Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Armadillos in Space: Neil Milburn of Armadillo Aerospace

Episode Date: December 15, 2008

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Armadillos in Space, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. The armadillo we're talking about is Armadillo Aerospace, the tiny Texas company that won $350,000 from NASA a couple of months ago. The company's dreams go far beyond that success, reaching at least as far as the edge of space. Neil Milburn is vice president, program manager, and one of the founders of Armadillo. He'll join

us from their secret location. Emily Lakdawalla knows there's no atmosphere on the moon, but was it always such a vacuous orb? She'll let the air out of this issue on Q&A. Bruce Betts will be along with his usual perusal of the night sky,

and a new contest that will let you demonstrate that you're Johnny Mnemonic, if not Keanu Reeves, or should I say Klaatu? Bill Nye has the week off. Our Earth, like the rest of the cosmos, is hardly standing still. Did you hear about the discovery of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exo- or extrasolar planet? There's a story about this important find at planetary.org. While there, you can check out the latest news in Emily's blog, where she reports that the mechanical problem with the doors on the Phoenix lander's TIGA instrument were not really a surprise. You may remember that engineers for the Mars mission had a devil of a time getting

those little louver-like doors to open up. I'll be right back with Neil Milburn, but first, this special message recorded about 200 miles over your head. Happy holidays from the International Space Station. I'm Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fink with my flight engineer, astronaut Sandy Magnus. It is this time of year we can reflect on our blessings and the opportunity to advance the cause of exploration through this great global project involving nations from the entire world. So happy, happy holidays from the International Space Station and best wishes for a happy and healthy year ahead. and best wishes for a happy and healthy year ahead. What do you do when you've created some of the most popular video games in history?

In the case of John Carmack, you gather a handful of kindred spirits and start building rockets. Armadillo Aerospace has only been around for a few years, but the company and its cute mascot have racked up some impressive accomplishments, along with some spectacular failures. Their location may be a secret, but their work is very nearly an open book, as can be seen on their website. I called Armadillo Vice President and Program Manager Neil Milburn for the inside story. Neil, I am really glad that you could take a couple of minutes there in the, what is it, the Armadillo Cave, to talk to us on Planetary Radio. Yeah, we dubbed it the Armadillo Cave. For the longest time, we tried to hide our location. Otherwise, we'd have some vilophiles coming around trying to watch our test. It's a little bit more out the way now. We used to actually have a facility just outside of Dallas in an industrial area.

We could do some small-scale testing there, but our testing capabilities outgrew the locations, so we're now out of the new Armadillo Cave, some secret location east of Dallas. Well, we'll leave it at that, but we will say that it's secure enough that you didn't want to have a landline in there, and that's why we're talking to you on your cell phone at the moment. Let me tell you about my first exposure to Armadillo.

I can't remember exactly where it was. It was some trade show, and I was walking the booths, and I come up to this booth with this cute armadillo in front of it, and there are these images of, well, the one that really stuck in my mind was a woman on top of a rocket engine, and I thought, these guys are crazy. Well, we might still be crazy, but we're kind of smart crazy. I don't remember the photograph of a woman on top of a rocket. I need to go back and look at that.

Yeah, check through the archives. Crazy enough to get some significant contracts lately from the likes of NASA and the Air Force. And I should congratulate you, because NASA is about to give you a giant cardboard check for $350,000. Yeah, the cardboard check is very welcome. The actual funds are even more welcome. That was third time is a charm. We should have won that prize a long time ago, but the rocket gods weren't with us on the two prior occasions. But this year it did work like a charm.

And this, of course, was the 2008 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, and you guys were the only ones who actually met the requirements of the first event. Tell us about what took place that day and the vehicle that did the job for you. Well, the Lunar Lander Challenge actually started over two years ago, and we designed a vehicle called the Quad. We had two of them at the time, one called Pixel, which is still alive, and another called Texel. We flew those two years ago at Las Cruces and didn't have a good day.

We actually did some really neat flights. The Level 1 prize is for a vehicle that can take off from a pad up to an altitude of 50-plus meters, translate across 100 meters, and then precision land on another pad. Then we have to refuel it and send it back from whence it came. And it has to be in the air for both legs for 90 seconds plus. That's the level one. The level two is a similar kind of mission, but it has to be in the air for three minutes, which is

no mean feat. And on the first leg, it actually has to land on a simulated lunar surface. And that prize we have still yet to tag. We were hoping to do that last month as well, but again, the Rocky Cubs didn't smile on us there. I think we were

ready, but we had a strange problem with a little $5 relay that messed us up. Otherwise, I think we would have probably walked away with both prizes that day. Tell me about the philosophy of Armadillo Aerospace. It's quite different from the approach that NASA and major aerospace companies take? Yeah, this is kind of a flow down from John Carback, who's our entrepreneur founder. John made his fortune in the computer gaming industry. Anybody who's even remotely familiar with computer games will know his two big successes, Quake and Doom,

which have nicely funded our enterprise for the last eight years. And in the software industry, John is adamant that the reason they've made for rapid progress is kind of the open environment and rapid turnaround. I mean, the famous line is, you know, if we had to develop software and we only got to test it once every year or two years, we'd still be back in the ages of Pong. But all software is tested routinely, almost on a multiple times a day basis. And we've had that flow through the Armadillo philosophy as well.

We believe in building small incremental increases and testing just about as often as you can get the machine up in the air. We prefer to fly rather than static tests. And it's certainly probably successful for us. We've been at this eight years now. But in eight years, we've accomplished probably more flights than the rest of the ultimate space industry put together.

And there is lots of evidence of both your successes and your failures at the website, and we'll put a link to that at planetary.org slash radio. It is a philosophy that seems to be working, and you do develop these, well, they are somewhat ungainly-looking vehicles, probably, I suppose, because everything's kind of out where you can see it. There's no smooth surface or fairing on these vertical takeoff, vertical landing vehicles you guys are developing. Absolutely. I mean, they're built for the task. And, in fact, if you look at the original Lunar Lander, the one that Grumman built, there's some strong resemblances to ours.

I tend to think of them as pretty vehicles because I'm a rocket geek. But when you look at it from the perspective of beauty, they're not pretty-looking vehicles. They're all gangly. There's bits sticking out over. They're square-looking. But you don't need an aerodynamic to land on the moon. And for our purposes, we were set out to win the Lunar Lander Challenge Prize. And we don't need anything aerodynamic for something that's going to travel at four or five meters per second.

It's just not part of the requirements. So they're built for a purpose, and they've served us really well. Neil Milburn, vice president of Armadillo Aerospace. When we return, he'll tell us about a far more streamlined rocket the company is working on. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Sally Ride. After becoming the first American woman in space, I dedicated myself to supporting space exploration and the education and inspiration of our youth.

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slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. My guest is Neil Milburn. He's vice president and program manager of Armadillo Aerospace, the small Texas company he founded with video game designer John Carmack and a couple of other rocket boys. They've already won the 2008 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

You can watch the successful flight on their website. We've linked to it from planetary.org slash radio. They did it with a decidedly unstreamlined craft called the Mod that was all business. On the other hand, you've got a part in some pretty slick rockets, the ones that, well, the Rocket Racing League is preparing to run around through the atmosphere. Oh, we're having an absolute blast with those. We kind of came onto the scene fairly late with the rocket racer. It was just the beginning of this year that they asked us if we could put a propulsion system together for the rocket racer.

that they asked us if we could put a propulsion system together for the rocket racer. And in the space of about three months, we went from sketches on a napkin to a flying vehicle. And that thing is just so much fun to watch fly. It's nice that it's a two-seater. We have to move a few pieces around so the second seat gets freed up. But before too very long, once Len Fox, our test pilot, gives us a nod of approval, I think there's a line of eight armadillo folks that want to climb inside in there and take a ride in that thing. And I imagine you're one of them.

You better believe it. Len was an F-18 pilot of the carriers, and he said, this thing has got more kick than an F-18 on full afterburner. Oh, man. Somebody with his experience to say something like that, it's got to be one hell of a ride. Well, I've got my hand up, but I'm afraid I'll be pretty far down the list for one of those rides. You said eight of you.

I counted 10, but that's including Widget, your Armadillo mascot. This is a really small group. Yeah, we started out of the original group. We founded this eight years ago, as you have 2,000, and the four original members, John Carmack, Russ Blank, Phil Eaton, and myself are all still here, and we've acquired another 14 members along the way. But we don't think that you need a huge team. One of the reasons we can turn things so fast, you know, witness the three-month turn on a propulsion module for the rocket racer, and even the original quad lunar lander vehicle went from a sketch on a napkin in Phoenix

to a flying vehicle in six months, is because it's such a tight-knit team. Everybody knows what needs doing. They all have multiple capabilities, and we just buckle down and do what needs to be done. What's the ultimate goal? It can't be just to win these cash prizes. No, these were steps along the way. It was never part of our original goal. But when we first started this up, I don't think any of us had any idea that it would

turn into the armadillo aerospace that we see today. That just snuck up on us when we weren't looking, but I'm glad that it did. But since we founded armadillo aerospace, it's always been our goal to provide inexpensive, that's a relative term, inexpensive access to space, initially suborbital space, and ultimately to orbital space. And that's our current goal. As you're probably aware, we have an agreement with the Rocket Racing League, or a division of that, and also with the state of New Mexico.

We're going to design and build a fleet of vehicles and operate them out of New Mexico for the suborbital space tourism market. That will be kicking off big time in just the next couple of weeks here. Oh, no kidding. So we should be looking forward to a big announcement. Well, they made the announcement at the Lunar Lander Challenge that this was actually a done deal. We had a concept vehicle that we put together

about six months ago, and I think now that we're changing, refining the design based on current knowledge. We have the technology that we need. All that we require now is to build a vehicle and start the test program. So we anticipate flying test flights in 2009 and commercial services as early as 2010. Wow. There is an artist's rendering of a vehicle that you've got to talk a little bit about. It's on the website, and it is not exactly what the competition is putting forward. It basically looks like a fishbowl. I'm not sure how much of that design is going to survive. We do want to retain the fishbowl concept. It may not be a pure sphere like that, but some kind of 360 panoramic view window. But we very much want to keep that panoramic view.

The competition, and there's going to be plenty of competition out there, and I think the market will support it with Virgin Galactic, obviously the front runners have been doing this for a couple of years now, and our friends at XCOR, good friends, another space company, announced just in the last few days that they have their Lynx vehicle and possibly a follow-on to that. But both of those are a kind of airplane design, wind things. But they're basically airplane designs, so you could be looking out of a porthole, and it's going to be an airplane-like ride.

You'll sit in an airplane seat. But with our vehicle, it's going to be very much Al Shepard style. You'll be laying on your back looking up at the sky when this thing takes off. With the 360-degree view, I think it's going to offer an experience that is just unparalleled in what we hope is going to be a huge, huge industry in the coming years. Well, I'll pass on my Rocket Racing League ride if I can get a shot at a ride in that bowl or whatever form it takes with that 360-degree view. Again, I think you'll find there's a long line there.

I think there's only one of our team that doesn't want to go. That's James. He doesn't like flying at all. Hey, you need to get in friendly with James. That's his fellow's ticket to you. Well, it sounds like even prior to getting a ride on one of your own vehicles that you've been on quite a ride with Armadillo. When we first started Armadillo, even before it became Armadillo Aerospace, the three of us, Russ Blankfield, Eaton, and myself,

were all in the high-power rocketry hobby. That's how John got to know of us. We were kind of the extreme edge of that. We're a little bit outside the normal scope, making our own propellants. That's how I met Phil and Russ. We were brewing hydrogen peroxide for rocket vehicles. At that time, I thought what was going to happen was we got together. We were going to build a project, which was a hovering vehicle. We'd fly it at a couple of national meets, and then we'd break up and go our separate ways. That was kind of the norm in the Hobby Rocket business.

And it just kind of kept on rolling. The first vehicle flew. We built a slightly larger one, and then it got larger yet. Then we had Russ sit on it, and he hovered around the parking lot on that thing. And then that's when the original XPRIZE came up. It was about that time that we kind of founded Armadillo Aerospace, and the enthusiasm just doesn't wane. We've got three full-time employees now, and the rest of us might as well be, because we put in full-time hours anyway. Neil, we're out of time. Please give our regards and best wishes to John Carmack and the

rest of the team and Ad Astra. Will do, and come and place your request for a ride. You bet. Neil Milburn is one of the founders, basically, of Armadillo Aerospace out there at the secret location somewhere near Dallas, Texas. He is the vice president and program manager for Armadillo Aerospace. Keep an eye on them. We'll be keeping an eye on the night sky with Bruce Betts in just a minute or two here. That'll be what's up after we hear this week's edition of Q&A from Emily. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, I know that the moon's gravity is too weak to hold onto gases for a long time,

but could it have had an atmosphere when it was young and volcanically active? Volcanism is a very efficient way to move volatile material like sulfur, hydrogen, and nitrogen from the interior of a planet into an atmosphere. The atmospheres of Earth, Venus, Mars, and possibly even Titan originally formed with the help of lots of volcanoes spewing gases into the sky. And we also know that, although it's pretty much dead now, the surface of the moon was once totally molten, and since the surface solidified, there have been numerous episodes of volcanic eruption. So could the moon once have had its own atmosphere? Sadly, the answer is probably no. The reason lies in the way the moon formed.

Scientists theorized that a Mars-sized body collided obliquely with the proto-Earth, and part of the material that was smashed into space by the collision eventually coalesced into our moon. The hot gases that were released in the unimaginable energy of this collision would most likely have been blown off into space by the solar wind, instead of condensing with the solid material that formed the moon. So the young moon probably had very little volatile material in it. In fact, the Moon rocks brought back to Earth by the Apollo astronauts contain almost no volatiles, a puzzling fact that is explained by the collisional theory for the formation of the Moon.

That's not to say there's no volatiles at all. The strange orange soil found by the Apollo 17 astronauts is composed of volcanic glass beads that most likely formed by exposure to steam during a volcanic eruption. But the quantities of volatiles are so small that our moon probably never had an Earth-like or even a Mars-like atmosphere. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. This is What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He's here for another week of sky watching. I saw something beautiful last, what, two, three nights ago as we record

this. The moon, which I had already noticed was huge, I heard on the radio, though not on this show, is at closest it's going to be for another seven years. And it's really pretty. It is really pretty. Of course, it's closest when measured that way. It really isn't a huge difference. A couple of miles? Buck 22, roughly. Much farther away is Alpha

Centauri. Did you know that? Really? Yeah. We got a message from the friend of the Planetary Society, Warren Betts, who does a lot of stuff, like promote movies. Ah, Cousin Warren. He's big now. He's promoting what else? The Day the Earth Stood Still.

So he sends me this press release, the galactic press release, that The Day the Earth Stood Still, world's first galactic motion picture sent on purpose to ET. Because there are these crazy guys in Florida who've set up their own deep space network, except they call it the Deep Space Communications Network, and they are beaming the day the Earth stood still to Alpha Centauri. Wow. So you know what's going to happen. No. In about eight and a half, nine years,

we're going to get the Planetary Society SETI project is going to receive the first bona fide message back. Really? Yes, and it's going to be translated as send more Jennifer Connelly been working on that one for a while forget the straight guy we want to see more of Jennifer

Keanu Reeves apparently we don't look like Keanu Reeves send more Jennifer Connelly you know I'm going to be on the special features when they release the DVD for that. That's right. It's like a great lead into a joke, but sadly it's not. It has to stand alone. Yeah.

Yeah, buy the DVD, folks, whenever it comes out, a year from now, six months. And Charlene Anderson from the Planetary Society talking about things like aliens and E.T. Talking to them. Let's go on to planets, shall we? Jupiter, Venus, still in the evening sky, but Jupiter getting lower in the west. So check it out soon after sunset in the west. Two bright star-like objects. One is Venus getting higher.

One is Jupiter getting lower. Venus is the brighter of the two. And if you're up in the midnight time midnight time frame saturn's rising in the east of that time it is high overhead uh in the south around uh pre-dawn mention it's not traditionally one of the most power-packed uh meteor showers of the year but there is a meteor shower coming up peaking on january 3rd that is the hardest to pronounce. The quadrantids. Quadrantids. Okay. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah. So you can check that out. And not a lot of interference from the moon, so that's the good news. Stare up and check out the quadrantids. Check out that hard-to-say meteor shower. Moving on. Moving right along. On to Random space fact!

Got the dogs fired up. Everybody's a critic. Indeed. So let's talk about star classification. Stars are classified in this completely seemingly random way. They're classified by temperature. That part's not random. But they're given letters like our stars, a G star.

And the hottest stars are, of course, O stars. And the coolest stars are, of course, M stars. And in between are the B, A, F, G f g and k stars for which there's a mnemonic you'll be happy to know oh oh be a fine girl kiss me oh be a fine girl or i'll be a fine guy kiss me that goes from hottest coolest uh for stars on the main sequence uh the kind of normal run-of-the-mill stars the temperature also correlates with other nice things frequently, such as mass and luminosity and other good stuff. Things get a little weirder if you're off the main sequence. Great astronomy lesson. Why, thank you. Maybe we should come back to that. Oh, I think it would

be an excellent idea. There will be a quiz. There will be. There will be indeed. On to the trivia contest. And we asked you, in a challenging and controversial topic, who was the first person to fly in space as a civilian? Who was a civilian when they flew, by which I said someone who was not actively in the military at that time. How'd we do, Matt? Well, there's some controversy here. Don't yell at us. The preponderance of you came up with the answer that we did,

and that is Valentina Tarascova. And clever Bruce, she was the mom in last week's answer. It all comes together, doesn't it? Well, Valentina, who flew on Vostok 6, there were some people who said that she became military before her flight, but that was not at all clear. I mean, and so we're going to go with it. We might have gone with it. And then we let other people into the random generator with other answers. But Valentina came up on top, I believe.

And so did Pam Bachman. Pam Bachman of Tabor, which is robot spelled backwards, sort of, in Iowa. Pam, you won and you're going to get a Planetary Radio t-shirt of your very own. Thank you for entering. And Valentina, she definitely became military. She eventually became the very model of a modern major general because that was the rank she reached in the Soviet military. The things you learn. Well, I thought we would return to the topic of rats spelled backwards.

Tar? Star. Oh. We're going to talk star classification. And, you know, I'm just not satisfied with OB a fine girl kiss me is the best best mnemonic for this oh no that's right ladies and gentlemen it's a mnemonic competition what are the letters again O B A F G K M and we will put those on the website of course of course so go to planetary.org slash radio find out how to enter and if you make us laugh or it just strikes us as the most profound thing ever,

then you will win a Planetary Radio t-shirt. And what else might they win, Matt? Hey, something brand new from our friends at Oceanside Photo and Telescope, specifically Craig Weatherwax, who's the boss down there. If you win and you want it, we assume you will, they're going to make you a member of the Oceanside Photo and Telescope, the OPT Rewards Program, and you will get

a discount on anything that you want to get there, and they do other cool stuff, I guess, for members of the members of that select group. So we're sweetening the pot a little bit. And you'll need to get it to us by the 22nd, the 22nd of December at 2 p.m. Pacific time.

All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about the importance of flanges. Thank you, and good night. And someone tell me what the heck one is. I don't know. Maybe you should ask Klaatu. I'm sure you would know. Could be a secret weapon. Bruce Betts is the director of projects for the Planetary Society

he does join us every week here for What's Up Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California have a great week Thank you.