Doom Co-Creator's Lunar Lander Works Well

15 Sep 2009 at 12:56:50 by Gunnar Petzall

A company founded and owned by John Carmack has built a lunar lander that could win the company £602,000 GBP ($1,000,000 USD).

The Scorpius lunar lander, built by Armadillo Aerospace (founded and owned by Doom co-creator John Carmack) has been built as an entry into NASA's Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. It's a Level 2 entry - which requires a 180 second flight - and could land the company an astronomical one million dollars prize. Level 1 is under similar conditions but requires half the flight time, and the company won that in October 2008, netting a cool $350,000 USD.

Armadillo Aerospace is the first company to complete a level 2 entry, and if no other contestants succeed, Armadillo will win by default.

Carmack is very happy that he's beaten the tough requirements set by NASA. Speaking about the Scorpius' capabilities, Carmack stated: "Since the Lunar Lander Challenge is quite demanding in terms of performance, with a few tweaks our Scorpius vehicle actually has the capability to travel all the way to space.

The company will be moving quickly to do higher-altitude tests and the Scorpius "can go up to about 6000 feet here at our home base in Texas before we'll have to head to New Mexico where we can really push the envelope."

Even if Carmack's little gem don't take home the prize in the end, the company "already have scientific payloads from universities lined up to fly as well, so this will be an exciting next few months for commercial spaceflight."

More nitty-gritty stats and details available over at Space.com. Thanks to Gizmodo for this.

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