Wow. Armadillo’s most recent flight went to 82 kilometers. Not without a hitch, but they got it back, probably able to fly again.
7 thoughts on “Almost Into Space”
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Wow. Armadillo’s most recent flight went to 82 kilometers. Not without a hitch, but they got it back, probably able to fly again.
Comments are closed.
My impression is that the nose cone and camera was salvageable, but the rest got wrecked. Note this from their release:
“A failure of the [high altitude] ballute (balloon-parachute) recovery system meant that the GPS steerable main parachute could not be deployed as intended. The vehicle was recovered within the predicted operating area and the nose cone and ballute were separately recovered intact on the Spaceport property.”
They’re now moving on to STIG-B however, to hit 100km. Hope they get the chute issues resolved. Certainly very impressive that they got up as high as they did this time, but getting down intact is also rather important.
Woot! Great to see this!
Videos of the flight:
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=377
Will: I think that’s video of the December test flight of the same rocket (which also had a ballute/parachute partial failure, but was apparently reparable.)
Looks to me like you’re correct, Mike. Hope to see the video / photos of the Jan. 28 flight. These guys need some help with recovery systems – obviously doing something wrong on deployment. There’s lots of Tripoli HPR flyers who’ve send big birds up over 100k feet and done successful recovery who would be more than happy to help – and the price would be right too.
Right you are. I saw the most recent video on their site and didn’t notice the date.
Nice to see a local company doing well – the Novatel logo is on top of what is probably a GPS antenna inside the tube- visible in the “zipper” photo. Novatel is in Calgary, Alberta.