>-Kambei Shimada from the movie Seven Samurai</strong></p> </div>

 

[richalex]

I had a great time at the Expo, but I have to say that if space flight is ever to become as common as New Mexico says it wants it to be, someone is going need to put in some airports or rail lines or something to this stuff, instead of making everyone drive from El Paso or Albuquerque.

 

[henryhallam]

I think there are a few commercial flights to the Alamogordo airport (just a couple of miles from Holloman).

 

[PistolPete]

Alamogordo and Las Cruces Airports are both Class E airports. These types of airports service what are known as General Aviation types of aircraft. IOW, all private aircraft from Cessnas to Lear Jets. They don't have the facilities to support regularly scheduled commercial flights. Hopefully with the introduction of private jets such as Cirrus's The Jet and the Eclipse ECJ will allow air taxi services to become a reality within the next few years. Then commercial spaceflight passengers won't have to rely on international airports. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><em>So, again we are defeated. This victory belongs to the farmers, not us.</em></p><p><strong>-Kambei Shimada from the movie Seven Samurai</strong></p> </div>