Making Rocket Science a Career Move | Space-Travel

By Chris Hanson, Space-Travel, Exploration & Tourism, Posted 11/30/09

Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Rocket_Stars_The_Guys_Making_Rocket_Scien...

"The Caddo Mills Municipal Airport east of Dallas is the home of Texas' most unusual rocket company, Armadillo Aerospace. All that outwardly heralds the presence of the company is a small sign over a few windows looking in on a sparse lobby decorated with a few trophies."

"Nine-year-old Armadillo is 100% owned by John Carmack, famous video-game developer of the well-known and highly-profitable Doom and Quake franchises. Armadillo has for its life so far, been a non-profitable endeavour, consuming around 4 million dollars of Carmack's own money along with various grants, awards and sponsorship monies. A team of eight (mostly volunteers but three full-timers) toils each week at pushing commercial spaceflight to where it has never gone before: affordability and availability."

Hanson provides (see pdf download) an inside profile of Armadillo with great photos and insights into this maverick enterprise that just picked up $0.5M in the Lunar Lander Challenge.  He also relates it to other Texas suborbital space vehicle vendors like Blue Origin and other key industry players.  This is a fine report, so check it out.