Armadillo Aerospace 2000ft Rocket Robot Roll Vane Flight

A flight to 2000ft AGL of an Armadillo Aerospace "Mod" VTVL rocket, with a shiny new actuated roll vane, 2010/06/22.

Rather than using cold gas thrusters to move the vehicle around the vertical axis (roll), an aerodynamic surface is actuated to provide roll. In the split screen, it's the aluminum plate on the right; the camera is pointed straight up. The view on the left is looking straight down, to show the roll orientation over time.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• armadillo
• aerospace
• rocket
• robot
• flight
• texas
• roll
• vane
• thrust
• alcohol
• lox
• liquid
• oxygen
• parachute

[robotguy]

is the drogue chute triggered by an accelerometer? Kinda looked like the landing was a little hard, and that might have triggered an emergency chute deployment...

[bbrockert]

@robotguy To quote John Carmack:

"but we got a little surprise when the drogue popped out when the vehicle touched down – the logic is to always cut away the drogue on a shutdown to make the vehicle come down where the impact calculator predicts, so SHUTDOWN_GROUND_CONTACT popped the pneumatic cutaway, and the blowby gas was enough to pop the chute out of the nose. Luckily, there was enough wind to take it away from the hot ground and engine."

[eylusion2]

HOLY HELL! I am sooooo impressed by the stability you guys have achieved! Super freaking congrats!

[childsca]

@elmalakai75

I laughed way harder then I should have at that. :D

[Tokenekie]

Wow!

[ralphwroberts]

Armadillo is living the dream!

[kirkjamestkirk]

This is HUGE ! God Congats !

[elmalakai75]

Nice, I like how you can tell it's falling back down to earth by the roll vane going opposite 45. The green drogue shoot deploying by accident at touchdown looked sorta like the lander got a bit too excited at the end.....